Pine Falls Pulp and Paper – Third of 4-part series

August 15, 2022

Part One: The Timber Frontier
Part Two: For Capital & Honest Enterprise

This article was done in partnership with the Winnipeg River Heritage Museum, the Lac du Bonnet & District Historical Society and the Whitemouth Municipal Museum. It appeared in the August 11, 2022 edition of the Lac du Bonnet Clipper.

For forty years, trainloads of timber shipped daily out of southeastern Manitoba. Railway ties in the 1880s and 1890s, and by the 1900s, cordwood and assorted lumber were bound for Winnipeg’s consumer markets. By 1916, timber in the Lac du Bonnet, Whiteshell and Whitemouth Valley areas began to decline.

In 1918, Lac du Bonnet’s sawmill was shutdown. By October 1919, McArthur advertised the sale of his Lac du Bonnet holdings: the general store, sawmill, brick plant and 1,700 acres of farm land. No one was interested. McArthur turned instead to the thick spruce forests surrounding the last set of rapids on the Winnipeg River: Pine Falls, with the hope of expanding his lumber empire with Manitoba’s first pulp and paper mill.

By 1920, McArthur was fully committed. While the Dept. of the Interior carefully drafted pulpwood regulations, a multi-year political debate over the mill site location ran through the pages of the Winnipeg Free Press and Tribune, with each newspaper on opposing sides. Many people believed Winnipeg was the only place for a paper mill. Selkirk also put in a bid and Lac du Bonnet businessman, William Childe, weighed in, asking why the paper mill couldn’t be built at Lac du Bonnet. The village had a railway, almost year-round road access and was located inside the pulpwood berths, all of which, Childe argued, made Lac du Bonnet the most logical choice.

McArthur persevered, continuing to develop Pine Falls. As president of the Manitoba Pulp and Paper Company, he struggled to find new sources of financial backing, and secure a rail line to the site. In May 1921, the Manitoba Pulp and Paper Company was granted Pulpwood Berth No. 1. By October 1922, they received a second pulpwood berth and a permit for developing the Pine Falls power site, with the stipulation that the electricity could only be used for the paper mill.

During the winter of 1922-23, the proposed mill site was partially cleared, docks were built at Fort Alexander for summer transportation and a camp established. In March 1923, the Manitoba Pulp and Paper Company negotiated a 99-year lease on the 520 acre mill site and purchased another 200 acres for the townsite. These 720 acres were taken from Fort Alexander reserve lands.

With each setback, McArthur continually requested, and received, extensions from the federal government. After partnering with Ontario’s Spanish River Pulp and Paper Company, McArthur was effectively demoted to figurehead status. A further partnership expansion in late 1926, including Quebec’s Abitibi Power and Paper Company, resulted in the newly renamed Manitoba Paper Company. Through these upper management changes, progress was finally made on construction of the paper mill.

After numerous delays, and a route change, the Canadian National Railway branch line from Beaconia arrived in spring 1926. Thousands of tons of steel, shipped in from Selkirk’s rolling mills, formed the bulk of the structure that quickly dominated the landscape.

1,800 men were on site, battling heavy August rains and ankle-deep mud. Whenever a new shipment of rubber boots arrived, hundreds lined up to purchase a pair. Horses, bogged down in the muck, were replaced by oxen hastily borrowed from local farmers and Indigenous people. As the rain continued, all that kept construction moving was a narrow-gauge railway floated on logs.

A transmission line from Great Falls supplied electricity to the site. Powerful overhead searchlights enabled the night crews to continue working “as if in daylight.” The SS Keenora often stopped so passengers could experience the creation of a new company town.

Within days of McArthur’s death in January 1927, the Manitoba Paper Company mill produced its first paper. On February 8, 1927, the Manitoba Free Press printed its first issue on Manitoba made newsprint, the realization of J.D. McArthur’s “long-cherished dream.”

References:

Jim Mochoruk, Formidable Heritage Manitoba’s North and the Cost of Development 1870 to 1930 (Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press, 2004), 270-73, 276, 278, 287, 293, 308, 316.

From the Beaches to the Falls: A Winnipeg River – Lake Winnipeg Heritage (Winnipeg, MB: Inter-Collegiate Press of Canada, 1989), 114.

Eleanor Stardom, “A History of Economic Development in the Lac du Bonnet Area” (1978). Thesis Paper, Lac du Bonnet & District Historical Society. Pages 5-6.

Karen Nicholson, The Lumber Industry in Manitoba (Winnipeg, MB: Historic Resources Branch, 2000), 33, 68.

“For Sale at Lac du Bonnet.” Manitoba Free Press (Winnipeg, MB), October 17, 1919.

“Pine Falls Line is Authorized.” Winnipeg Tribune, June 20, 1924.

William Childe. “Letters to the Editor: Why Not Lac du Bonnet?” Winnipeg Tribune, June 17, 1925.

“Spanish River Official Heads Man. Pulp Co.” Winnipeg Tribune, March 8, 1926.

W.J. Healy. “Pine Falls – 1870 and 1926.” Manitoba Free Press, May 31, 1926.

“The Pine Falls District.” Selkirk Weekly Record, August 5, 1926.

“Paper Manufacturing Plant at Pine Falls Opens Monday.” Manitoba Free Press, January 12, 1927.

“This copy of…” Manitoba Free Press, February 8, 1927.