Maple Leaf Rag about the sales of the "Maple Leaf Rag", for example that 1 million copies of the sheet music were sold in the composer's lifetime, making Scott Joplin the first musician to sell 1 million copies of a piece of instrumental music. Joplin's first biographer Rudi Blesh wrote that during its first six months the piece sold 75,000 copies, and became "the first great instrumental sheet music hit in America". However, research by Joplin's later biographer Edward A. Berlin demonstrated that this was not the case; the initial print-run of 400 took one year to sell, and under the terms of
Maple Leaf Foods purchased Maple Leaf Mills in exchange for its own shares. In 1991, the combined company was renamed Maple Leaf Foods. The firm thus included a large bread division, best known for the Dempster's brand. During restructuring efforts led by David Newton as CEO and Lewis Rose as CFO, it sold or closed most of its slaughterhouses. These measures were successful and the company returned to profitability. After being successfully revived, Maple Leaf Foods was purchased by Wallace McCain, formerly co-CEO of McCain Foods, who had been ousted by his brother and co-owner Harrison McCain, in 1995 along with the Ontario