John Osborn Williams

[6] (Although one enterprising local did bring a boatload of goods upriver to Port Hope Simpson, Newfoundland and Labrador, moored offshore and proceeded to do a brisk trade before he was stopped.)

By 30 July 1934 Police Superintendent O'Neil had investigated the complaints of the 225 lumbermen and declared that there were no valid grounds for the strike although it was admitted that the preparations for the 500 men were inadequate when they arrived.

In August 1934 the first permanent settlement started at the site of a logging camp run by the Labrador Development Company and named after Sir John Hope Simpson.

The first Company Town in Labrador had been born and large scale commercial development of the woods around Alexis and Lewis Bays for the export of pit props to south Wales had begun.

Simpson was recalled to the Dominions Office in November 1934 not on the pretence of some constitutional issue or other but to face severe reprimand for what he and Lodge had allowed to happen.

By the time the Public Enquiry was held into Williams' affairs in 1945 his personal qualities of drive and persistence had become more than a thorough nuisance, as the Dominions Office had failed to get to the bottom of what he was up to.

By 29 January 1935 it was clear that the Labrador Development Company was taking maximum advantage of the fact that exploitation of the woods could happen in an unregulated way.

On 4 June 1935 in a very confidential letter marked "secret and personal", Sir John Hope Simpson wrote that 200 families were being settled at the Alexis River site.

Disaffection with the Labrador Development Company representatives on site quickly set in whilst J O Williams was 3,000 miles away in Britain living in luxury in Cardiff city centre next door to Eric by 15 March 1938.

Eric ordered that excess stores be returned to St. John's and went beyond his Father's instructions by entering into the Keith Younge local contract for cutting pit props to be shipped out to South Wales although at the time this arrangement was seen as a good way of helping the Company to continue its operation in the area.

According to the original correspondence within the Public Enquiry, Keith Younge, local Labrador Development Company Limited store manager ordered that the two bodies should be quickly buried and a concrete headstone inscribed and erected.

The Public Enquiry into the Financial Affairs of The Labrador Development Limited (kept in UK National Archives) clearly shows within its original correspondence that J O Williams considered Olga to be of a "bad character."

Williams' confidential letter to Keith Yonge in 1941 in which he admitted that he had the money but wanted to get as big a concession from the government as possible before disclosing his financial strength also indicates his level of deception.

It was only after Williams and the Labrador Development Company had left Port Hope Simpson in 1948 that the people could set about bettering themselves, but by this time many had moved away in search of work.

[7] When Chief Justice Dunfield's report on the public enquiry came out it meant the Dominions Office's plan to discredit Williams' character had seriously backfired.

Dunfield's conclusion was that neither Williams nor the government fully appreciated how much the Port Hope Simpson project would cost and so the company was under-funded right from the start.

However, one year later from Williams's point of view, the situation had looked desperate, Back in Britain on the one hand, the British treasury was trying to ensure that the UK taxpayer would not have to bear any loss incurred by the company if it went into liquidation.

Therefore, wanting to appear generous in public, within the modified terms of their final settlement, they offered to waive the interest on their loan from 30 June 1940 – 20 November 1945.

The obvious effect upon Williams was that he chose to close down his operations completely at Port Hope Simpson rather than pay federal taxes on the wood.

The last thing the United Kingdom and its steadfast ally Newfoundland wanted was to be distracted from the war by a relatively trifling dispute about what was going on at Port Hope Simpson.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigating officer in 2003 about whether or not foul play had occurred in the early hours of 3 February 1940 stated that, "He...Williams...betrayed the people and no doubt this would have stirred the pot enough for someone to have taken drastic measures by their own hands and started the fire at the house that led to the deaths of Eric, J.O.

"—21 October 2003 Thomas Lodge concluded that it had been the Secretary of State for Canada who had failed to give guidance to the commission who were a collection of individuals running their own departments.

He described the commission as an experiment in dictatorship and claimed he left his post because he could no longer carry on working with people who completely failed to agree on a positive policy and because he could not convince the Secretary of State to adopt his own point of view.

The Dominions Office removed Lodge from his position of commissioner early in 1937 and the publication of his book Dictatorship in Newfoundland in 1939 put him out of favour in London.

Claude Fraser, Sir John Hope Simpson's loyal secretary of Natural Resources had been appointed to the post of Government Director of the Labrador Development Company Limited on exactly the same day as when the deaths occurred.

[17][18] Unsatisfactory, unpaid wages and a severe lack of houses for the loggers and their families existed for the early settlers and contributed to suspicious, acrimonious circumstances surrounding the two deaths.

[23] The family tradition of secrecy [24] surrounding the two deaths also strongly suggests it is beyond coincidence that a cover-up[23] involving at the very least, Government mismanagement[25] continues to hide the truth about what really happened in the early hours of 3 February 1940.