opportunity and bought up the defunct power company, promising Sault Ste. Marie a large injection of American investment. The town council in return gave him an exclusive 20-year franchise on hydroelectric power generation, as well as a 10-year municipal tax exemption. Clergue was experienced at dealing with politicians, and sensed provincial and federal policies in the north around the development of "New Ontario". Strategies like the National Policy championed by John A. Macdonald sought to grow Canada's manufacturing base and encourage immigration through exploitation of natural resources, and numerous financial incentives were available to industrialists and promoters who would contribute to an increase in settlement. Clergue later remarked in 1901 that, "Let the governments, by judicious general laws and by special grants of wild lands where justifiable, tempt the capitalist and the manufacturer to establish works for the utilization of these Canadian raw materials, and then they will have established an agency for immigration more efficacious than a legion of lecturers and a million maps." Initial industrial expansion Clergue soon expanded power generation at Sault Ste. Marie to a level where it could supply both municipal power and power for several industries, and used hydropower as the nexus of a whirlwind of industrialization. Only a year into his arrival, in 1895, the Sault Ste. Marie Pulp and Paper Company (later St. Mary's Paper) was established. Clergue's plan was to source the sulfurous acid needed for papermaking from Sudbury's nickel mining and smelting industry, but the dominant Canadian Copper Company declined any deal with him. Clergue soon set his sights on the steel industry, but first he needed a ready supply of iron. With the 1897 discovery of hematite ore near Wawa in the northern part of Algoma District, Clergue quickly bought the mining claim and opened the Helen Mine, which was named after one of his sisters. To service the mine, he incorporated the Algoma Central Railway, one of the companies which is most associated with his legacy. With the line under construction, ore was transported via steamship. In the east, near Sudbury, he purchased two nickel mining properties in 1899, naming them the Gertrude and Elsie mines, after other sisters of his. Similarly to his plans with the Algoma Central in Northern Algoma, Clergue planned for a railway to service the mines, and bought a paper railway, the Manitoulin and North Shore Railway (M&NS), which had been chartered in