Introduction

Urban History Review

Volumn 35, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 2-13

  High, Steven ^a  

^a Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33947188558     PISSN: 07030428     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.7202/1015917ar     Document Type: Editorial

References (82)

1. Rosemary Ommer, "One Hundred Years of Fishery Crises in Newfoundland," Acadiensis 23, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 5-6.
2. Writing eight years later, Sean Cadigan identified two broad schools of thought in the fisheries management literature published since 1992. The first, which can be called the "tragedy of the commons" thesis, argued that over-fishing resulted from the absence of property rights. Because open access supposedly resulted in over-harvesting, the answer was to privatize the commons: individuals or enterprises would be given quotas, or shares, of the resource. The second group, which rejected resource privatization, argued that fisheries management had served the interests of "a particular capitalist organization of the fisheries" and not the interests of fishers and their communities. For these scholars, resource exhaustion resulted from the state's promotion of a large-scale industrial fishery. Sean Cadigan, "Whose Fish? Science, Ecosystems and Ethics in Fisheries Management Literature since 1992," Acadiensis 31, no. 1 (Autumn 2001): 171-95.
3. Northern Ontario comprises seven-eighths of the land mass of Ontario and underlies fully one-quarter of the Trans-Canada Highway. Kerry Abel notes that the region has garnered little attention from anyone without a direct connection to that region. See her "History and the Provincial Norths: An Ontario Example," in Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History, ed. Kerry Abel and Ken S. Coates (Toronto: Broadview, 2001), 127.
4. The resource economy shaped the region's politics, economy, society, and culture. See, for example, H. V. Nelles, The Politics of Development;
5. Morris Zaslow, The Opening of the Canadian North, 1870-1914 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971);
6. as well as more recent studies by Karen Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), especially the chapter on "New Ontario."
7. and Thomas Dunk, A Working Man's Town: Male Working-class Culture (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991).
8. Kathryn Marie Dudley, The End off the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), xi, 161.
9. Peter R. Sinclair, Heather Squires, and Lynn Downton make much the same point in their study of Bonavista Peninsula after the Newfoundland cod moratorium, in Fishing People, Fishing Places: Issues in Canada's Small-Scale Fisheries, ed. Dianne Newell and Rosemary Ommer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 321-333.
10. In a recent historiographic essay on the status of urban history in Canada. Claire Poitras notes that there has been very little work done on urban decline, demographic and economic, or on the politics of revitalization: "Le processus de désindustrialisation et ses effets sure le tissue urbain et social demeurent a chasse gardée des géographes, des po litologues et des sociologies." Claire Poitras, "L'histoire urbaine au Canada: l'espace, les citadins et les gourvernants," Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine 32, no. 1 (Fall 2003): 49.
11. David W. Lewis is a photographic artist based in Callander, Ontario. His work has appeared in galleries across Europe and North America. For more on the deindustrial sublime, see Steven High and David W. Lewis, Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization (Toronto: Between the Lines and Cornell University Press, forthcoming).
12. Their appeal echoes that of Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott in the United States: "What was labelled deindustrialization in the intense political heat of the late 1970s and early 1980s turned out to be a more socially complicated, historically deep, geographically diverse, and politically perplexing phenomenon than previously thought." "Introduction," in Beyond the Ruins: The Meaning of Deindustrialization, ed. Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 2.
13. Articles appearing in Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine in the first two decades of its life focused on small- and medium-sized towns such as Kapuskasking, Thunder Bay, Barrie, Kingston, St. John's, Kamloops, and Kitchener. The anthologies edited by Gilbert A. Stelter and Alan F. J. Artibise include The Usable Urban Past: Planning and Politics in the Modern Canadian City (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1979);
14. Shaping the Urban Landscape: Aspects of the Canadian City-Building Process (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1982);
15. and The Canadian City: Essays in Urban and Social History (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1984).
16. J. M. S. Careless, in his classic formulation, wrote that the metropolitan relationship is "almost a feudal chain of vassalage, wherein one city may stand tributary to a larger centre and yet be the metropolis of a sizeable region of its own." J. M. S. Careless, "Frontierism, Metropolitanism and Canadian History," Canadian Historical Review 35, no. 1 (March 1954): 1-21.
17. For the best assessment of metropolitanism and its variations see Don Davis, "The 'Metropolitan Thesis' and the Writing of Canadian Urban History," Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine 14, no. 2 (October 1985): 95-113.
18. Roger Hayter, Trevor J. Barnes, and Michael J. Bradshaw, "Relocating Resource Peripheries to the Core of Economic Geography's Theorizing: Rationale and Agenda," AREA 35, no. 1 (2003): 15-23.
19. Ibid., 18.
20. Resource towns are "unquestionably, an important element in Canada's geography: without them, much of the nation's hinterland would remain unoccupied." Glen Norcliffe, Global Game, Local Arena: Restructuring in Corner Brook, Newfoundland (St. John's: ISER Books, 2005), 11-12.
21. Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality In Post-war Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997);
22. Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA's 70-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (Cornell University Press, 1999);
23. Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo, Steeltown, USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002);
24. Lisa Fine, The Story of REO JOE: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).
25. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 6.
26. One of the exceptions is Thomas Dublin, When the Mines Closed: Stories of Struggles in Hard Times (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). Dublin explores the collapse of anthracite mining in northeastern Pennsylvania through the eyes of the miners he interviewed.
27. In the United States, the two sides of this debate over the nature of the changes underway are ably represented by Daniel Bell's The Coming of Post Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973) on the one hand,
28. and Bluestone and Harrison's The Deindustrialization of America on the other.
29. Hayter, Barnes, and Bradshaw posit that recent talk of "globalization" originates in the unexpected deindustrialization of the world's most important industrial cities. The search for answers led scholars to look at the changing international division of labour and the rise of the global corporation. Roger Hayter, Trevor J. Barnes, and Michael J. Bradshaw, "Relocating Resource Peripheries to the Core of Economic Geography's Theorizing: Rationale and Agenda," AREA 35, no. 1 (2003): 19.
30. Rianne Mahon, The Politics of Industrial Restructuring: Canadian Textiles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984);
31. J. Paul Grayson, Corporate Strategy and Plant Closures: The SKF Experience (Toronto: Our Times, 1985)
32. Jane Jenson and Rianne Mahon, eds., The Challenge of Restructuring: North American Labor Movements Respond (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993);
33. David Sobel and Susan Meurer, Working at Inglis: The Life and Death of a Canadian Factory (Toronto: Lorimer, 1994);
34. Steven High, Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America's Rust Belt, 1969-1984 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).
35. Although the authors do not frame their study in terms of deindustrialization. Anthony Winson and Belind. Leach's study of several small manufacturing-dependent towns in Ontario is highly relevant to the issues explored by the contributors of this special issue. See their Contingent Work, Disrupted Lives: Labour and Community in the New Rural Economy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002).
36. John N. H. Bretton's edited collection falls into the same category: Canada and the Global Economy: The Geography of Structural and Technological Change (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996).
37. Employee ownership is explored in Jack Quarter, Crossing the Line: Unionized Employee Ownership and Investment Funds (Toronto: Lorimer, 1995), which includes case studies of Pioneer Chain Saw, Nelco Mechanical, and Algoma Steel.
38. For an example of Quebec nationalism at work, see Jorge Niosi and Henri Gagnon, Fermetures d'Usines, ou bien, Libération National (Montreal: Les éditions heritage, 1979).
39. A number of recent studies have done likewise. See, for example, Doug Smith, Stickin' to the Union: Local 2224 versus John Buhler (Halifax: Fernwood, 2004),
40. as well as Glen Norcliffe, "Mapping De-industrialization: Brian Kippling's Landscapes of Toronto," Canadian Geographer 40 (1996): 266-277.
41. John H. Bradbury, "Towards an Alternative Theory of Resource-Based Town Development in Canada," Economic Geography 55 (1979): 147-166.
42. For an empirical analysis of 220 Canadian resource-dependent towns see James E. Randall and R. Geoff Ironside, "Communities on the Edge: An Economic Geography of Resource-Dependent Communities in Canada," Canadian Geographer 40, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 17-35.
43. Rex Lucas, Minetown, Milltown, Railtown: Life in Canadian Communities of Single Industry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 20.
44. Lars Ogberg, Fred Wien, and Jan Grude, Vanishing Jobs: Canada's Changing Workplaces (Toronto: Lorimer, 1995).
45. Trevor Barnes and Roger Hayter have been at the forefront of research on economic restructuring in Canada's forest industry. See their "Economic Restructuring, Local Development and Resource Towns: Forest Communities in Coastal British Columbia," Canadian Journal of Regional Science 17, no. 3 (Autumn 1994): 289-294.
46. Industrial restructuring and work process in paper-making are explored in a number of important articles published in a special issue of the Canadian Geographer, including Trevor J. Barnes, "High-Performance Organizations and Employment Flexibility: A Case Study of Insitu Change at the Powell River Paper Mill, 1980-1994," Canadian Geographer 41, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 26-40;
47. John Holmes, "In Search of Competitive Efficiency: Labour Process Flexibility in Canadian Newsprint Mills," Canadian Geographer 41, no. 1 (Spring 1997); 7-25;
48. and Glen Norcliffe and Judy Bates. "Implementing Lean Production in an Old Industrial Space: Restructuring at Corner Brook, Newfoundland, 1984-1994," Canadian Geographer 41, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 41-60.
49. See also Maureen Reed, Taking Stands. Gender and the Sustainability of Rural Communities (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003).
50. The most ambitious project on mine closures is the Elliot Lake Tracking Study, a longitudinal study, sponsored by the Institute for Northern Ontario Research and Development at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. The project tracked miners who lost their jobs in the closure of the Denison and Rio Algom Mines in the 1990s. Many of the project's working papers are available online at http:laurentian.ca/INORD.
51. See also Anne-Marie Mawhiney and Jane Pitblado, eds. Boom Town Blues: Elliot Lake Collapse and Revival in a Single-Industry Community (Toronto: Dundurn, 1999).
52. John Bradbury's work on mine closures, though conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, still looms large in the historiography of mine closures in Canada. See John H. Bradbury and Isabella St. Martin, "Winding Down in a Quebec Mining Town: A Case Study of Schefferville," Canadian Geographer 27, no. 2 (1983): 128-44;
53. John H. Bradbury, "Declining Single Industry Communities in Quebec-Labrador, 1979-1983," Journal of Canadian Studies 19, no. 3 (1984): 125-39;
54. and Cecily Neil, Markku Tykklainen, and John Bradbury, eds. Coping with Closure: An International Comparison of Mine Town Experiences (London: Routledge, 1992).
55. Also useful is Bob Russell, More with Less. Work Reorganization in the Canadian Mining Industry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
56. See Rosemary Ommer, ed. The Resilient Outport: Ecology, Economy and Society in Rural Newfoundland (St. John's: ISER, 2002);
57. Dianne Newell and Rosemary E. Ommer, Fishing Places, Fishing People: Traditions and Issues in Canadian Small-scale Fisheries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999);
58. and Miriam Wright, A Fishery for Modern Times: The State and the Industrialization of the Newfoundland Fishery, 1934-1968 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001).
59. The underlying reasons for resource exhaustion are hotly debated. See, for example, Reginald Byron, ed., Retrenchment and Regeneration in Rural Newfoundland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).
60. Bluestone and Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America, 19.
61. One of the great exceptions to this statement is Christopher H. Johnson, The Life and Death of Industrial Languedoc, 1700-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995),
62. as is John Lutz, "Losing Steam: The Boiler and Engine Industry as an Index of British Columbia's Deindustrialization, 1880-1915," Historical Papers (1988).
63. See, for example, Steven High, "Capital and Community Reconsidered: The Politics and Meaning of Deindustrialization," Labour/Le Travail 55 (Spring 2005): 187-196.
64. The production of place is central to individual and civic identity construction. British geographer Doreen Massey has greatly influenced my understanding of place as existing in time and space, Doreen Massey, "Places and Their Pasts," History Workshop Journal 39 (1995): 182-192.
65. The ecomuseum movement originated in France and took root in Quebec and Northern Ontario. See Serge Chaumier, "Les ambivalences du devenir d'un écomusée: entre repli identitaire et déposession," Publics et Musées 17-18 (Jan.-June 2000): 83-114;
66. Octave Debary, "Deindustrialization and Museumification: From Exhibited Memory to Forgotten History," Sociology of Education 69, no. 2 (April 1996): 105-125;
67. Alexandre Delarge, "Des écomusées, retour à la défin ition et évolution," Publics et Musées 17-18 (Jan.-June 2000): 139-156;
68. and Francois Mairess, "La belle histoire, aux origins de la nouvelle muséologies," Publics et Musées 17-18 (Jan.-June 2000): 33-56.
69. The Workers Arts and Heritage Centre in Hamilton is explored in Craig Heron, "The Labour Historian and Public History," Labour/Le Travail 45 (Spring 2000): 171-197.
70. Among the centre's exhibits that are relevant to this conversation is Wayne Lewchuk and CAW Local 525 Retirees' Working and Motoring in a Steeltown: The History of CAW Local 525; 1948-1998. (Hamilton: Ontario Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, 1998).
71. The Heritage Committee of the Ottawa District Labour Council, for example, produced an exhibition and video on the closing of Beach Foundry in the "Mechanicsville" district of the city. See also CAW Local 303 Heritage Committee, You Can't Bring Back Yesterday: A History of CAW Local 303 (Halifax: Canadian Auto Workers, 1993).
72. For an outstanding example of how industrial museums can be creatively analyzed. See Lucy Taksa, "Haulingan Infinite Freight of Mental Imagery: Finding Labour's Heritage at the Swindon Railway Workshops' STEAM Museum," Labour History Review 68, no. 3 (December 2003): 391-410.
73. See also Robert Summerby-Murray, "Interpreting Deindustrialised Landscapes of Atlantic Canada Memory and industrial Heritage in Sackville, New Brunswick," Canadian Geographer 46, no. 1 (2002): 48-62.
74. Mine frames and wooden grain elevators have received great popular attention. See, for example, Elizabeth McLachlan, Gone But Not Forgotten: Tales of the Disappearing Grain Elevators (Edmonton: NewWest, 2004).
75. Abandoned mine frames have a similar mystique and majesty. See Louie Palu and Charlie Angus, Industrial Cathedrals of the North (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1999).
76. Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins: The Meaning of Deindustrialization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 1-2.
77. Kirk Savage, "Monuments to a Lost Cause: The Postindustrial Campaign to Commemorate Steel," in Beyond the Ruins, ad. Cowie and Heathcott, 237.
78. Ian McKay has shown that the tourism industry can just as easily erase a region's industrial past when it suited. Ian McKay, The Quest for the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994).
79. Le silo No 5 du port de Montréal et on secteur. le passé, l'avenir, Actes d'une journée d'étude (Montreal: Association québécoise pour le patrimoine industriel, 1998).
80. A few of the most recent studies include John Meligrana and Andrejs Skaburskis, "Extent, Location and Profiles of Continuing Gentrification in Canadian Metropolitan Areas, 1981-2001," Urban Studies 42, no. 9 (2005): 1569-1692;
81. Mathieu VanCriekingen and Jean-Michel Decroly, "Revisiting the Diversity of Gentrification: Neighbourhood Renewal Processes in Brussels and Montreal," Urban Studies 40, no. 12 (2003): 2451-2468;
82. and Jon Caulfield, City Form and Everyday Life: Toronto's Gentrification and Critical Social Practices (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).