By 1964, Viola MacMillan, a prominent and well-respected prospector and mine developer, had long been one of the most successful businesswomen in Canada. In April of that year, after Texas Gulf Sulphur revealed it had found a massive deposit of copper, zinc, and silver near Timmins, Ontario, MacMillan seized an opportunity. The American mining giant had locked up all the worthwhile land in the area, except for four claims it lost because of a staking error. After buying them, MacMillan sold the claims to Windfall Oils and Mines, a company she and her husband, George, controlled. On July 1, drilling started on the property near the Texas Gulf discovery. Within days, rumours began swirling that Windfall had found an ore body. MacMillan let them swirl.
W hen the Windfall stock opened at $1.01 on Monday, July 6, 1964, James Scott took notice. Recently appointed as the Globe and Mail ’s assistant business editor, he’d spent many years as the paper’s mining editor and had often dealt with Viola and George MacMillan. He’d never heard of Windfall, but a jump in the share price like that suggested the company had found something. He was curious.
Visiting brokerage firms to glean intel was a regular practice for Scott, and by late morning, he was at the offices of Davidson and Company. That’s where he ran into Claude Taylor, a former newspaper reporter who handled public relations for Harry “Bud” Knight’s Consolidated Mogul Mines. Knight and his father, Harry Sr., were successful mine financiers and stockbrokers. On the side, Taylor did some PR for other companies and was a special correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, writing a weekly piece about activity on the Toronto stock market.
Within half an hour of the market opening, Taylor had purchased 2,000 Windfall shares at $1.04. Then he took the Knight Building elevator up to the top floor, where Viola MacMillan was in her penthouse office. She didn’t say much and didn’t seem to know what had goosed the stock. At eleven-forty, Taylor sold 1,000 Windfall shares at $1.43. Later, he went back up to the penthouse and said, “Come on, there must be something to this. Stock isn’t moving to this extent without some reason for it.”
Finally, MacMillan said the drillers had pulled seventy-eight feet of mineralization. When Taylor asked if it contained anything of value, MacMillan was at first evasive and then told him there was copper and zinc in the core but George would not commit to it being commercial. She refused to say anything more until they’d done assays.
Later, in what may have been a case of broken telephone, Taylor told Scott that Windfall had hit ninety feet of copper-zinc mineralization. “George feels it is ore,” he said. “Viola would prefer to wait for the assays.”
The next day, the Globe ran a story with the headline “Timmins Rumour Revives Buying in Speculatives.” Scott’s contribution to the article was a paragraph that noted, “. . . a source close to the company said a width of 90 feet of copper and zinc mineralization had been encountered. It was not known if the material contained high enough values to make commercial grade ore.”
Another journalist keen to speak to the MacMillans was Graham Ackerley of The Northern Miner. Five days earlier, he’d noticed some activity with the stock and asked Viola about it. She wouldn’t offer anything for publication and wouldn’t even confirm that drilling had begun, though Ackerley knew that from other sources. What she did say surprised him: “I cannot tell you why, but you should own some stock.”
That was weird. Viola had never recommended a stock before, but Ackerley acted on her advice, buying 5,000 shares. Her tip did not endear her to him when the price went down the next day and he sold for a loss of $250, plus his broker’s commission. He was even less happy when the stock opened at $1.01 the next week. And now she wouldn’t return his calls.
A s reluctant as the MacMillans were to talk, they realized that the reporters weren’t about to leave them alone until the company gave them something. Viola called Tom Cole, Windfall’s lawyer and secretary. “George thinks we ought to have a meeting,” she said, “and get out a release.” On Tuesday morning, George dictated material for a press release to Viola, who took it down to Cole’s Bay Street office, where the directors approved it.
Later that afternoon, Viola finally phoned Ackerley back. She said she hoped he had bought some stock, but she wouldn’t say anything for publication. Off the record, she said that drilling “was coming in on a target,” which didn’t tell him much. When he asked about the core, she said she’d seen only two small pieces, and they were mineralized, but gave no other details except to say assay results might be available in the morning.
That evening, Ackerley received the press release. “The drill entered a mineralized graphitic shear zone at 416 feet and has remained in it to 530 feet,” the press release said, though the latter number should have been 570. To the general public, this probably sounded impressive, but it didn’t really indicate anything special. Hitting minerals is one thing; hitting mineral values rich enough to be ore is another.
The announcement also stated, “The core is being sampled.” The MacMillans had dropped two samples off at a lab the day before but this line, which hadn’t been in the draft George had dictated to Viola, was open to misinterpretation. Although anyone could be forgiven for thinking it meant the core was being assayed, it could just mean the company was splitting core and preparing samples for assaying.
Ackerley now had more questions than answers. The reference to “mineralized graphite shear” could indicate ore, as it had at the Texas Gulf property, but it didn’t necessarily mean that. On Wednesday, the reporter, who was on deadline, made repeated efforts to speak to the MacMillans, Windfall directors, and anyone in Timmins who might be able to clarify the information. He phoned and dropped by Viola’s office, called her home, and dispatched a cab driver there. Nothing worked.
On Wednesday, the day after the press release went out, Cole received a call from his friend Dick Pearce, the president and general manager of The Northern Miner. The Windfall press release had cooled off the share price a bit but had done nothing to stanch the gossip. With the paper’s noon deadline getting closer and closer, Pearce offered to seek more information from Cole, or at least check out the rumours that the drillers had pulled sixty feet of ore and that a core shack was under construction.
Cole confirmed that the directors had authorized a core shack, a small structure for studying and securely storing the rock that came out of the drill. In fact, a carpenter had arrived at the site that morning to begin building one with the help of the idle drillers. But the lawyer expressed surprise at the contention Windfall had any evidence of ore. For his part, Pearce was struck at how an officer of the company was so puzzled by the stock’s elevated price.
Cole found the conversation upsetting, and later that morning, when Viola called him, he said, “Now, what is this about sixty feet of ore?”
“That’s a lie,” she replied. “I never said there was sixty feet of ore in that hole. I said there was sixty feet we hoped would make ore.”
That afternoon, George received the results of the assays from Technical Services Laboratories. One of his samples contained no silver, a trace amount of zinc, and very low levels of copper and gold. The lab didn’t do an analysis of the copper or zinc in the second sample and found no silver and only a trace amount of gold in it. The MacMillans did not give those results to the press.
T he issue of The Northern Miner that hit newsstands Thursday morning contained Graham Ackerley’s carefully worded story. Though the article offered no details about the core, it said, “What intrigues exploration people is the real probability that Windfall has confirmed the same geological horizon which plays host to the Texas Gulf ore body.”
Any hopes Cole had that the rumours about the core would now go away ended with two phone calls he received that day. The first was from Jim Booth, head of Canadian Superior Explorations. The two men had met for lunch the day before, because the geologist wanted to express his company’s interest in buying control of Windfall, or at least a piece of it, based on the proximity of the claims to the Texas Gulf find, the indications of an anomaly from aerial surveys, and the geological structure described in the press release. Now, Booth was on the phone asking about the exciting assay results he was hearing about.
The second call was from Murdock Mosher. The respected prospector, who’d helped found the Prospectors and Developers Association and gone on to be the president of several mining companies, was one of Cole’s clients. He cited copper and zinc percentages that were almost identical to the ones Booth had heard.
“I just don’t get this,” Cole said, “because I understand there were no assays.”
These calls alarmed the lawyer. A flurry of speculation when a company started drilling was not unusual, but rumours of specific assay results certainly were. And while Viola had told him two samples had gone for assaying, his understanding was that there were no results yet. When she returned Cole’s call, he confronted her again: “Has there been an assay or hasn’t there been an assay?”
After she assured him there hadn’t, Cole suggested the company get a lab to test some samples to deal with the matter one way or the other. Viola said there was no reason to do an assay until the drillers had finished the hole. Sensing he was uncomfortable with this decision, she asked if he wanted to resign from the board.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Later that day, Cole dictated a resignation letter. But he didn’t submit it. He had several reasons for sticking around. As far as he knew, the MacMillans weren’t doing anything illegal or unethical, and he still had confidence in them despite the difference of opinion on the need for an assay. His departure might generate bad publicity that would affect the share price, hurting some shareholders and weakening the position of the MacMillans, who were already worried about losing control of the company. And, as he later admitted, “I didn’t wish to alienate a client who might be on the verge of finding another Texas Gulf.”
O n Bay Street, the oft-repeated question was, “What have you heard?” As customers swamped brokerage houses with requests for information, research departments responded with a barrage of memos and wires to salesmen and branches. An inter-office wire from Len Bednardz of James Richardson & Sons on July 6 read: “Indirect reports indicate that a mineralized section was encountered from 410 feet 585 feet in the latest hole.” The next day, J. W. Dennis of Davidson & Company wrote: “I understand from reliable sources that heavy buying came from Noranda and Timmins. This buying represents very good mining people, who have access to information, and I am quite sure there will be a good section of good grade ore in the first hole.” On July 9, a J. H. Crang and Company wire said: “We hear rumour WINDFALL have 70 to 90 feet of 2% copper; 7% zinc.”
Less formally, other stories spread from person to person. Some contained more truth than others. Various versions of the basic gossip that the Windfall drillers had hit ore, sometimes with mineral values, sometimes without, made the rounds. One story had it that Viola was keeping rich core in her Cadillac and guarding it carefully. According to another, after she first looked inside a core box, she hugged the drill foreman and did a little jig. Still another contended that someone walked onto the property only to find a guard with a shotgun sitting on a case of beer, but after paying a $20 bribe, the snoop was able to take a sludge sample.
All of this made it impossible for reporters to get reliable information, and the papers resorted to printing rumours, identifying them as such. Initially, they just mentioned mineralization and refrained from citing specific numbers. That began to change after the Stock Market News and Comment came out on Thursday.
Written by Alan Percival, the weekly newsletter had 1,500 subscribers who paid $35 a year. The July 9 issue noted that investing in Windfall was a gamble but “rumours around Bay Street suggest that there are some 80-odd feet of core which will assay 2.3 per cent copper plus 8 per cent in zinc plus silver values. Some gossip says that drilling was stopped while still in ore.” This was based on nothing more than what Percival had heard from several people. He did try to get confirmation, but no one he talked to could say for sure what was in the core. And the MacMillans did not return his calls.
Whether the newsletter had anything to do with it or not, Thursday ended up being the busiest trading day for Windfall, with more than 1.9 million shares bought and sold before the stock closed at $2.55. As much as Viola professed her reluctance to give up stock, she sold 380,200 shares on Thursday. She attributed it to requests from brokers to provide them with stock to support the market. But Breckenridge, McDonald wasn’t asking for stock; instead, at her request, the firm opened an account for Airquests, one of her companies, and sold 70,700 Windfall shares.
Meanwhile, Claude Taylor was working on his weekly piece for the Herald Tribune, which he would submit the next day. When it ran on Monday, July 13, with a “Windfall Stirs Investors, New Canadian Bonanza?” headline, it stated the couple had “pulled a major base metal drill core north and east of the multi-million-dollar discovery of Texas Gulf Sulphur near Timmins, Ontario.” The article cited the same copper and zinc values as Percival’s newsletter. The rumours were starting to seem more and more like fact.
S cott lucked into a meeting with Viola and George late Thursday evening. The city’s newspaper printers had walked off the job earlier that day because the International Typographical Union’s Local 91 had failed to reach an agreement on automation with the Globe, the Daily Star, and the Telegram despite nearly two years of contract negotiations. While Scott waited to see if the next day’s papers would ever come off the presses, he and a couple of colleagues decided to go for a drink.
The group crossed York Street to the Sentry Box, a bar in the Lord Simcoe Hotel that, aside from being handy for Globe employees, was a favourite of mining promoters. Around eleven o’clock, Viola and George and a woman Scott didn’t know walked into the crowded, noisy, and smoky room. As soon as they sat down, the journalist headed over to their table, said hello, and met Louise Campbell. A former model, she was married to John Campbell, a lawyer who’d become the director of the Ontario Securities Commission in November 1963.
Viola had first met John when she was lining up panellists for a financial symposium at the 1964 Prospectors and Developers Association convention. (She’d been president of the influential mining organization for two decades.) After the convention, a social relationship developed between the MacMillans and the Campbells. On Thursday, John called Viola and asked if she’d meet him at the Royal York Hotel at five o’clock. Hearing so many Windfall rumours, he wanted to find out what was going on.
Viola didn’t reveal much beyond what John already knew, and his impression was that the drillers had hit mineralization. Eventually, they decided to call their spouses and invite them to dinner at Julie’s Restaurant and Tavern on Jarvis Street. Located in a restored Victorian mansion that had once been the home of industrialist Hart Massey, Julie’s had been a popular spot since opening in January.
The menu options, an example of the state of fine dining in the city at the time, included French onion soup, chopped chicken liver, salmon, tenderloin tips, tournedos Rossini, and Caesar salad. As they ate, the MacMillans appeared extremely optimistic about Windfall, and at one point, George asked Louise if she’d like to make a lot of money. “Certainly,” she replied. He suggested Windfall could go to $5.
George and John discussed the ethics of a company president selling stock at a time of intense speculation. George said he had 308,000 shares and wanted to sell 25,000 to pay off the loan he’d taken out to buy Windfall. John didn’t see anything wrong with that.
After dinner, while the other three moved on to the Sentry Box, John went back to his office at the OSC to compose a letter for George. He put down on paper what he had told George about selling the shares. Not long after his dinner companions showed up at the Sentry Box, he arrived with a draft of the letter. He listened as Scott prodded the MacMillans with many of the questions he’d asked Viola earlier that evening. The Globe man asked if the core showed 3 percent copper mineralization over ninety feet and Viola responded, “Where did you hear that?”
“It is a pretty general rumour on the street,” said Scott.
Several times, Scott asked if he could see the core, but he couldn’t get the MacMillans to agree to it or even say where it was. Viola did most of the talking. When the journalist asked George a question, the Windfall president looked at his wife and let her answer. But she was evasive, saying little and often changing the subject.
None of this surprised Scott. Having interviewed the MacMillans many times since the late 1930s, he found they rarely gave satisfactory answers to his questions. After almost half an hour of getting nowhere with them, Scott had to return to the newsroom. As he was leaving the table, he received some free advice from George: “If you want to be poor all your life, don’t buy Windfall.”
Then, appearing to be scolding her husband for being indiscreet, Viola said, “Oh, George.”
After leaving the Sentry Box, the MacMillans and the Campbells climbed into Viola’s Cadillac. Louise and John sat in the back seat with the spare tire. John assumed there were core boxes in the trunk, especially after he heard the big thud of something heavy when the car went over a bump. The two couples went to the Campbells’ apartment in Rosedale for a nightcap, the evening stretching past one in the morning.
At one point, John went to mix drinks while the other three sat on the porch, and George again said Windfall could go to $5. Viola said if it was a good hole, the stock could go to $25. But Louise was skeptical. Once the MacMillans left, she expressed her doubts to John. He disagreed, pointing out that mining types were enthusiastic because they were optimists by nature, adding, “Why would these people, with all their money and wanting a good reputation, why would they do such a thing like this?”
Excerpted in part from Windfall: Viola MacMillan and Her Notorious Mining Scandal by Tim Falconer. Copyright © by Tim Falconer, 2025. Published by ECW Press Ltd.
