MacMillan, Harvey Reginald

MacMILLAN, Harvey Reginald, forester, industrialist, philanthropist (b 9 Sept 1885, Pleasantville, ON; d 9 Feb 1976, Vancouver). After his father's death, he was raised by his grandparents and attended school in Aurora, ON. He went on to obtain a BSc at Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph and an MA in Forestry at Yale Univ in the US in 1908. While working as a forester for the federal government he contracted tuberculosis and spent 2½ years in sanatoriums. After his recovery he was appointed in 1912 the first chief forester of BC. Three years later he left on a round-the-world mission to find customers for BC lumber. After a brief stint in the private sector, he spent the rest of WWI with the Imperial Munitions Board, overseeing SPRUCE production for aircraft construction. In 1919 he founded H.R. MacMillan Export Co to sell BC lumber abroad, a highly successful venture from the outset, and in 1926 he bought his first SAWMILL. He was elected president of the Vancouver Board of Trade in 1933, as well as president of BC PACKERS LTD, a large west coast commercial FISHING company. During WWII MacMillan served as timber controller, chairman of the Wartime Requirements Board and president of Wartime Merchant Shipping, the federal government's emergency shipbuilding effort. Through the 1940s and 1950s his companies experienced steady growth. In 1951 he was appointed Canadian representative on the NATO Defence Production Board and he retired as chairman of MacMillan & Bloedel Ltd (later MacMILLAN BLOEDEL) in 1956. The recipient of several honorary degrees, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1943 and a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1970. MacMillan's philanthropic activities included a founding contribution to the VANCOUVER FOUNDATION, a gift of the H.R. MacMILLAN SPACE CENTRE to the city, and numerous large gifts to UBC. He was an ardent hunter and fisher, an enthusiastic and well-read collector of books, and for several years the owner of VANCOUVER ISLAND's largest farm, Arrowsmith, near PARKSVILLE. MacMillan was also the leading member of a group of BC businessmen who, beginning in the 1920s, brought a large measure of the province's business interests under local control.
Reading: Ken Drushka, HR: A Biography, 1995.
by Ken Drushka