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Tim Falconer spent three summers on mineral exploration crews, worked in two mines and studied mining engineering at McGill University for two years before switching into English Literature. He is the author of five previous non-fiction books and a veteran magazine writer. His last two books—Bad Singer: The Surprising Science of Tone Deafness and How We Hear Music and Klondikers: Dawson City’s Stanley Cup Challenge and How a Nation Fell in Love with Hockey—made the Globe and Mail’s Top 100. He lives with his wife in Toronto.
Viola MacMillan, who was one of the most facinating women in Canadian business history, was 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: PINK PENTHOUSE
Viola MacMillan hadn’t intended to rent a downtown apartment, let alone a penthouse. But in 1954, she realized she needed more room because she and her staff could barely move in her Yonge Street office. She found what she was looking for in the Knight Building, a fancy new brick-and-aluminum tower at 25 Adelaide Street West, which offered her more room and a prestigious new address. After she leased suitable office space, she discovered that there was a penthouse apartment on the thirteenth floor with a fifteen-metre wall of glass that offered a view of Lake Ontario.