ISBN Corporate Cataclysm: Abitibi Power & Paper and the Collapse of the Newsprint Industry, 1912–1946 book English 704 pages

In this absorbing narrative, Barry E.C. Boothman traces the history of Abitibi Power and Paper Limited alongside the rise and fall of the newsprint industry and the advent of Canadian corporate capitalism. In the first half of the twentieth century, Abitibi was Canada’s biggest manufacturer – an apparent success story after the Wall Street crash of 1929 and a company deemed "too big to fail" – but the company eventually ended up at the centre of the longest and most controversial bankruptcy in Canadian history.Moving from the frontier areas of northern Ontario to the heart of the continental economy, Corporate Cataclysm shows how competitive strategies, industrial organization, corporate finance, and law combined with the empire-building dreams of entrepreneurs and the concerns of politicians to generate an economic disaster. It then chronicles the disputes and intense strife that plagued Abitibi’s fourteen-year receivership.

Barry E.C. Boothman is a retired professor in the Faculty of Management at the University of New Brunswick.

"Bridging the fields of management, business-government relations, law, and finance, Corporate Cataclysm takes a ‘holistic approach’ and proceeds chronologically, making a significant contribution to knowledge by telling us a story that we have not heard before about the rise and fall of Canadian business history."Matthew Bellamy, Department of History, Carleton University"Thoroughly and impressively researched, Corporate Cataclysm provides a sweeping account of the internal economies of the Canadian pulp and paper industry throughout the first half of the twentieth century and makes an important contribution to the rapidly developing field of Canadian business history." Keith Fleming, Department of History, Western University