economic stability for the town. Things would continue to change at the mill throughout the next few decades. In 1969, KVP was purchased by Brown Forest Industry, which sold off its Espanola and area operations to the E.B. Eddy Company, and E.B. Eddy once again modernized and upgraded the mill, increasing the output from in 1980 to in 1984. By 1995, the mill had a workforce of 317 and produced of lumber. Today the mill still operates and is owned by EACOM Timber Corporation. Over these decades from the 1940s to the 1990s, the town itself changed significantly as well: road travel had begun to replace railway travel as the Canadian Pacific Railway phased out passenger transportation, and the centre of activity in the community shifted south, with the original area of settlement suffering a long-term decline. From two stopping trains in each direction in 1943 (with one western route turning south at McKerrow to serve Espanola and Manitoulin and the other continuing further west to Sault Ste. Marie), passenger service was reduced to a single train per direction per day by 1970, and Greyhound bus service grew in popularity during the 1950s. Early town plans in 1897 had called for a Hammond Road to run along the path of the CPR tote road and cross the Spanish at a similar location to the CPR's rail bridge. This was finally realized with the construction of the new Ontario Highway 17 around 1947, the culmination of about a decade of road construction and public works projects in the area. The new highway was routed south of the town's main commercial area, and facilitated a slow drift of the centre of the town away from the original core formed around the CPR station and Hall's general store. Some businesses relocated to new highway-adjacent locations, while others closed one by one, and there was a gradual shift away from hotels, taverns, and small retail, toward garages and gas stations, as truck freight became more frequent along the new highway, and larger centres like Espanola and Sudbury became more accessible for residents. The possibilities of car commuting depressed demand for temporary accommodation and therefore decreased the customer base for the town's hotels and boarding houses, as workers could now commute from larger urban centres, and seasonal industries, which heavily utilized temporary accommodations, declined. However, a new residential subdivision was built south of the highway