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In one of three related stories looking for living descendants of Ottawa’s founding families, Bruce Deachman talks with lumber baron J.R. Booth’s great-grandson John (Rowley) Booth.
John Booth jokes that when he first walked into Ottawa’s Trinity College, people said, “Oh, there’s J.R.”
“Because somehow through the generations, the nose profile hasn’t changed a whole lot.”
Indeed, the 71-year-old Ottawa businessman, who now lives in Nepean, did inherit his great-grandfather’s prominent nose — and some of his wealth — but not a lot else. The original J.R. — John Rudolphus — was shrewd and frugal. His successful bid to provide all the wood for the original Parliament Buildings, for example, undercut his competitors by using unemployed longshoremen from Montreal to cut trees for much less than the going rate.
“I’m told I’m much more like my grandfather,” says John, “in that I deal with people well.”
His great-grandfather, known as The Great J.R., lived to nearly 99 — outliving five of his eight children — and worked almost until the very end of his very long life.
J.R. Booth in 1904.
When J.R. wanted to secure a princely $45,000 loan to buy 250 square miles of timber rights for the Parliament job, and the bank asked what collateral he had, he famously held out his hands and said, “These.” The story may be apocryphal, but it’s not out of keeping with what we know of the Bytown lumber baron who arrived in 1852 with nine dollars in his pocket and went on to become the largest timber-limits owner in the British Empire and a major player in shaping of the nation’s capital.
“If J.R. had lived in any other area in Canada except Ottawa,” says John, “he’d be a really famous man. I mean, a lot of people remember who he is if you’ve been in Ottawa, and you’ll see references here and there, but because Ottawa was the political capital of the country, business was just business.”
Up at 5 a.m. each day and always dressed in shabby work clothes, J.R. founded the region’s lumber industry, oversaw the country’s largest privately owned railroad, and became a shipping magnate. He and his descendants shaped Ottawa, establishing a hospital and building churches and mansions, Union Station, a YMCA and day nursery. He was friends with both Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, although he ultimately helped defeat Laurier over reciprocity. The Booth, Transportation and Jackson buildings, all eventually expropriated by the federal government and the NCC, are among the Booth family’s legacies, while a pair of Booth streets, one each in Ottawa and Gatineau, and Booth Road, at Kingsmere, are named for them. A new breed of chrysanthemum, developed at the Experimental Farm, was also given J.R.’s name.
Among Canada’s richest men, his estate was probated at $23 million when he died in 1925, the equivalent today of more than $300 million. The total would have been higher, but for some “gifts” he gave to family members before his death. The family paid more than $4 million in succession duties following his death, but a dozen years later, the Ontario government claimed it was owed more, and changed existing legislation that might have prevented it from collecting an additional $3 million from the Booth family.
“Here’s the crowning thing,” says John. “If you take all the wealthy families in Canada today, the really old-school wealthy families, most of them came from the booze business, which was illegal. So they didn’t pay taxes; it was all cash. So what J.R. did was that much more impressive.
“But I heard he was tough,” John adds. “He didn’t suffer fools at all, and took no prisoners.”
John Booth, great-grandson of Bytown/Ottawa lumber magnate J.R. Booth, outside Booth House, where John was conceived and briefly raised.
John (also a J.R.; his middle name is Rowley) never met his famous forebear; the elder Booth died 19 years before John’s birth in 1944. But the old man’s forceful personality and enduring legacy were never far away.
“Growing up being a part of a wealthy family has its challenges. There is an expectation that you should be as great as your great-grandfather, or a complete failure. Either way, you will be judged and it is difficult.”
John was 10 or 12 when he became aware of his family’s significance in Ottawa.
Related
“When you’re a kid, you don’t know that you’re from a wealthy family; it’s just a family. We spent summers in Montebello at the Seigniory Club. I called it going to the cottage, although it was everything but.”
It wasn’t until he attended Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. that John discovered a downside to his life of privilege. The school’s winter carnival included a performance by Ian and Sylvia Tyson, who only months earlier had released their biggest hit song, Four Strong Winds. Booth recalls that copies of the January 1964 Chatelaine magazine, featuring the folk duo on its cover, were plastered all over the campus. Before long, however, students began reading another story in that issue, titled The Booths of Ottawa. “No Canadian family,” wrote Doris French in her article, “has left a greater impression on Ottawa than the Booths.”
“So all of a sudden people put two and two together,” recalls John. “Until then I was just John Booth; nobody knew who the hell I was. I had the freedom to be a university student without ever thinking about the old Ottawa name and all that went with it.
“It came as a shock, because what happened was that I gained some new friends – that, I expected. But I lost some friends that I’d made down there, and that was really hurtful and upsetting. I challenged them on it, and their response was that they couldn’t co-exist with me because they weren’t in the same class, financially. And I thought that was really sad.”
John Rudolphus Booth stands beside a rail car of his timber.
John was briefly raised at his grandfather Jackson’s home at 252 Metcalfe St. The house was built shortly after the Ottawa fire of 1900, which destroyed J.R.’s home.
He was only three years old when his family sold the brick, turreted mansion to the Laurentian Club, an exclusive businessmen’s enclave of which Jackson and his brother, Fred, were members, and of which John was later president.
“I like to joke that I was conceived in the bar of the Laurentian Club,” says John. “My parents’ bedroom actually became the bar there.”
Soon after the sale of the Metcalfe Street house, John’s father, Rowley, built another, in Rockcliffe. John and his brother, William, attended Ashbury, where each was head boy.
And while it may dwarf in comparison to J.R.’s contributions, John, too, had a hand in helping shape Ottawa.
After the massive Canada Day festivities on Parliament Hill in 1967, about a decade followed without July 1 celebrations there. Then one year, John’s lawyer and accountant, Bernie Shinder, held a Canada Day picnic at Vincent Massey Park, to which, John recalls, 25,000 people showed up. The event was subsequently moved to Parliament Hill, and John was asked to join Shinder’s group of organizers. Around 1980, John was asked to take over, which he did until 1985, after which the NCC assumed control. “It was a whole lot of fun,” John recalls. He offered to continue organizing the event for another 10 years, but never received a reply from the NCC.
“But being part of J.R.’s legacy feels really good,” he says. “I’m certainly proud to be Canadian, and proud to be from Ottawa.
“I’ve had a great life so far, and while not having the great successes, business-wise, that my great grandfather had, have had my own successes. Also, I have three wonderful sons, four grandchildren and lifelong friends, which make my life a success. I’ve experienced several close calls with death and have learned what is ultimately most important in life: Love.”
bdeachman@ottawacitizen.com
查看原文...
John Booth jokes that when he first walked into Ottawa’s Trinity College, people said, “Oh, there’s J.R.”
“Because somehow through the generations, the nose profile hasn’t changed a whole lot.”
Indeed, the 71-year-old Ottawa businessman, who now lives in Nepean, did inherit his great-grandfather’s prominent nose — and some of his wealth — but not a lot else. The original J.R. — John Rudolphus — was shrewd and frugal. His successful bid to provide all the wood for the original Parliament Buildings, for example, undercut his competitors by using unemployed longshoremen from Montreal to cut trees for much less than the going rate.
“I’m told I’m much more like my grandfather,” says John, “in that I deal with people well.”
His great-grandfather, known as The Great J.R., lived to nearly 99 — outliving five of his eight children — and worked almost until the very end of his very long life.
J.R. Booth in 1904.
When J.R. wanted to secure a princely $45,000 loan to buy 250 square miles of timber rights for the Parliament job, and the bank asked what collateral he had, he famously held out his hands and said, “These.” The story may be apocryphal, but it’s not out of keeping with what we know of the Bytown lumber baron who arrived in 1852 with nine dollars in his pocket and went on to become the largest timber-limits owner in the British Empire and a major player in shaping of the nation’s capital.
“If J.R. had lived in any other area in Canada except Ottawa,” says John, “he’d be a really famous man. I mean, a lot of people remember who he is if you’ve been in Ottawa, and you’ll see references here and there, but because Ottawa was the political capital of the country, business was just business.”
Up at 5 a.m. each day and always dressed in shabby work clothes, J.R. founded the region’s lumber industry, oversaw the country’s largest privately owned railroad, and became a shipping magnate. He and his descendants shaped Ottawa, establishing a hospital and building churches and mansions, Union Station, a YMCA and day nursery. He was friends with both Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, although he ultimately helped defeat Laurier over reciprocity. The Booth, Transportation and Jackson buildings, all eventually expropriated by the federal government and the NCC, are among the Booth family’s legacies, while a pair of Booth streets, one each in Ottawa and Gatineau, and Booth Road, at Kingsmere, are named for them. A new breed of chrysanthemum, developed at the Experimental Farm, was also given J.R.’s name.
Among Canada’s richest men, his estate was probated at $23 million when he died in 1925, the equivalent today of more than $300 million. The total would have been higher, but for some “gifts” he gave to family members before his death. The family paid more than $4 million in succession duties following his death, but a dozen years later, the Ontario government claimed it was owed more, and changed existing legislation that might have prevented it from collecting an additional $3 million from the Booth family.
“Here’s the crowning thing,” says John. “If you take all the wealthy families in Canada today, the really old-school wealthy families, most of them came from the booze business, which was illegal. So they didn’t pay taxes; it was all cash. So what J.R. did was that much more impressive.
“But I heard he was tough,” John adds. “He didn’t suffer fools at all, and took no prisoners.”
John Booth, great-grandson of Bytown/Ottawa lumber magnate J.R. Booth, outside Booth House, where John was conceived and briefly raised.
John (also a J.R.; his middle name is Rowley) never met his famous forebear; the elder Booth died 19 years before John’s birth in 1944. But the old man’s forceful personality and enduring legacy were never far away.
“Growing up being a part of a wealthy family has its challenges. There is an expectation that you should be as great as your great-grandfather, or a complete failure. Either way, you will be judged and it is difficult.”
John was 10 or 12 when he became aware of his family’s significance in Ottawa.
Related
- The Wrights, the Sparks (and more): Wayne Lester is the Kevin Bacon of Ottawa ancestry
- http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-ahearns-descendants-of-ottawas-edison-say-citys-greatest-innovator-is-unsung
“When you’re a kid, you don’t know that you’re from a wealthy family; it’s just a family. We spent summers in Montebello at the Seigniory Club. I called it going to the cottage, although it was everything but.”
It wasn’t until he attended Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. that John discovered a downside to his life of privilege. The school’s winter carnival included a performance by Ian and Sylvia Tyson, who only months earlier had released their biggest hit song, Four Strong Winds. Booth recalls that copies of the January 1964 Chatelaine magazine, featuring the folk duo on its cover, were plastered all over the campus. Before long, however, students began reading another story in that issue, titled The Booths of Ottawa. “No Canadian family,” wrote Doris French in her article, “has left a greater impression on Ottawa than the Booths.”
“So all of a sudden people put two and two together,” recalls John. “Until then I was just John Booth; nobody knew who the hell I was. I had the freedom to be a university student without ever thinking about the old Ottawa name and all that went with it.
“It came as a shock, because what happened was that I gained some new friends – that, I expected. But I lost some friends that I’d made down there, and that was really hurtful and upsetting. I challenged them on it, and their response was that they couldn’t co-exist with me because they weren’t in the same class, financially. And I thought that was really sad.”
John Rudolphus Booth stands beside a rail car of his timber.
John was briefly raised at his grandfather Jackson’s home at 252 Metcalfe St. The house was built shortly after the Ottawa fire of 1900, which destroyed J.R.’s home.
He was only three years old when his family sold the brick, turreted mansion to the Laurentian Club, an exclusive businessmen’s enclave of which Jackson and his brother, Fred, were members, and of which John was later president.
“I like to joke that I was conceived in the bar of the Laurentian Club,” says John. “My parents’ bedroom actually became the bar there.”
Soon after the sale of the Metcalfe Street house, John’s father, Rowley, built another, in Rockcliffe. John and his brother, William, attended Ashbury, where each was head boy.
And while it may dwarf in comparison to J.R.’s contributions, John, too, had a hand in helping shape Ottawa.
After the massive Canada Day festivities on Parliament Hill in 1967, about a decade followed without July 1 celebrations there. Then one year, John’s lawyer and accountant, Bernie Shinder, held a Canada Day picnic at Vincent Massey Park, to which, John recalls, 25,000 people showed up. The event was subsequently moved to Parliament Hill, and John was asked to join Shinder’s group of organizers. Around 1980, John was asked to take over, which he did until 1985, after which the NCC assumed control. “It was a whole lot of fun,” John recalls. He offered to continue organizing the event for another 10 years, but never received a reply from the NCC.
“But being part of J.R.’s legacy feels really good,” he says. “I’m certainly proud to be Canadian, and proud to be from Ottawa.
“I’ve had a great life so far, and while not having the great successes, business-wise, that my great grandfather had, have had my own successes. Also, I have three wonderful sons, four grandchildren and lifelong friends, which make my life a success. I’ve experienced several close calls with death and have learned what is ultimately most important in life: Love.”
bdeachman@ottawacitizen.com
查看原文...
