When Giants Fall
The Gilmour Quest for Algonquin Pine

A classic Canadian story of lumbering in the late 19th century's era of powerful timber barons, When Giants Fall traces the rise of the Gilmour company as one of the lumber giants of eastern Canada. Beginning as a square timber dealer in the early 1800s, this lumbering enterprise expanded into sawmilling to supply the American market, relentlessly chopping through the pine forests of the Ottawa Valley and central Ontario to feed the saws of its voracious mills.

By the 1880s, although the company’s sawmill at Trenton on Lake Ontario was now one of the world’s largest, the supply of pine that fed it was, understandably, running out. With the family’s wealth and reputation on the line, David Gilmour embarked on an incredible scheme to tap a new source of pine in Algonquin Park, and float the logs 445 kilometres to the mill along three different river systems — and over the hills between them. A companion volume to When Giants Fall, entitled Gilmour Tramway: A Lumber Baron’s Desperate Scheme, provides a detailed account of the gravity-defying mechanism that made this possible. In the end, the tramway was not the success hoped for and it could not overcome all the challenges faced by Gilmour.

In When Giants Fall, coauthors Gary Long and Randy Whiteman capture the daring and drama of the Gilmour company’s rise...and its eventual demise.

PRAISE

“Long and Whiteman have produced a winner … [it] combines the geographer’s appreciation of place with the historian’s interest in issues and personality.” — Ontario History

“A terrific book … we heartily recommend it.”  — The Raven, Algonquin Park

AUTHORS

Gary Long grew up in Muskoka. After obtaining a geography degree from the University of Waterloo, he spent years exploring and studying the waterways of central Ontario. In addition to writing articles for magazines and newspapers, Long worked on several books. He authored This River the Muskoka and Gilmour Tramway: A Lumber Baron’s Desperate Scheme, contributed a chapter about the Gilmour log drive to Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park, and wrote notes plus an introduction for a new edition of James Dickson's classic, A Nineteenth-Century Algonquin Adventure.

Randy Whiteman, the eldest of four brothers, was born and raised in Stirling, Ontario, a few kilometres from the Trent River north of Trenton. A 1978 graduate from York University's Canadian Studies program, Whiteman's career in the retail book trade allowed him enough spare time to pursue his twin passions of early Ontario history and antiquarian books by Canadian authors. Whiteman lives in Barrie, Ontario.

DETAILS

Publisher: Fox Meadow Creations, 2001
Category: Lumbering and resource industries
ISBN: 978-0-9681452-5-8
Price: $19.95 CDN/USA paperback
Format: 191 pages 8.5 x 5.5 in
Features: 28 historical photos and illustrations, 7 maps, index