page_title: John Rudolphus Booth
section_title: Expansion to Georgian Bay
hierarchical_section_title: John Rudolphus Booth / Building a lumber and railway empire / Railways / Expansion to Georgian Bay
caption_attribution_description: English: The Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway crossed the Brockville and Ottawa Railway (Canadian Pacific Railway) line just west of Renfrew, Ontario at the diamond crossing seen in this image. The site of fights between the two companies during construction, the junction was the site of more than one collision during its lifetime. This image was reported in the Ottawa Evening Journal on 10 December 1906, reporting on an event that occurred on the 8th. The paper read: There was a collision at Renfrew Saturday evening between two freight trains, one belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railway and the other to the Grand Trunk. No one was hurt and the only damage consisted in the smashing of two C.P.R. freight cars and the derailing of the G.T.R. engine. The smashup delayed traffic on the G.T.R for some hours. The C.P.R. freight was on the diamond at Renfrew and the G.T.R. train was going east. Previous to the collision the C.P.R. train was divided but when the smash came was all coupled together. The cars struck by the engine were all loaded with cement.
context_page_description: John Rudolphus Booth was a Canadian lumber tycoon and railroad baron. He controlled logging rights for large tracts of forest land in central Ontario, and built the Canada Atlantic Railway to extract his logs and to export lumber and grain to the United States and Europe. In 1892, his lumber complex was the largest operation of its kind in the world.
  He was familiar with all aspects of his industry, and one observer noted:
  [He] knew the forest as a sailor knows the sea, and his success was largely due to the fact that he never overestimated its potentialities.
context_section_description: In 1888, Booth chartered the Ottawa, Arnprior and Renfrew Railway to build a line from Ottawa to Renfrew, as well as the Ottawa and Parry Sound Railway to do the same from Parry Sound to Renfrew. In 1891, the two lines (together with the Parry Sound Colonization Railway in 1893) were amalgamated into the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway (OA&PS), which ran from Georgian Bay through southern Algonquin Park to Ottawa.
  When the PSCR was taken over by Booth, the original intention was to have its terminus at Parry Sound. However, the high prices demanded by local landowners prompted him to choose a location on nearby Parry Island, which would become Depot Harbour. When completed, Depot Harbour became one of the most prominent ports on the Great Lakes, rivalling Collingwood, Midland and Owen Sound. It was the shortest route for shipping grain to the Atlantic, with trains arriving and departing every twenty minutes.
  All three lines met "end to end". The M&OJ met the OA&PS on Booth's sawmill property in Ottawa while the C&PL met the M&OJ in Coteau, using several hundred feet of trackage rights of the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). In 1899, the OA&PS amalgamated with the CAR. As a result, Booth ruled the largest railway empire built in North America by any one man.
  It was said that the first phase of the CAR's construction was undertaken without any government assistance, which was unusual at the time. Booth himself was concerned with building the railways as well as marketing the service to build and maintain tonnage on the new lines.  He was open to cooperation with other railways in eastern and western Canada, as well as to sale or amalgamation with a larger railway system, and was contemplating such a sale by 1901. Whether it was because Booth at age 74 was tired, or because he realized that competition from other transcontinental lines would soon cause serious problems for the CAR, he did everything possible in the early years of the 20th century to make every aspect of the railway profitable, and therefore attractive to potential buyers.
  Booth also operated grain elevators at Depot Harbour, Coteau, Duluth and Milwaukee, and steamships on the Great Lakes, and formed the Canada Atlantic Transit Company, which operated five large lake freighters on the Upper Great Lakes.
caption: The diamond crossing between the OA&PS and B&O was the site of several collisions over its history, a tribute to its equally stormy building.
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