Lords of The Frontier

About the Book

Lords and Knights of the Canadian Frontier is a dynamic narrative that highlights the careers of three impecunious young men of English, Scottish, and Irish immigrant families who were molded in the austerity of Atlantic Canada during the years of the industrial revolution (1897–1941). Each of the characters shares the sting of poverty, taking the world with a vengeance in pursuit of their fortunes.

About the Author

W. Bruce Kippen trained as a pilot and flight engineer with the Royal Canadian Air Force (1943-45) before attending McGill University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce Degree majoring in economics. Following graduation, he commenced his business career in Calgary, Alberta, center of the young oil and gas industry sprung from the major discovery of the Leduc oil field in 1947. Starting as a “roughneck” on a drilling rig in Leduc, which brought in two D3 producing wells, excited him to initiate his western career in the Oil and Gas industry as a leasing agent for the California Standard Oil Co. in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Later he established the Jiffy Auto Laundry in Calgary, the first automatic car wash in Western Canada, followed by the founding of several oil and gas companies. Returning to Montreal as chairman of the family investment banking firm, Kippen and Company, Inc. (est. 1922), long-time members of the Montreal, Toronto, and Midwest Stock Exchanges, with offices in Montreal, Toronto, and New York, he specialized in the founding and financing of several junior industrial and natural resource enterprises including with, (co-founder, and long-time college associate Donald Faro Wolvin), the formidable base-metal mining company, Brunswick Mining and Smelting Corporation, developer of rich zinc, lead, copper, and silver deposits now owned by Noranda Mines Ltds.; several productive oil and gas companies in Western Canada, which matured into Pathfinder Petroleums Ltd. And later, through subsequent mergers, Norcen Energy Resources Ltd., subsequently acquired by Union Pacific of California for over two billion dollars; and Unican Security Systems Ltd., a five-hundred thousand-dollar financing, acquired twenty-five years later by Kaba Holdings, A.G. of Italy for six hundred fifty million dollars. In 1970, his firm assisted in the sponsoring of Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd.at Athabaska Alt, now Suncor Energy Inc. Mr. Kippen’s present business activities are focused on the emerging internet green energy revolution technologie, a whole new worldwide paradigm. Career experiences, together with his studies of leaders of industry, finance, and politics in Canada, the U.S.A., and England inspired him to write this intriguing novel ‘‘Lords and Knights of the Canadian Frontier’’, set in the dynamic era of the industrial revolution which depicts the careers of three dynamic young men from youthful impecunious years on the western frontier through the vicissitudes of booms, war, and depression in North America, and England, from1897 through the first forty-two years of the twentieth century. As a company founder, corporate executive, investment banker, and political activist being a founder of the Council for Canadian Unity, co-author and publisher of Option Canada, the economic consequences of Quebec separatism, for which he was awarded the Queen’s Silver Anniversary Medal. His reminiscences have been the genesis of his “novel” Lords and Knights of the Canadian Frontier, which depicts the careers of three dynamic young men, from youthful, impecunious years on the western frontier, through the vicissitudes of booms, war, and depression in North America and England, from 1887 through the first forty-two years of the turbulent twentieth century. Mr. Kippen lives in Montreal with his dear wife Elfride; they have three children: Timothy Alexander Bruce in New York; Guilia Francesca and Winston David Bruce in London, England.