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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
The central character in one of the country’s most famous stock scandals. MacMillan was a prospector who’d gone on to put together big deals, develop lucrative mines and head a major industry association – all at a time when career women were a rarity. Early in July 1964, shares in her company, Windfall Oil and Mines, took off. In the absence of information about what Windfall had found on its claims near Timmins, rumours and greed pushed share prices to a high of $5.70. MacMillan stayed quiet. Finally after three weeks of market frenzy, Windfall admitted it had nothing. When the stock crashed, so many small investors lost money that the Ontario government appointed a Royal Commission to examine what had happened. Meaningful changes at the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Ontario Securities Commission followed. Windfall is biographical history at its finest: the unlikely story of the trailblazer who, although convicted and imprisoned, would later receive the Order of Canada.EXCERPT: THE QUEEN BEEViola MacMillan had been so successful selling houses on the side that she decided to leave her job as a stenographer at Rodd, Wigle & McHugh to start her own real estate agency. The move turned out to be ill-timed. By the end of the 1920s, Windsor was no longer booming, and then the Great Depression followed the stock market crash of October 1929. George hadn’t had a job in a while, so they moved to London, Ontario, where she sold Christmas cards wholesale. They kept the place in Windsor and filled it with boarders while taking in more roomers in the home they rented in London. She also tried to sell houses on the side, but that proved a tough go.Read more https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/‘City of Thieves’ contains 10 stories about gold smuggling in northern Ontario and QuebecIn the
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