Timber Empire
The Exploits of the Entrepreneurial Boyds
2nd edition

In 1834, 19-year-old Mossom Boyd arrived in the backwoods of Upper Canada with few assets other than his intelligence and determination.

Soon taking over a small sawmill at Bobcaygeon, in the Kawartha Lakes district, he expanded operations until he was shipping millions of feet of lumber each year to the U.S. He extended his logging operations north to the farthest reaches of the Trent River headwaters in Haliburton County, and then made a bold attempt to tap the pine resources of the Muskoka watershed.

Boyd also engaged in the risky but exciting and often financially lucrative square timber trade, annually floating rafts of pine all the way down the Trent and St. Lawrence rivers to Quebec for export to Britain.

Timber Empire follows the exploits of Mossom Boyd and two of his sons as they battle natural, political, and economic obstacles in their quest to extract a living from the pine forests of central Ontario.

Grace Barker’s well-researched narrative, based to a large extent on information in the diaries and correspondence of the Boyds, overlays a sense personality and immediacy on the hardships, excitement, and innovation that characterized 19th-century lumbering in Ontario.

AUTHOR

Grace Barker lived for most of her life in the Bobcaygeon area of the Kawartha Lakes. She and her husband, Don, raised Hereford cattle on their north Verulam farm. During the summers they explored the lakes and rivers of the Trent system in their boat.

Grace’s interest in the Boyd story began during her tenure as librarian at the Bobcaygeon Library, located in what had been the Boyd Lumber Company oFce. As she delved into the old Boyd diaries and notebooks, removed from the pine shelves to make way for books, she became convinced that the lumbering activities of a pioneer family was a story that needed to be told. Those Boyd documents (donated to and now preserved by Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa) provided much of the background for Timber Empire, originally published in 1997.

In 1999 Grace received an Ontario Heritage Foundation award for her work in preserving, protecting, and promoting the rich heritage of the province.

She now resides in Cobourg.

DETAILS

Publisher: Fox Meadow Creations, 2003
Category: Lumbering and resource industries
ISBN: 978-09681452-7-2
Price: $19.95 CDN/USA paperback
Format: 143 pages 10 x 8 in
Features: 66 historical photos, maps and illustrations / index