“Incidentally, news had come to me that Gildersleeve was organising a new company to enter into competition with the North Star’s pulpwood activities along the North Shore.”
“Before the war, the North Star had succeeded in acquiring all the larger and more valuable timber concessions on the upper reaches of Lake Superior, with the exception of the block known as the Nannabijou Limits. This vast area of pulpwood was considered the most desirable of all, and the cutting rights there meant the domination of the pulp and paper industry in Northern Ontario.
“The government had withheld the Nannabijou Limits from being thrown on the market in deference to a pledge made to the people by a former premier that it would never be leased until the company tendering for it erected a mill at Kam City capable of manufacturing into paper every stick of wood taken from it.
“The North Star until then had been an exporter, sending most of its pulpwood to mills in eastern Canada in which it held stock and to customers in United States. I had early conceived that to make the North Star hold its place it must by one means or another acquire the Nannabijou Limits. Before the war, plans were all completed for the building of a pulp and paper mill at Kam City to comply with the government stipulation. The outbreak of hostilities, however, brought about such chaos in the business world that the project had to be abandoned.
“My absence at the war and the consequent inactivity of the North Star in the matter of expansion had given Gildersleeve the opportunity he had been quietly watching for. When I returned I discovered that he was organising international capital on a large scale with the express purpose of securing the rights on the Nannabijou. If he succeeded I knew too well what it meant, and that would be the ultimate elimination of the North Star as a factor on the upper lakes.
“The North Star immediately purchased a site for a plant in Kam City, let a contract for the erection of a pulp and paper mill building and placed an order for the necessary machinery and equipment. With these proofs of our good intentions we went to the provincial government and put in our application for cutting rights on the Nannabijou. The Kam City Pulp and Paper Company, subsidiary of the International Investment Corporation, of which Gildersleeve had been made president, simultaneously made a bid for the limits. They too bought a site in Kam City and made preparations for the erection of a mill.