From a start in his family's small sawmill in the 1880s, Archibald Fraser became a prominent pioneer of the New Brunswick pulp industry. As the lumber trade fell into decline, he sought new ways to exploit the province's vast forest resources. In 1918 he diversified into pulp manufacturing, opening a modern mill at Edmundston. Fraser quickly became an industry giant, with mills and forest operations throughout New Brunswick. By the time he died, large corporations were replacing family enterprises, and pulp and paper had superseded lumber as the province's most important manufacturing industry.