The fonds comprises records of the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company that document vital economic activity in Canada for almost a century. More than the historical record of a pulp and paper company, it holds valuable information for economic historians studying foreign investment and provides a case study of business-government relations. Researchers will find basic information on the state of the virgin boreal forests of the Lower North Shore in the reports of the timber cruises done on the company's limits. The engineering and maintenance records when combined with the photographs offer an unparalleled view of the development of the pulp and paper industry. Lastly, for urban planners the collection affords a detailed thirty year history of the planning, construction and managing of a company town. The records combine the economics of Canadian resource exploitation with Col. Robert R. McCormick's ideal of mid-western, small-town America. The Chicago Tribune's development of the Baie Comeau mill and town site had profound ramifications for Canadian political and economic evolution. More than just another resource extraction site on the Canadian Shield, Baie Comeau was built and run as a model "American" town whose ultimate significance lay in the fact it became the boyhood home of a future Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney.
The records in the fonds provide a history of the planning, construction and management of company towns, Thorold in Ontario and Baie Comeau in Quebec, 1930-1960, by Arthur Schmon who built and managed the company for Colonel McCormick. The fonds is arranged in eleven series and consists of records generated in the course of the daily business and activities of the company. They are as follows: 1. Records related to the early development of the company; 2. Industrial Relations Files; 3. Legal and Property Files; 4. Controller's Office Files; 5. Mining Records Files; 6. Engineering Records Files; 7. Marine Records Files; 8. Financial Records Files; 9. Research Records Files; 10. Corporate Management and Reports Files; and, 11. Public Relations Files.
The fonds also comprises 333 microfilm reels dated from 1927 to 1978 (and 112 duplicate reels), from the company's Engineering Department. All correspondence prior to 1959 has been microfilmed expecting plans, blue prints and bound reports. Some originals of these records have not survived. Read the series entitled "Engineering Records Files" for more information. Also, a detailed description of each reel is available in the finding aid 2528.
The fonds comprises the photographs of the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company, which record in detail the company's activities, from the original timber cruises to shipping the finished newsprint to Chicago and New York. The industrial photography taken inside the mills at Thorold and Baie Comeau is remarkable, providing fifty years coverage of the company's paper production. However, the most important images are those of the construction and subsequent development of Baie Comeau. They literally begin with aerial photographs of the rocks and trees followed by images of building the wharf to landing the equipment to build the town. These are followed by prints and negatives of the actual construction and finally the photographs of the completed town. Then every major new building and housing development through 1960 is recorded. This is the complete photographic record of the construction and life of a not quite typical Canadian company town.
The majority of photographs were taken by Canadian professional photographers including: W.E. Shore, Business and Industrial, Editorial Associates Limited, John Pope, Jean-Jacques Lavoie, George Hunter, Malak, Gilbert A Milne, Herbert Nott, Photo artistique Enr. and Photo Baie Comeau. Among the American professional studios commissioned the Company was Kaufmann and Fabry Co. Commercial Photographers of Chicago. However the most significant group of photos were taken by Paul Provencher, the Ontario Paper Company's Chief Forester. Paul Provencher was also an explorer, an artist, a writer and a filmmaker. He produced films on people of Quebec North Shore to document their style of life and their activities and he published many books related to his work (list in chronological order):
"I Live in the Woods", Frédéricton, Brunswick Press, 1953, 188 p.
"Vivre en forêt", Montréal, Éditions de l'Homme, 1973, 223 p.
"Provencher, le dernier des coureurs de bois" (en collab. avec Gilbert La Rocque), Montréal, Éditions de l'Homme, 1974, 287 p.
You can also read his biography written by Pierre Frenette entitled «Paul Provencher dans les forêts du Nord», Histoire Québec, vol. 15, no 2, 2009, p. 29-33.
Researchers could also read many websites dedicated on the career of Paul Provencher in particular the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec Website, the Fonds Paul Provencher preserved at the Société historique de la Côte-Nord (PN/1/1,36) and many photographs in the archives of magazines "Forêt Québécoise", "Le Poste d'Observation" and "Chasse et Pêche".
The fonds comprises a large amount of architectural drawings and maps relating to all aspects of the planning, construction, operations and maintenance of the papers mills and other facilities of the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company, its predecessors and its subsidiaries. They are an essential component of the fonds. They document every aspect of the company's operations over eight decades. This includes all technical aspects used to develop the machines for the production of pulp and paper. The production of both pulp and paper in a same complex site was new for that time and required innovative engineering and manufacturing processes. These records provide useful information to study this industrial evolution and give an overview of the use and the management of the company's vast forest holdings. These records are directly linked to textual records and we decided to describe them within the existing textual series.
Audiovisual material consists mostly of films and videos which relate the history of the company and were used to chronicle its development. These records are described in more detailed in the Public Relations Files Series.
