James Playfair

James Playfair (8 July 1860 – 25 May 1937) was noted for his entrepreneurship in the Great Lakes shipping, lumbering, grain handling, and industrial manufacturing businesses. He was a central figure in the establishment of Midland, Ontario, Canada. The son of John Speirs Playfair (26 June 1826, Glasgow – 2 June 1913, Toronto) and Georgina Hall of Montreal, in 1889 Playfair married Sarah Charlotte Ogilvie (1858-1945), youngest daughter of Senator A.W. Ogilvie of Montreal, former president of Ogilvie Flour Mills. Lumbering At the age of 19, James Playfair was hired by the Toronto Lumber Company which had timber holdings in Simcoe County and mills at Collingwood. In 1883 the creditors of H. H. Cook's British North American Lumber Company hired James Playfair to saw up the stock of unsawed logs at their Midland sawmill. The lumbering firm of James Playfair & Company was started in 1884. Playfair's first mill was located at Sturgeon Bay, (between Waubaushene and Victoria Harbour). In 1894 he formed a lumber partnership with Douglas Leyland White, Jr. and together they purchased the mill formerly known as the Miscampbell mill, at Midland. D. L. White Jr. of Saginaw, Michigan, was the former treasurer of the Emery Lumber Co. of Saginaw and East Tawas, MI. incorporated in 1885. They were involved in the export of logs from the Sudbury region, to supply their Michigan mills. When the export duty on logs was increased in 1886, the vice president of the Emery Lumber Co. R. A. Loveland arranged to have that firm's Georgian Bay logs manufactured into lumber at Miscampbell's mill. By the 1890s Andrew Miscampbell desired to devote more of his time to politics. He sold his mill to the Emery Lumber Co. in 1891, but with the reduction of the duty on logs exported to the United States, operations of the Midland mill were abandoned and Emery's lumber production was resumed on the American side. D. L. White Jr. continued his involvement with the Saginaw Lumber And Salt Company (incorporated in 1881), with the same officers as the Emery Lumber Co. With their acquisition of the former Emery Lumber Co. mill, James Playfair and D. L. White formed the Playfair-White Company. They contracted to supply the lumber requirements of Saginaw lumberman Arthur Hill, with logs from timber limits the French and Spanish rivers.