Pertinent Pulp & Paper Timeline:

1890 - Charles Riordon from County Kerry, Ireland, who had pulp & paper mills at Merritton (now St. Catherines), Ontario, installed digesters to produce sulphite pulp.

1891 - The St. Maurice Lumber Company was founded as a wholly owned subsidiary of the International Paper & Power Company.

1891 - Charles Riordon and four others form the Atlantic Pulp & Paper Company.

1898 - Seventeen pulp and paper mills merged to form the International Paper Company (IP).

1898 - Charles Riordon erects a large sulphite pulp mill at Hawkesbury, Ontario.

1903 - The exporting of pulpwood from Canadian crown lands is prohibited.

1913 - The US import tariffs on newsprint are removed.

1916 - Walter was sent as Woods Manager to open the Rouyn-Noranda Division for the Riordon Pulp & Paper Company.

1919 - The Riordan Pulp & Paper Company opens a sulphite pulp mill at Temiskaming, Quebec.

1919 - The St. Maurice Lumber Co., an IP subsidiary, starts construction of a paper mill at Three Rivers, Quebec.

1921 - The depression resulted in a decline in sales and a sell-off of 74 year old Charles Riordon’s assets.

1922 - The St. Maurice Lumber Company buys the Temiskaming and Hawkesbury pulp mills.

1922 - IP's Three Rivers mill started operations with four paper machines.

1924 - IP's Three Rivers newsprint mill expansion from four to seven machines started.

1925 - The St. Maurice Lumber Company was renamed the Canadian International Paper Company (CIP).

1925 - CIP started construction of a newsprint mill at Gatineau.

1926 - The CIP’s Three Rivers mill completed its large-scale expansion to become the world's largest newsprint mill.

1927 - CIP completed the installation of a fire prevention system at the Gatineau mill.

1928 - CIP established a research lab, specializing in cellulose chemistry, at the Hawkesbury mill .

1972 - The Temiskaming CIP mill was shut down and then sold to the former employees that formed Tembec Incorporated.

1982 - The Hawkesbury CIP mill was shut down and demolished.



In 1901, as a young man of 17, Walter was working as an apprentice in his father’s blacksmiths shop.

Shortly afterwards, he became a successful Bushman in the pulp & paper industry along the Rouge river.

Working for the Riordan Pulp & Paper Company, he ensured a continuous supply of wood to their Hawkesbury mill.



At the age of 27, his annual salary for 1910 was $700 ( considered to be an average salary for that time ).

During the summer of 1911, he first saw his wife-to-be, Laura.

She was sitting on the bridge over Beaven’s Creek, below his father’s blacksmith shop in Arundel, during a visit to her then fiance’s home.

He introduced himself and immediately decided that this red-headed school teacher would become his wife, even though she was already engaged to someone else.

A year and a half later, when he was 28 and she was 23, they were married and lived with her parents, on the Walker farm, in Henry, Ontario, where their first child, Mabel, was born nine months later on Oct 31, 1913.

The birth of Violet on Jun 16, 1915 was followed by a move to Haileybury, Ontario in 1916 with Laura’s ailing parents included.

This move was necessary because Walter (as Woods Manager) and Mr. X (as Financial Manager) had been sent to open the Rouyn-Noranda Division for the Riordon Pulp & Paper Company.

In 1919, they moved across Lake Temiskaming to Ville Marie, Quebec, when the Temiskaming Mill opened.

Ville-Marie was centrally located, as Walter’s Rouyn-Noranda office was 85 miles to the north and the Temiskaming mill was 55 miles to the south.

In 1920, at 37 years of age, he earned $2300 (considered to be double the average salary for that time). He was paying $30/mo. (about 15% of his income) to rent a 6 room house that sheltered him, his wife & 5 young children and both of Laura’s perents.

This is where Laura’s mom, Marguerite Beauchamp, died in 1921. She was buried in the Cassburn Cemetery.

In 1922, the Riordon Pulp & Paper Company sold the Temiskaming mill and the Hawkesbury mill to the St. Maurice Lumber Company, which eventually became the Canadian International Paper Company (CIP) in 1925.

The final move was to New Liskard, Ontario in 1923 to avoid having their oldest son, Charles, go to school in a convent.

This move also allowed the family to have access to a Presbyterian church (St. Andrew’s).

Laura’s father, Stewart Walker, died in 1924. He was buried in the Cassburn Cemetery beside his wife, Marguerite.

Walter had a great rapport with the Jobbers and he actively promoted the Conservative party lead by Maurice Duplessis, that was defeated in the Nov 25, 1935 Quebec election.

This campaigning greatly annoyed the CIP management at head office in Montreal and he was quickly demoted to superintendent of the Clova operation.

In the fall of 1946, Walter was stricken with colon cancer and Mr. X (now CIP’s Chairman of the Board) made arrangements to cover all his medical expenses and for him to be admitted to Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital, Ross Memorial Pavillion (built in 1916).

Walter’s daughter, Dorothy, her husband Harry Thornton (of Waverly St, Ottawa) and Alex Barrett visited on weekends.

Dorothy stayed with her father’s sister, Lucy McGrandel while in Montreal.

It was there that Dr. Armour surgically removed most of the cancer.

Some of the cancer was too close to Walter’s spine and could not be removed.

In the spring of 1947, Walter returned to New Liskard under the care of his daughter, Dorothy, only to find that Charlie’s wife, Winifred, had locked Walter out of his own house and had made arrangements for Walter and Dorothy to stay with Walter’s sister, Eva.

He stayed there for almost a year before being admitted to the Red Cross Hospital in New Liskard, where he died in the late spring.