Company Houses
Company Towns
Heritage and Conservation
Edited by
Andrew Molloy
Tom Urbaniak
Company Houses
Company Towns
Heritage and Conservation
Edited by
Andrew Molloy
Tom Urbaniak
CAPE BRETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
SYDNEY, NOVA SCOTIA
Copyright 2016 Cape Breton University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Cape Breton University Press recognizes fair dealing uses under the Copyright Act (Canada). Responsibility for the research and permissions obtained for this publication rests with the authors.
The editors and contributors wish to thank the many contributions and funding provided to make this book possible, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Cover Images: Front cover, see articles pp. 46, 76;
back cover, see articles pp. 219, 46, 117.
Cover design: Cathy MacLean Design, Chticamp, NS.
Layout: Mike Hunter, West Bay and Sydney, NS.
Copyediting: Robbie McCaw, Ottawa, ON.
First printed in Canada.
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77206-049-2 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77206-050-8 (pdf).--
ISBN 978-1-77206-051-5 (epub).--ISBN 978-1-77206-052-2 (kindle)
1. Company towns--Canada. 2. Historic buildings--Conservation and
restoration--Canada. 3. Architecture--Conservation and restoration--
Canada. 4. City planning--Canada. 5. Urban renewal--Canada. I. Molloy,
Andrew, 1960-, editor II. Urbaniak, Tom, 1976-, editor
HD7545.A3C64 2016 307.7670971 C2016-902113-0
C2016-902114-9
Cape Breton University Press
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Contents
Preface
Memory, Diversity and Regeneration
In his 1971 classic, Minetown, Milltown, Railtown , sociologist Rex A. Lucas argued that Canadian company towns have few past memories and a short past. They depend on impersonal forces (Lucas 1971: 20).
The authors in this book present a different portrait. Yes, company towns have appeared, lived and declined because of global economic forces. But they reflect these forces in distinctiveand personalways. They have inspired attachment and a sense of place. They can be tight-knit but also quintessentially global. They served far-off markets while housing a mosaic of newcomers from around the world. They speak to the diversity of Canada and the immigrant experience. Their landscapes are a kind of language that conveys rich and layered stories. They are hands-on classrooms of culture, economics, architecture, politics and sociology. These company towns mean a great deal to the people who put down roots there or passed through them. The houses became homes.
Taken together, the case studies in this book speak to the enduring value of these places. Richard MacKinnon reveals how the architectural styles of the thousands of company houses in Cape Breton, even the most modest, reflect the aspirations of the industrial revolution and the resistance to some of the effects of heavy industry. Impersonal building plans were personalized over time by coal and steel workers and their families. Alex Forbes assesses the formidable personality of Alexander Boss Gibson and his vision for Marysville, New Brunswick. Gibsons patriarchal, but also benevolent and complex, behaviour moulds the character and culture of the community generations after the founders death. Gail Weir shows that a post-industrial cultural landscapeWabana, Bell Island, Newfoundlandcan become a storytelling landscape, a landscape that reveals important facts and nuances about the lives of the iron-ore workers and their families, including her own family. Today, this landscapeand the people who live in it and on it, and who study itshare those stories with visitors, including tourists.
Affirming collective identities is a struggle. Lucie K. Morisset and Jessica Mace document how the strong sense of identity of Arvida, Quebec, survived municipal amalgamation and the attempts by public bodies to subsume the autonomy of the city founded by a large aluminum company. The seeds of Arvidas sense of self were embedded in the original utopian designs. These designs and ideals are now celebrated as Arvida seeks international heritage recognition. Tom Urbaniak looks at contested interpretations of cultural identity in Kaszuby, Ontario, a non-industrial intentional community in eastern Ontario. It is a more recent kind of company town that nonetheless draws on the names and symbols of the 19th-century Polish Kashub settlers and their descendants. It is also a window on how globalization can actually contribute to the resurgence of local and regional cultures and identities.
Today, the health and survival of these towns requires a different kind of entrepreneur a social entrepreneur, a policy entrepreneur, a network of activists and grassroots risk-takers who can create the soil for new things to grow, albeit with reference to the old. Barbara Hogan, Lyn Bleiler, Anne Leckie, Rob McIntyre and Marc Johnston take us to Elsa, referred to as Yukons last company town. Can environmental remediation revive its prospects and help save some of its vestigesand with those vestiges the enduring memories of a remarkable cross-cultural experience? And by reflecting on a demonstration project in which they were involved, Andrew Molloy and Tom Urbaniak profile the difficulties but also very real opportunities to revitalize homes and neighbourhoods in the post-industrial Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
This book suggests that heritage status and recognition can affect quality of life and community survival. Heritage designationslocal or nationalhave helped some of these communities. Marysvilles status as a national historic district is a form of certification, an affirmation of legitimacy. The national recognition did not trigger strict local regulations, but it has reinforced careful stewardship and public attention whenever the fabric of the community is threatened. The Wabana Iron Ore Mines National Historic Site appears to be slowly doing the same for Bell Island, along with other designations, murals, publications, an interpretive museum and even dramatic productions. In Glace Bay, the heritage designation of a company housethe first such designation in the regiongave a boost to the volunteers who were renovating it for affordable housing. It sent the message that this is living history in an evolving community, not just a static artifact.
Long after the company captains and their enterprises have left the scene, a places character, values, behaviour and politics are influenced by its founding moments, its founding organizations and its early inhabitants. The overarching role of Boss Gibson arguably makes contemporary Marysville more amenable to leadership from benevolent public dignitaries as opposed to upstart small businesspeople. It would be hard to live and work in Kaszuby without understanding the hardship of the Polish Kashub settlers and the longings (sometimes wounds) of the more recent immigrants, their enduring cultural project and the deep pride that their histories have engendered.
