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In reaction to A.R.M. Lower's forest studies, which emphasize the role of markets and tariffs, it is argued that both capital and labour demonstrate extensive agency during the transition between Canada's exports of lumber to Britain and the United States. A series of micro-studies explore the socio-economic transition from colonial to corporate forestry, within a regional framework integrating rural and urban experiences. The succession between economies is examined, from fur to lumber, land speculation, to merchant capital and pioneer sawmilling, to the Ottawa Valley capitalist. The example, James MacLaren, used kinship capital pools and strategic business alliances to rise to the position of independent capitalist lumberman and Bank president. The labour institutions upon which his business was based, the shanty and the timber cove, were anchored to a web of household economies, both urban and rural. Families drew on monthly shanty wages. The shanty was common ground for small kin-groups of local farm workers, urban sawmiil workers, migrant workers, and a core of professional lumberers, resident in Ottawa. Staggered waves of arrival and departure show flexibility in when one decided to leave the farm for the shanty, implying it was a complementary institution. MacLaren's cove in Quebec City also accommodated rural workers amid numerous small non-union strikes. Across the harbour, timber ship labourers, divided over ethnicity and technology, coalesced violently into one of the country's strongest unions. As industrial lumber barges replaced rafts, sawmills replaced coves as export points. MacLaren used both to sell to British and U.S. markets simultaneously, expanding his investments into Vermont and New York. His capital was redeployed in resource developments, such as mining and railways, or local real estate, in a regional pattern that cut across the "Empire of the St. Lawrence". His connections were with American investors or competitors--Cleveland steel elites or the House of Morgan. The Bank of Ottawa, built upon his gathering of local groupings of capital, eventually found regional identity a hinderance in raising capital. Unable to make inroads into other markets, it merged with the Bank of Nova Scotia. In 1904 a successful appeal was made to the State to close timber limits against settlement. This was to make forests more acceptable as collateral to make the transition to pulp and paper. Couched in the discourse of fire, the closing of the forest common marks the true end of the frontier. For Quebec, this is the final abandonment of agrarian colonisation for a development model based on state supported large scale corporate forestry, mining and hydro-electric development.