Small Town in Modern Times: Alexandria, Ontario 9780773562837

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A Small Town in Modern Times

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A Small Town in Modern Times Alexandria, Ontario DAVID M .

RAYSIDE

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

McGill-Queen's University Press 1991 ISBN 0-7735-0826-0 Legal deposit second quarter 1991 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Rayside, David M. (David Morton), 1947A small town in modern times Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-7735-0826-0 1. 2. 3. I.

Alexandria (Ont.) - Social conditions. Alexandria (Ont.) - Economic conditions. Alexandria (Ont.) - Politics and government. Title.

HN110.A44R39 1991

971-3'75

C90-090516-6

This book was typeset by Typo Litho composition inc. in 10/12 Palatino

Dedicated, with love, to Gerry Hunt Ron Rayside Judi Stevenson

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Contents

Tables and Maps ix Preface xi 1 The Lie of the Land 3 2 Industrial Development and Economic Dependence 31 3 The World of Wage Labour 72 4 Gender Identity and Inequality 130 5 Language and Schooling 171 6 Community Politics 236 7 Fragmentation and Community 287 Notes 303 Guide to Further Reading 325 Index 333

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Tables and Maps

TABLES

1.1 Principal Demographic and Social Charateristics, 1986 4 2.1 Population Growth and Historical Benchmarks, 1784-1986 32 2.2 Industries, 1987 (more than 10 employees) 57 2.3 Manufacturing Industries, 1964-84 58 3.1 Total Family Income, 1985 123 4.1 Labour Force Activity, by Gender, 1981 and 1986 132 4.2 Occupations by Gender, Alexandra, 1986 136 4.3 Income for Individuals, by Gender, 197085 137 4.4 Proportion of Women on School Staffs, Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry County, 1982-8 160 5.1 Evolution of Ethnic Origin, 1901-86 174 5.2 Evolution of Mother Tongue, 1941-86 175 5.3 Mother Tongue and Occupation in Population aged 15 +, Glengarry, 1971 176 5.4 Ethnic and Linguistic Characteristics, 1981 and 1986 177 5.5 Official Language Use and Bilingualism, 1931, 1961, 1981, 1986 178 5.6 Local Election Results by Poll Area, 1982, 1985, 1988 183

x Tables and Maps 5.7 Sequence of Events - High School Controversy in Alexandria, 1969-87 219 6 Heads of Alexandria Council, 18841988 246 MAPS

1 Eastern Ontario xix 2 Alexandria xx

Prefacee

This book is the result of an intensive study of the political, economic, and social life of a small town in Glengarry County, Ontario. As I originally conceived it, the study was to encompass all of Glengarry County, a place with family connections going back over 150 years. From childhood, I had come to know and love South Lancaster, a village at the south end of the county fronting on the St Lawrence River, as a refuge from the city - first Montreal and then Toronto. It was a place I could relax in and be accepted. Over time this area became a place I wanted to know better. In choosing what research to undertake after completing my PhD thesis, I was attracted to the idea of a project centring on Glengarry for several reasons. The fact that the county was about half French Canadian and half English Canadian (the latter mostly Scottish in origin) had always interested me, since my Montreal origins had immersed me in language-group tensions from my earliest political awakenings. In choosing Glengarry as a research site, I was also influenced by a body of scholarly work referred to as "community power" literature, which seeks to understand the complex relationships among economic, social, and political power by examining single communities. With this literature in mind, I was interested in looking not only at French-English questions, but also at relationships between other groups with potentially unequal power; Glengarry's modest size seemed to make that kind of complex inquiry possible. I also hoped to find in small communities such as those within Glengarry County a form of democratic practice that was closer to the ideal than that evident in senior levels of government. I had developed by this time a good deal of scepticism about the potential for genuine democracy in national political communities and large

xii Preface

cities, and for a time I held to the belief that only radical decentralization could generate citizen participation in community decisionmaking. I began to formulate a research project in 1979 and 1980, deliberately designing it to be as open-ended as possible, acknowledging my unfamiliarity with rural and small town life and recognizing the importance of leaving myself open to experience before formulating more precise research questions. This was a way of restricting the distorting effect of the prior assumptions often built into research projects. I tried to listen hard to the way people characterized their world and to think hard about the kinds of choices realistically available to them. Without having the conceptual apparatus common to academics, people often have sophisticated analyses about their own condition and highly perceptive observations about the world around them. The researcher must pay attention to those interpretations and think about the reasons behind them. The combination of deductive and inductive research strategies has at times entailed a certain amount of conceptual "messiness" and inefficiency, but in the end has produced an analysis that I believe relates more closely than most social science research to the reality of the people I have talked to. Intensive field work began during a sabbatical leave in 1980-81, and continued during the summers of 1982, 1983, and 1984. I engaged in three kinds of research activities. The first was to attend as many meetings of local political bodies as I could manage, paying particular attention to what issues arose and, just as importantly, to what issues were glossed over or never dealt with at all. The second was to cull printed sources for information that illuminated the area's economic and political life. I have used a number of published sources, including Canadian Census records. I have also made liberal use of the Glengarry News (the local weekly), in part to work up descriptions of events that had become significant to my emerging analysis and in part to demonstrate the prevalence of dominant ideological norms. I have made substantial use of the documents and files of the local public and separate school boards and municipal councils. The third and most important research activity was extensive open-ended interviewing of Glengarrians (and sometimes nonGlengarrians), focusing first on people who were active in the local political process (including the educational realm), particularly those involved in the issues that interested me. I then embarked on a series of interviews that would help me explore the world of work and social-class relations. My research assistants and I talked to a

xiii

Preface

range of people wide enough to explore work within most of the town's manufacturing industries, and within a range of the small businesses along Main Street and the town's public sector institutions. A few institutions or sectors - the local hospital and garment workers, for example - received particularly intense treatment. Interviews were generally confidential, but I also talked to a few people "on the record" about the totality of their own lives. These were people who had particularly insightful things to say about their community, and whose lives dramatized themes emerging out of my analysis. They are generally not the most prominent of people; most of them have modest jobs and a low profile in community affairs. I felt that the use of identifiable individuals from several quite different parts of town would help convey a sense of everyday life in Alexandria and would help make concrete the conclusions contained in this study. This was a large project to undertake, and in some respects a product of energetic youth. Comparable studies in the past have typically been large-budget enterprises with whole teams of researchers. The modest scale of,the present inquiry means that there are inevitable gaps that might have been filled with a larger team. That scale, though, allowed me to retain intimate contact with all that was being inquired into, while still covering those aspects of community life I believed most essential. Important changes in the project's direction occurred during the course of research. The first was to narrow the focus from Glengarry as a whole to the town of Alexandria, since I was coming to realize that the most engaging of the issues and materials I was encountering centred on the county's principal town. Another change in the project was the addition of the question of gender relations to the issues covered in my research. My concern for such issues had been sparked by the growing sensitivity to feminist perspectives within my Toronto circles and by my growing awareness of my own gay sexuality. The addition of the gender dimension posed some research difficulties. Much of the early interviewing, for example, had been conducted without much attention to the relationship between men and women within families and in the town's social life. Even if it had, the exploration of these aspects of community life, particularly those touching on roles within families, came perilously close to the most personal and private cores of people's lives, not something easily inquired about or talked about. That has meant using well-placed and observant informants and unobtrusive indicators for exploring some of the matters dealing with gender relations.

xiv

Preface

As it evolved, then, the project narrowed its attention to a single community, but in some ways broadened its scope. It came to be concerned above all with inequality along a number of dimensions. It sought an understanding, first, of the town's unequal relationship to outside economic and political forces. It also aimed to explore relationships between major sectors of the local population - between social classes, between women and men, and between French and English. Research was increasingly guided by my desire to know how those relationships were enacted in everyday life, and in particular how they contrasted with the idealized image of the town as a warm and intimate place to live. I also came to be interested in whether local politics touched on anything that was significant to the lives of Alexandrians and whether any local political activity aimed at reducing the inequalities that I had begun to see all around me. I have brought to the project some analytical perspectives that have helped provide shape to my observations and interviews. Although I have never lodged myself clearly within the Marxist paradigm that has so shaped Canadian political economy, I have always joined with that perspective in seeing the free-market system as built upon inequality and upon a kind of individualism that is corrosive of the best in humanity. I agree with the argument that inequality is not simply a coincidence, but a characteristic upon which economic growth in a market system depends. Further, I have come to appreciate that "structured" inequality exists not only between wage earners and their managers and between women and men, but also between economically disadvantaged regions such as eastern Ontario and more powerful metropolitan centres. Another perspective I have brought to my project is one that sees tension between language groups as normal, perhaps even inevitable. My years of living in and observing Quebec, and my previous research in Belgium, have taught me that linguistic peace is always temporary and that there are perfectly understandable reasons why the speakers of one language resent the speakers of another language who inhabit the same space. Although this analysis is not built upon a theoretical foundation fully formed prior to field work, my observations have been guided by analytical perspectives about the essential structure of social relationships. Those kinds of theoretical understandings have been critical in penetrating the elaborate "imagery" of small-town life, an imagery held to tenaciously by all sorts of townspeople as a way of distinguishing their existence from city life. It is also my view that any inquiry into inequality must circumnavigate elaborate concealments and justifications, not only those

xv Preface

constructed by people in positions of power, but also those believed in by people in positions of subordination. Just as it is in the interests of those who wield power over others to conceal that power, so it is also in the interests of most of those who are subordinated to the power of others to retain their own dignity by denying that they are in a weakened position. As a result, relationships of power are almost always obscured, and it is the task of the social inquirer to go beyond the obvious - to penetrate the images and to challenge even the perspectives of those who are members of the community under examination. Through the course of my research, some of my assumptions were challenged, and I like to think that the resulting change in my views is a comment on the openness of my research design. I began the project, for example, with a belief that "development" had serious costs for human relationships. As many urbanites do, I harboured a vaguely romanticized view of rural areas, believing that industrial and commercial growth could well threaten the character of the countryside. In some ways, my concern about the impact of development was a reaction to the destructive effect of the high-density urban development already experienced by Montrealers and Torontonians. I have not fully altered that view of rapid development and urbanization, but I have come to appreciate that for many of the residents of areas such as Alexandria, long neglected by "progress," development brings much-needed jobs and improved services. In a relatively poor area, economic change can mean a better life for some, even with the costs. The relationship of the town to the outside world is such that many of the sorts of prescriptions I might have once imagined would be dangerously simple-minded. In a more general way, I have come to be even more uncertain about what I would suggest to Alexandrians to improve their lives than I thought I would be at the outset. I am conscious now that I am better at pointing to injustice than I am at figuring out ways Alexandrians can reduce the injustice within their own community. A good deal of the inequality I find in the town is built in, and local people may well be unable to effect change on their own. Change would require a transformation in the entire economic and political order, and I feel myself increasingly bereft of suggestions as to how that might happen. What remains for me is to celebrate those brave Alexandrians who push at the borders of what is acceptable and who go about their daily lives with dignity and compassion for others, refusing to accept what is as the only option open to them. In writing this manuscript, I have tried to keep a range of audiences in mind. There are analytical portions that take up some of

xvi Preface

the central issues of power and inequality debated in the fields of political science and sociology. An interdisciplinary audience, particularly in Canadian Studies, would find a treatment of small-town life important in understanding the Canadian experience overall. I hope, too, that there will be a Glengarry audience for this research, some residents of the area who will read what I have to say, and as a result think a little differently about their own community or their place in it. A project such as this depends on the openness of individuals and institutions, and I have many such debts to acknowledge. Almost two hundred people agreed to be interviewed, most for an hour, a few for several hours, and they almost always responded to my questioning with candour and intelligence. I promised most of them confidentiality, so I cannot thank them by name, but I hope they realize how grateful I am. A few Alexandrians were exceptionally helpful in agreeing to long biographical interviews "on the record." To Jacqueline Fraser, Denis Quesnel, Julie Leroux, Lucy Lavigueur, and the late Pierrette Laflamme and Gerry McDonald, I owe special debts of gratitude for their generosity and honesty. They provided me with some of the most powerful conversational moments of the entire research project, Lucy and Pierrette especially. They all taught me much about the courage and compassion that can permeate everyday life, and they demonstrated the best of what Alexandrians can be. A number of boards and councils provided indispensable help in allowing me access to meetings and documents. The town council of Alexandria and its administrators at the time - Don Collin, Leo Poirier, and Lise Taillefer - were unfailing in their openness and courtesy. At a time when large numbers of municipal authorities are justifiably criticized for secrecy, Alexandria seems to me well served by its council. I can recall no instance in which a request for information or access was denied. Although the research I undertook in rural areas of Glengarry outside Alexandria ended up being outside the ambit of this study, I want to express my appreciation to the councils and the administrators of both Lancaster and Charlottenburgh townships. The former council was particularly generous in allowing me into meetings and giving me access to documentation. The Charlottenburgh council and administration were helpful in a number of ways, although in some instances betrayed elements of a long-standing pattern of secrecy. The trustees and administrators of the two school boards of the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry provided extraordinary access to information and to even the most private of

xvii Preface

deliberations. During the most controversial periods, representatives from all sides (with only rare exceptions) opened themselves up to my questioning and provided frank responses. Anyone who investigates Glengarry County owes the late Ewan Ross a great deal. Although not formally trained as an historian, Ewan was the county's most prodigious chronicler and collector. He was also a kindly and avuncular source of advice to me, recognizing before anyone else in Glengarry that my work was to be profoundly different from his. The county history he co-authored with Royce MacGillivray was extremely useful for me, as were the historical file cards to which he provided me unlimited access. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In addition, SSHRCC awarded me a substantial grant to cover research expenses, and the University of Toronto provided smaller awards on two occasions. The two sabbatical leaves granted by the university were indispensable in giving me the time to undertake early field work and to write up the project. During half of my first leave, Harvard University's Center for European Studies provided me with a warm and stimulating intellectual atmosphere to begin thinking about the questions that guided my initial research into Glengarry. During my second leave, the University of Bath (in England) provided me with space and facilities that greatly speeded the drafting of the manuscript. Several people assisted me in the field and in the handling of interview tapes. Patrick Neal and John Crossley, both at the time graduate students in political science at the University of Toronto, participated briefly in the field, each of them offering distinctive insights into what they observed. A number of people coped with the unenviable task of transcribing interview tapes or assisting with a number of secretarial tasks, including Cyrilene Deckles, Jane Bennett, Neil Bradford, Mary Fortomaris, Shirley Hartley, Kelly Horner, Elizabeth Jagdeo, Susan Lishingman, Doreen Morton, James Vandervoort, and Kate Zeidman. As office managers in political science and University College during most of the period during which this book was in preparation, Mary Rous and Carol Robb were unfailingly helpful and encouraging. My parents, Jean and Bruce Rayside, were often in residence in South Lancaster while I used their cottage as a base for my research. They were supportive in subtle ways, lending me a car or cooking meals, inquiring with curiosity about what I was doing but never pressing me to violate the promises of confidentiality that were so

xviii Preface

critical to the success of my inquiry. My twin brother Ron was also supportive in his curiosity and in many other respects, not least the provision of maps and cover illustration. A number of friends read all or parts of the manuscript, offering valuable suggestions for its improvement and providing words of encouragement when my own confidence was flagging. Pierre Aubry, an Alexandria lawyer and now friend, read the entire manuscript and offered supportive advice. David Wolfe also read the entire work, and provided perceptive analytical criticism with candour and warmth. Gerry Hunt, who had to live with the project for much longer than he would care to remember, was unfailing in his support. He, too, read a complete early draft and helped make the final product a better book. The contribution of one friend deserves special mention. From the project's beginnings, Judi Stevenson provided intellectual and emotional support of extraordinary proportions. Acting as an invaluable research assistant for two-week periods in two summers, she conducted some of the most penetrating interviews and provided a highly insightful analysis of small-town life. She read the entire manuscript, some of it twice or three times, on each occasion offering a vast amount of useful commentary. There is not a page of this book that does not bear her mark in one way or another. In each of the revisions I undertook, I tried to measure up to her high standards. In the period following the submission of this book for publication, I received useful criticisms from three reviewers, two of them anonymous. John Hofley, of the Sociology Department at the University of Winnipeg, provided particularly helpful comments to aid in final revisions. Virgil Duff, of the University of Toronto Press, was warmly supportive of the book over a two-year period, and as with many other social science writers in Canada, I owe him a great deal. Philip Cercone and Joan McGilvray of McGill-Queen's University Press were unfailingly helpful in guiding the manuscript through the final stages in publication, and Brenda Missen applied a perceptive editorial eye to final revisions. Any one of the friends and associates who helped with this project would have written a different book than I have and would take issue with some of what I have said. But all of them respected what I wanted to do and offered encouragement for the project I had set myself. They bear none and I bear all of the responsibility for whatever is wrong or inadequate in the pages to follow, at the level of either fact or interpretation. They share much of the responsibility for what is right.

INDUSTRIES

SCHOOLS

1 Alexandria Moulding (3 sites) 2 Tradition Windows (closed) 3 ARC Industries (Glen. Assoc. for Comm. Living) 4 Formax Plastics 5 Alexandria Footwear 6 Farley Windows 7 Petrosun (closed) 8 Laurin 9 Woodings Railcar (closed) 10 Consoltex 11 137215 Canada Inc. 12 Brown Shoe 13 Baker's Pride 14 Carnation 15 Regal Knitting 16 Geo. Lanthier Bakery 17 Sanilit 18 Alexandria Milling 19 Glen. Transport Ltd.

20 Ecole Secondaire Regionale Glengarry / Glen. District High School 21 T.R. Leger School 22 Alexander School 23 Ecole Elda Rouleau 24 St. Joseph's School 25 Ecole Perpetuel Secours OTHER 26 Subsidized Family Housing (2 sites) 27 Curling Club 28 Police Station / Human Resources Centre 29 Priest's Mill Restaurant

A Small Town in Modern Times

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CHAPTER ONE

The Lie of the Land

Glengarry is a rural county at Ontario's southeastern tip, bordering on the St Lawrence River between the city of Cornwall and the Quebec county of Vaudreuil-Soulange. Loyalist origins and early migration gave the area an assertively Scottish flavour, warmly romanticized in the Ralph Connor novels of the early twentieth century. J Proximity to Quebec has allowed for easy migration of French Canadian settlers since the nineteenth century, producing a population now almost evenly divided between French and English. The countryside is mostly farmland, although a number of roads bear the imprint of city dwellers seeking a plot of rural calm. Alexandria is the county's largest centre - a town of 3500 set 24 kilometres away from the river, about halfway between Ottawa and Montreal. Close to 60% of its population is French Canadian, and 80% is Roman Catholic. A large number of the anglophones have Scottish ancestry, some with long roots in Glengarry's past. The vast majority of area residents, whether French or English Canadian, were born and raised in Glengarry. Few Alexandrians have emigrated from farther away than Montreal, and almost none have non-white ethnic backgrounds. The town has an unusually diversified manufacturing base and a wide range of public-sector institutions, providing services and about 2500 jobs for the local area. There is a large wage-earning working class, employed in over 20 industries, a half dozen of them providing more than 100 jobs each. Much of the town's industrial growth has come in the last 30 years, partly a product of the success of a few local firms, partly a result of outside investment. During this period, Alexandria's public sector has grown as well, with the expansion of local educational institutions, the construction of a hospital, and the establishment of a few small offices for public

4 A Small Town in Modern Times Table 1.1 Principal Demographic and Social Characteristics, 1986

POPULATION

Born outside Canada (%)

Alexandria

Glengarry

Ontario

3,245 2.4

20,987 8.0

9,101,695 23.1

32.8 57.5

55.8 38.1

76.3 4.7

8.2

6.5

1.1

82.1 9.3 8.1 0.5

68.0 27.0 3.1 1.9

35.2 51.2 6.4 7.2

16.9 18.5 26.0 19.0 19.3

21.9 15.2 28.1 20.9 14.0

20.5 16.5 31.9 20.2 10.9

29.5

22.0

14.6

33.9 13.3

29.9 15.4

28.5 13.3

15.0 8.3

19.8 12.8

24.2 19.5

73.1

74.2

79.3

47.6

49.6

59.3

MOTHER TONGUE (%)

English French Multiple (English & French)3 RELIGION, 1981 (%)

Roman Catholic Protestant Other None AGE (%)

0-14 15-24 25-44 45-64 65 + HIGHEST LEVEL OF EDUCATION 15 + , NOT IN SCHOOL (%)

Less than grade 9 Grades 9-13 (without secondary certificate) Secondary school certificate Non-university postsecondary education Some university education LABOUR FORCE ACTIVITY, 15+ (%)

Men in labour force (% of all men) Women in labour force (% of all women) INCOME, 1985, 15+ (%)

Median income - males Median income - females % of families with low income0 % unattached individuals with low income0

b

$13,447 8,581

—

$21,771 10,319

20.5

—

11.0

44.7

—

33.3

5 The Lie of the Land Table 1.1 (continued) Alexandria

Glengarry

Ontario

1.7 31.7

17.0 19.6

4.0 22.0

11.2 28.7 2.0 25.1

16.0 18.8 3.6 25.2

12.6 23.2 6.9 31.3

INDUSTRIAL DIVISIONS (% OF LABOUR FORCE)

Primary Manufacturing Construction, transport, utilities Trade, finance, insurance Government Other

Source: 1981 Census of Canada, catalogue 93x-942; pp. 1-1, 1-146; 1986 Census of Canada, catalogue 94-111; pp. 1, 410, 416; and catalogue 94-112, pp. 1-9, 682-90, 692-700. a

Single mother tongues other than English and French, as well as multiple mother-tongue combinations other than English and French, have not been included. b In the 1986 census, data is not calculated for Glengarry County, but is calculated only for the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry. c Low-income thresholds vary by size of area of residence and size of family. In "small urban regions," for example, the low-income cut-offs in 1985 were $11,093 for a two-person family and $17,200 for a four-person family. (For an urban area with a population of more than 500,000, the cut-offs for two- and four-person families were $13,501 and $20,812 respectively.)

agencies such as the regional Health Council. Although the area is relatively poor by Ontario standards, with a median income almost one-third lower than the provincial average, it now enjoys a level of economic prosperity it has never known before. This kind of development has reduced the town's distinctive rural character and autonomy.2 The contrast between Alexandria and large urban centres with respect to social structure, the character of waged and salaried work, the relationship of citizens to government, and cultural values is less than it used to be. As the town has been tied into national and international networks and subjected to the authority of institutions far removed from the local area, the attention of its citizens is more and more focused outward rather than on the community. Its overall political and cultural life is more than ever shaped by values and pressures from the outside, urbandominated world. By increasing the dependence of the local area on outside forces, modern economic, political, and social development has fragmented the community, giving it less of the familiar and self-contained small-town character than it once had. To a surprising extent this community has become a city in miniature rather

6 A Small Town in Modern Times

than a place completely different from the city.3 To that extent, this analysis will treat Alexandria as a microcosm of Canadian society, the exploration of which reveals the contradictory reality that hides behind simplified images, whatever the size of the community. In some respects, though, Alexandria is quite unlike the city. It is still a quieter, more familiar place. Gender, class, and language relations work themselves out differently. The inequalities are often not as great, the separation between different parts of society not as extensive, and the potential for conflict not as great. The very dependence on the outside world creates a kind of defensive solidarity. This inquiry into the life of one town, however, seeks to go beyond the images of an intimate community in which everyone knows and gets along with everyone else. It will focus in particular on the complex relations between social classes, between men and women, and between English and French Canadians. It will explore the ways in which inequalities along class, gender, and language lines are expressed in everyday life, drawing on the experiences of Alexandrians within their families, in their work places and schools, and in their recreational and voluntary activities. The first step, though, is to gain an initial impression of the town by driving up to it from the south end of the county where white settlement began, and then through it, stopping along the way to meet a few of the women and men who live or work in Alexandria, and who in their lives and their observations of the area provide some sense of the diversity of people who call Alexandria home. FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The highway that forms Alexandria's Main Street begins in South Lancaster, 24 kilometres to the south. It was along this St Lawrence waterfront that white settlement of Glengarry County began in 1784. South Lancaster is now a quiet place, its commercial life bled away to other places first by the railways and then by highways. Growth of settlement along the water now comes primarily from the cottagers who escape the cities of Montreal or Cornwall during the summer, or from permanent residents who have left those cities in their retirement years. The highway heading north (Highway 34) was built ramrodstraight as only a military road would be, along the border between Lancaster Township and Charlottenburgh Township. It passes first over the four-lane Highway 401, which connects Glengarry so effortlessly to Cornwall, Montreal, and points beyond, and then

7 The Lie of the Land

through the village of Lancaster proper, a community created by the completion of the Grand Trunk Railway in the 18505 and for years an important trading link between much of the county and the world outside. Only on the other side of Lancaster village are there uninterrupted views of Glengarry's farms. The land is flat, some of it originally thought too low and swampy for crops. Land drainage and crop improvements have worked wonders, though, and several of the dairy farms on either side of the road are handsome and prosperous. Farther on, the highway rises and falls over modest hills left by glaciers. At the crest of one such hill is the intersection with the King's Road, another highway built with military considerations firmly in mind. The hamlet of St Raphael's lies just a few kilometres west of the intersection. This was the seat the first Roman Catholic parish in Upper Canada, the creation of one of Glengarry's most imposing historical figures - Bishop Alexander Macdonell. It was also the birthplace of John Sandfield Macdonald, one-time premier of the pre-Confederation Province of Canada, and first premier of Ontario. Further north, about six kilometres from Alexandria, Highway 34 passes through the much newer community of Green Valley. A railway branch line passes through here, but the hamlet's growth has more to do with the availability of jobs in nearby Alexandria. Denis Quesnel

Green Valley is where Denis Quesnel lives, in a small house on the east side of the long narrow community. He and his wife Helen both work in Alexandria, but Green Valley fits their budget and suits their preference for an even quieter community. They are both young (in their mid-twenties when Denis and I talked), with, at the time of interviewing, two young children. Keeping up with expenses is difficult, and the life they lead is a modest one. Denis is a gentle, soft-spoken man, of average height and build. He has straight, straggly, dark hair and a combination of bushy eyebrows and pronounced lines that encircle and darken his eyes. He has a mischievous sense of humour and an outlook on life that seems good-natured and generally uncomplaining. Despite his family name, his first language is English. He was sent to a French school as a child in order to learn the language, and although he says that "it never caught" while he was in school, he has picked up a great deal in the meantime. Denis is part of Alexandria's industrial working class and came from a working-class family, the youngest of five children. His father

8 A Small Town in Modern Times

had tried farming, but spent most of his working life in factories, first in Cornwall and then Alexandria. Denis' first job as a 15-yearold high school student was at Lanthier's bakery, and after trying a couple of other options it was to the bakery that he returned. I never liked school to begin with anyway. I never caught on to school; I never had an interest. I went up to grade ten. My family would have liked to see me finish. But I was working part-time and I was skipping school to go to work: it didn't mean anything to me anymore. I didn't expect to be an airline pilot or a social worker. I didn't expect to be anything out of the ordinary. By then, all the others in the family were out of school. They all left in grade ten or eleven. I got married in 1978, three months before I went back to the bakery. Helen and I met in high school - back then we were younger than fifteen. When we married, I was twenty-one and she was nineteen - she was just finishing at St Lawrence College. Kathy, the first baby, was born within a year. I kind of worried at the time - I was three months in between jobs. I knew that I would be getting Unemployment [Insurance payments], but there was a lot happening at one time. We lived in Alexandria then, right across from the high school. By the time we moved to Peel Street, I was back at the bakery, and Helen had gone back to work, too. We wanted the extra money, and she wanted to work, so she out and worked. We weren't living like kings, mind you. Kevin was born in October 1979 - the year after. We moved out here then. For one thing, it was quiet. For the young ones, I didn't want them close to the main street. You can leave stuff on the front lawn here, and expect to find it the next day; in Alexandria, you wouldn't dare do that. Helen always wanted to come back to Green Valley, so this was as good a chance as any.

From the northern edge of Green Valley, Alexandria is not far away - five minutes by car. On the way into town the highway passes a couple of large automobile dealerships, one of them recently shifted over from an American manufacturer to a Japanese. On the left, just before passing the elaborate sign announcing entry into the town itself, is one of Alexandria's greatest sources of pride - the headquarters of the multi-million-dollar Glengarry Transport Limited. The buildings are not large, since most management personnel are now concentrated in Montreal, but the formal headquarters remains here in the company's birthplace. Farther on the left, inside the municipal boundary, is another of

9 The Lie of the Land

Alexandria's prides - the huge IGA grocery store built by Marc Lalonde. Thought by some to be a risky venture when it was built, too large for a town this size, it is now thriving, drawing customers from most corners of the county. The new and much expanded Canadian Tire store is just beyond that, along with a sizable carpet store, furniture outlet, liquor store, and the mandatory Dairy Queen. The road rises almost imperceptibly toward the more densely crowded central section of Main Street, narrowing somewhat as it goes. Some houses are interspersed among the larger commercial buildings that occupy most of the Main Street frontage at the south end of town. One of the middle-aged bungalows is where Pierrette Laflamme was living with her son Brian until her death in 1985. Pierrette Laflamme

Pierrette embodied much that was best about Glengarry and Alexandria, and much of what the community thought of itself. She was completely bilingual and proud of it; she loved the diversity in personality and life-style in her own family of five children and in the town she lived in. When we talked, she had separated from her husband, and just before her death she won a precedent-setting court battle for a portion of her husband's pension. Although smallish in stature, she was a striking woman, with strong facial features framed by a square jaw and short, straight hair. She normally spoke very softly in strongly accented English, but sometimes burst into high-pitched exuberance or sudden laughter. Kind and gentle in her relations with other people, she was also capable of disarming forthrightness. Like Denis Quesnel's family, Pierrette's family was poor. Because she was the eldest of the four girls in a family of eight, Pierrette always had lots of chores. Like Denis, she was faced as a child with the trauma of being surrounded by a language that was not her own. When she graduated from her first school in Glen Robertson (a French school about 10 kilometres east of Alexandria) and went to high school in Alexandria, she found herself surrounded by English. She had done well in elementary school, but was discouraged by high school and did not last beyond Grade 9. Pierrette married quite young and gave birth to five children, four of them surviving. During some of the years of child-rearing, she worked to supplement the family's income, mostly at jobs that involved cooking. As her children matured and financial insecurity declined, she threw herself into volunteer activity, so much so that

io A Small Town in Modern Times

at one point she could have been president of four different associations, including the local Association for the Mentally Retarded. I think it was '67 or '69 when we had our first meeting. And I was contacted because my son Brian is mentally retarded. Some people organized a meeting in St Joseph's School here - there was a lot of people there. I became more actively involved when we opened the school [for disabled children] - Harmony Glen. I started attending meetings; you had to because it's your school and you have children in school. After a while I was first vice president. I felt very nervous about it because I had never done this before, but it seems that there was nobody else; that's usually the way. At about the same time as I became active in the M.R. [Mentally Retarded] Association, I joined the Hospital Auxiliary - in '67.1 had a neighbour, Mrs. Laporte, who convinced me that I should join the Auxiliary. She said that it was our hospital and for a long time we didn't have a hospital in Alexandria and I should join the Auxiliary. I must have been a member for a couple of years; I enjoyed that. I enjoyed meeting a lot of the members because a lot of them were from outside - not only from Alexandria. I don't think I'd want to live anywhere else. Alexandria is well situated: we're close to Montreal, Ottawa; we're in the middle of everything. No, I don't see how I could leave here and be happy somewhere else; I like the town and I like the people.

From the house that Pierrette lived in, there is a slight incline in the road, with Sacre Coeur up the slope on the right hand side. This is the church built early in this century to accommodate the rapidly growing French Canadian population, its steeple soaring high above everything else in that end of town. Just before the church is the modern building housing the Caisse Populaire, one of the town's four banking establishments. The French-language Ecole du Perpetuel Secours is on the left, just opposite the church - a drab example of early 19605 school architecture. Just north of Sacre Coeur is St Joseph's School, for several years an empty reminder of declining school enrolments. It now houses English-language students in the Roman Catholic Separate School system and follows a Frenchimmersion curriculum. From St Joseph's on, Main Street looks older and more traditional. A few houses are still used as residences along the street, some of them modest frame structures that come right up to the sidewalk, a few grander brick houses set back from the road. There are a few commercial establishments - a handsome restaurant, two funeral homes, an insurance broker's office - some of them are located in old houses, too. One of the more elegant brick houses, on the left

ii The Lie of the Land

side just before the street going down to the park and the mill pond, was the first location of Les Trois P'tits Points - the French Canadian Cultural Centre, born in a period of francophone activism at the end of the 19705. Julie Leroux

Julie Leroux is one of the vibrant young spirits behind the cultural centre and active, as well, in founding a local day-care centre. At the time that Les Trois P'tits Points was established, she was barely out of high school, having spent a couple of years actively involved in the promotion of French Canadian culture in her own school. Though slight of build and quiet in voice, Julie radiates energy and strength of conviction, speaking out on a wide range of issues and always eager to help other people organize around those issues. Born in Green Valley in 1961, she was the youngest of seven children. Her mother died when she was eight, and she moved to live in the house that belonged to her new step-mother - a house that also served as an old people's home. The family moved to Alexandria when she was in Grade 8, and though many years had passed since Pierrette Laflamme had attended the high school, Julie, too, found a predominance of English that made it a struggle for her to finish some courses. After finishing high school, she threw herself completely into community work. I got involved in the cultural centre after grade twelve, in 1979. We got a grant and were able to hire someone. People didn't know what we were doing, and some people would come in and say "What's this - French stuff?" and would call us fanatics. "Go to Quebec," they'd say. Two years after that, we started talking about day care, and decided to apply for a summer project to see if there was a need. We didn't get the grant, but we decided to do the research just the same. We were disappointed by the few people who came out for meetings, but it's not unusual for here. It's always like that around here, when you start something new.

When Julie's family first moved to Alexandria, they lived near "Mill Pond" just down the street from the first site of the Cultural Centre. The lake takes up the west side of the town centre, lapping up to within a block of Main Street. It is formed by a dam that once provided power to a mill still standing at the centre of Main Street. The water's edge is now bordered by lawns, marshes, and a large municipal park. With the sun and wind in proper place, it forms a shimmery respite from the brick and asphalt of the town centre.

12 A Small Town in Modern Times

From the vantage point of the lake's beach, the town takes on a greener, brighter, and softer air than it does from Main street. The town hall is just a block east of the lake, on the west side of Main Street. In addition to the town's administrative office, the building houses the Public Utilities Commission and, until recently, the provincial court. The structure itself is uninviting, but the atmosphere inside is warm and friendly. The four-person town administration is good-humoured and eager to help, and among them they know just about all of the town's residents by face, lineage, and job. All but one are completely bilingual, switching without notice from English to French and back again. North of the town hall, Main Street becomes more densely commercial, and down to the right, not far north, are two of Alexandria's most important "home-grown" industries. The one closest to the town centre is the bakery that Georges Lanthier started more than 50 years ago, which now employs more than 100 people, Denis Quesnel one of them. The other is Alexandria Moulding, a wood products firm started by members of the Cholette family shortly after World War II. The company's buildings gradually expanded in the midst of a residential area in an age before urban planning principles demanded a clearer separation between land uses. It is at the upper end of "Johnstown," a neighbourhood largely French Canadian and working class, containing most of the town's poorest residents. Farther to the north and east, about even with the centre of town, is the English Roman Catholic Church. St Finnan's is a beautiful late-nineteenth-century structure whose traditional interior was saved from the changes decreed by Vatican II through the mobilization of community protest. Opposite the north front of the church is the former Bishop's Palace, a handsome stone building now used as a residence for senior citizens. The Sacred Heart Monastery is a little farther to the east, right at the edge of town. The stretch of Main Street constituting the commercial centre of the town contains striking reminders of the first boom period at the turn of the century. By and large, it remains the two-storey town centre that sprang up in the i88os and 18905, with most of the upperfloor exteriors virtually unchanged. Even at street level, little has changed. The solid brick buildings at the intersection of Main and Kenyon look much as they did when they were first built. The dimensions of the street are still human - even intimate. The narrowness of the road and the slow pace of traffic make it easy to cross the street or shout "hello's" across it. Most of the shops, restaurants, and offices are modest in size and furnishings. Most are plain and

13 The Lie of the Land

a little cluttered-looking, not at all ostentatious or slick the way many city shops and offices are. The intimacy of the architecture along Main Street is matched by the personal style of the people who walk along it. Stylish dress and highly manicured appearance are uncommon; walking is leisurely, often interrupted by greetings to passers-by. Traffic is particularly busy around the post office, just a short block off Main Street, since that is where everyone picks up the daily mail and where many pause to catch up on local goings-on. The most impressive of the buildings at the town centre is the old mill building, now housing a restaurant by the name of Priest's Mill - the first name given to the settlement. The restaurant's main room is quite elegant, with restored antiques, subtle lighting, tartan-clad staff, well-dressed clientele, and prices quite high for the area. The fact that business thrives reveals something of changes in the town. There are now enough teachers, doctors, nurses, civil servants, and managers in the area, some of them commuting to Montreal and Cornwall for work, to sustain an expensive restaurant and stylish bar. Gerry McDonald

Just north of Mill Square, a small white clapboard building between the police station and the traffic light at Kenyon Street at one time housed Gerry McDonald's barber shop. Gerry retired a few years before his death in 1989, but during the period when his hair-cutting grew more infrequent, a number of long-time residents of the town still gathered to exchange gossip and talk about what the town used to be like. They called themselves "The Senate," and, in 1984, the Glengarry News profiled them. It seems that most small towns and villages have at least one place where the locals gather on a regular basis to discuss world events, review the latest hockey game, lambaste politicians and catch up on all the local gossip. For many long time residents of the Alexandria area that special meeting place has been McDonald's Barbershop on Main Street South. The shop hasn't changed much since owner Gerald McDonald first opened his doors for business on Jan. 30, 1945. A Coke machine sits in the corner as it has since Mr. McDonald bought it in 1955 - although it no longer dispenses drinks for a dime as it says on the outside. In its heyday a regular group of about 15 or 20 people from Alexandria and the surrounding area would drop in the shop for a visit or a haircut. Eventually the group became known as the Senate - a place where important decisions were made. "All the old regulars

14 A Small Town in Modern Times have died off," he said. "We'd talk about anything that's going on during the day, who's dead, who's getting married. A lot have come and gone since I started in '45. There's only a few of us left in the Senate."4

Gerry McDonald's home was just five minutes away, down Kenyon Street, a provincial highway that begins at Main Street and heads west. He lived in a pleasant home with his wife, in sight of Mill Pond. He was a lively and humorous man, his grey hair neatly combed back over his head. He spent all but a few war-time years in Alexandria, and his memory could go back much farther, to the tail end of Alexandria's first industrial boom and the bitter hard times of the Great Depression that followed. His barbering years coincided with a period of very gradual revival through the 19505, 19605, and 19705. During the first of those post-war years, he was active in local politics, but left because, among other things, he wasn't spending enough time with his children. His pride in those children and in their children was obvious by the number of family photographs in the house at the time we talked and by the warm way he talked about them. In his work life, Gerry was always a part of Main Street commerce. In that sense, he belonged to the most traditional economic sector in town, and his values reflected the traditionalism that can still be found up and down Main Street and in the town council chambers. He lamented some of the changes that have overcome the town and was saddened that he no longer knew most of the people walking the town's streets. But like many of his contemporaries, Gerry McDonald also celebrated the progress he saw over his lifetime. He knew from his own father's history and his own family's experience that for the town to have stayed the way it was would have meant that none of the town's youth could have found jobs in the area and that few of the town's residents could have afforded the kinds of houses they are now able to live in. In 1944, I had come back from the West and I was talking to the barber in the shop where I am now, and he said to me "Gerry, why don't you buy this?" I said "Okay, we'll make a deal when the war's over." I started in lanuary '45. The town felt basically the same, but it was much busier - there was more coming and going. From 1941 on, it was much busier than in the '305. The main change from the war was the factories coming in. Business in town in general was better, too. The money that was made by all these workers - they went out and they bought homes. Anybody knowing Alexandria well in 1945 and coming back in 1984, they'd find an awful lot of difference in the amount of homes and the buildings and the upkeep.

15 The Lie of the Land People are another change. People have moved in, mostly from Quebec, into Alexandria and the surrounding area. Many of them still commute to Montreal or to jobs in Cornwall. You don't know the people by name the way you used to. At one time you'd walk down the street and it'd take you half an hour to get from here to the shop - people would stop and talk to you. And whenever I'd start for home, it was another long time to get home. Now you walk right through, because people don't know you, you don't know who they are. Not much change in the way the town was run. We never had any complaints about how the town was run - we always thought it was run very well. We've got practically everything you'd want - we've got good roads, good sidewalks, good sewer system. Some may say the water doesn't taste too good, but we got used to our water.

In the fall of 1987, Gerry McDonald's barbershop was taken over by Joanne O'Connor Danaher, a 26-year old hairstylist who was returning from Ottawa to her native Glengarry. Uptown Hair Design is open to women and men, and is as much a sign of the times as Gerry's old shop was of an earlier time. The local hospital lies just a little farther west along Kenyon Street, just before the road turns into Highway 43. It is a small regional hospital and a source of considerable pride among most town residents. It occupies a handsome site, with large lawns separating the building from the road. Across from it is the Brown Shoe factory, housed in a building that began life in the 19505 as a garment factory. North of that lies the town's industrial park, containing the large Consoltex plant (which dyes and finishes textiles), some smaller manufacturing buildings, and the much-prized Sports Palace. The residential area between the industrial park and Main Street has a large number of new-looking, modest-sized, solid brick houses on suburban-sized lots, the product of development sponsored by JeanPaul Touchette, active investor in property throughout the county and long-time mayor of the town. Many of the people who live in this housing are among the better-paid and more established of the town's manufacturing workers. Jacqueline Fraser On the other side of Main Street, north a few blocks from the intersection of Main and Kenyon, lies a prosperous and heavily treed residential area, with some handsome red brick houses of the late Victorian period. Jacqueline Fraser lives in one of the handsomest of those, with a large porch framed by freshly painted white tracery. It has the sort of tasteful interior that few Alexandrians can afford,

16 A Small Town in Modern Times

although there is nothing in it that could be called ostentatious. Jackie and her husband Stanley both teach at the local high school; although by big city standards they are not wealthy, they do well in comparison with most Alexandrians. As much as anyone, Jackie Fraser symbolizes the bilingualism and biculturalism of Alexandria. She has fully retained her French language, and teaches in French most of the time, but spends much of her time at home speaking English. She remains a practising Roman Catholic, but respects her husband's adherence to the United Church and regularly attends service with him. She is the picture of athletic good health, active not only in her capacity as an instructor in physical education, but in her daily routines as mother of four children. At the time we talked, she was vice-chair of the board of governors of St Lawrence College, a regional community college with three campuses, one of them in Cornwall, about 50 kilometres away. The energy she brings to that work is evident in everything she does, in a schedule that seems to consume every waking hour. I was born in Vankleek Hill [35 kilometres northeast of Alexandria], in 1938. My father owned a men's clothing store, and he also had jobbers in woodcutting areas in Northern Ontario. My mother came from - I wouldn't say well-to-do - but my grandfather was worth quite a bit of money when he died. I had a happy childhood. By the time I came around - I was the seventh - there was no time to be spoiled. I grew up quickly; I had to take on responsibilities. My dad died when I was fourteen; then my mother was left with a men's clothing store and a restaurant. There was me and two brothers left, and we all had to pitch in and help. I was very interested in getting good marks at school, and some nights I'd work until eleven or eleven-thirty at the restaurant, so I had to find time. There weren't many things you could be when I was fourteen or fifteen. You either became a teacher, a secretary, or a nurse - those were your three choices when I was growing up. I went to teacher's college when I was sixteen. I'm French Canadian and very proud to be so; and my husband is Scottish English and very proud. And I'm very devout Roman Catholic. Twenty years ago, there wasn't as great a flexibility between the churches, although I was accepted by Stanley's parents. So there had to be many discussions. My husband is very devout Christian and I had to respect that, and he had to respect me. We meet in everything that we have in common. We don't emphasize the things that separate us; we emphasize the things that join us.

17 The Lie of the Land Lucy Lavigueur

Back on Main Street, on the right side, just a couple of blocks north of Kenyon Street, a couple of unprepossessing factory buildings occupy the site of the turn-of-the-century carriage works that was once the mainstay of local manufacturing. Until recently, Lucy Lavigueur worked in one of those factory buildings, built during the war and having the look of a temporary building. She was a sewer at Regal Knitting, and along with 20 or 30 other women she assembled clothes for a Montreal manufacturer. Born and raised in Alexandria, she began as a thread cutter at the age of 15, and has worked in a number of Alexandria's garment plants since then. She and her family used to live in a rented run-down farm house at the south end of town, but now they own a house on the highway north of town. She changed jobs recently to a window factory, but it went bankrupt late in 1989. She is average in height and trim in appearance, with relatively short light brown hair and an easy smile. At the time of interviewing, she was 40 but looked younger. Even when talking of the serious burdens she has had to bear in her life, she carried about her an air of calm and cheeriness. Lucy's life says a lot about the courage needed by many working-class women, having to balance (with scant resources) the extraordinary demands of raising four children with the demands of a skilled and highly pressured job. Brought up in a family beset with hardship and misfortune, she never had much choice but to work in jobs that paid very little. I really liked school until I got to grade eight, and then I think I got into a bad crowd, and didn't do as well. I was always a really smart kid if I put forth an effort, which I didn't in grade eight. You know, when you're one of eight kids at home, you have to watch over the youngest kids, and my mom was sick. I think, too, when you have a big family, you're not as dressed as you should be and it would've been embarrassing for me to go to school. I thought it best to go to work - at least I would have a little freedom from the house. My father had said that I could quit school as long as I could get a job, so I got one at Brown Shoes. My brothers all worked there and they knew the supervisor and asked if I would be able to try out for a job. I tried out for it, and got it, but I wasn't really putting forth that much of an effort. After two months, I was laid off and my mom had a miscarriage and had jaundice, so I had to stay home again to baby-sit. It was even harder to do it the second time, but somebody had to do it I guess. I think I had a lot of experience that a lot of other young girls didn't have - seeing the other

i8 A Small Town in Modern Times kids crying because my father would come home drunk and we didn't know what he would do, seeing my mom sick - it makes you grow so fast. I was fifteen and I could have been twenty-five. When your dad is an alcoholic it's real hard on everybody. But we lived through it. At around seventeen, I went back to work. My aunt worked for a small garment maker on top of the old restaurant, and she asked if I wanted to go and cut threads for eighteen dollars a week. It was a small shop - twenty, maybe twenty-two people - and we had a lot of fun there. The boss wasn't pushy. I worked there for about two or three years, and still lived at home. We lived in Deseronto for a while. I got a job at Lee - Lee Jeans. That year, I was pregnant with my third child. After Kelly, which I wanted to be the last child, I had a tubal ligation. Six months after, I got pregnant again, so there goes another two years. Now I was up to four kids, so I didn't work until Randy went to school. We moved back to Alexandria when my husband got work as a welder. I wanted to go out and work. I don't like to sit around you know, I like to be moving and doing things. When we moved back into town I went to Regency [Regal Knitting], where I work now. I must have gone there four times before she hired me.

Across the street from where Lucy used to work, the district high school sprawls over its large terrain. It is set quite far back from the street and effectively marks the end of the heavily trafficked and densely used part of Main Street. Across the street are the old town Armouries, home to a variety of manufacturers since the early 19605. At that point, the road starts a slight decline as it heads toward the Canadian National Railways line that cuts diagonally across the road just before the town border. It is one of the CNR'S main lines, leading from Montreal to Ottawa and thence through Northern Ontario to the Canadian West. The railway arrived in the i88os and was critical to the period of growth at the end of the last century. Today, the town has to fight to keep Alexandria as a station stop, and only a few townspeople rely on it for passenger transportation. Alexandrians are more likely to use the highways to connect with the outside world, driving either south to the 401 or a few miles north to Highway 417, which skims along the top of Glengarry County on its way between Ottawa and Montreal. We have driven up Main Street because it says so much about Alexandria. The large new stores at the south end suggest progress and optimism. On the other hand, the overall character of the street remains small-scale and local, still only barely invaded by the kinds of nation-wide retail chains that have come to dominate main streets all over North America. The community is in some ways tied to-

19 The Lie of the Land

gether by Main Street; it is here that people who live here meet one another. What happens on this street, though, conveys only a part of the story of this town. SELF-IMAGE

What I particularly like about Alexandria'is the friendliness of the people: everybody can get along so well. There's always been such a mix - both languages spoken fluently by probably ninety per cent of the people. It probably wouldn't even be noticed what language you spoke when you came into a room, for instance.5

Glengarry County and Alexandria are special places, many of the locals claim, and certainly very different from the uncaring highpressured jungles of Montreal or Toronto, or any city, for that matter. Here, everyone knows everyone and gets along. Here, in the way of pioneer communities of long ago, people help one another, particularly in times of crisis. Here, French and English, Catholic and Protestant, young and old, rich and poor, modern and traditional live side by side in peace. Glengarry's sons and daughters never really leave; their hearts remain with Glengarry. Glengarry is like no other place. That description is more than just a Chamber of Commerce image of Alexandria and the surrounding countryside. It is a view of the place taken seriously by much of the local population and regularly transmitted by the area's most influential citizens. It is part of the dominant culture of this community, a culture that celebrates harmony, self-help, good neighbourliness, loyalty, attachment to heritage, and progress and that sees the community as embodying those values. Alexandrians' claims about cohesion and warmth can be illustrated by such major community celebrations as Canada Day, on July first. Everyone in town seems to go, and great numbers of them actually participate in making the day a success. Town residents will also point to inter-church co-operation as an example of town harmony. They cite the English-language Catholic church offering one of its chapels for use by area Anglicans who had long been without a place of worship. The volunteer activity in this town and others like it is also cited as an example of a special kind of caring and co-operation. Community events are put together by volunteers, and some of the town's major institutions (such as the hospital, the golf club, and the Sports Palace) are touted as the products of volunteer commit-

2O A Small Town in Modern Times

ment. A Glengarry News columnist who had lived in the county only a short time described what had struck her from the beginning. It's hard sometimes for a newcomer to appreciate the community spirit in an unfamiliar locale. However, the longer one stays in Glengarry, the more the big-heartedness of its citizens shines through. The past couple of months, attending council meetings and writing the occasional news story, I've begun to notice how important a part volunteers and concerned citizens play in improving conditions of everyday life. Church groups often host fundraising events in aid of worthy causes ... Service clubs, like the Lions, the Richelieu ... are constantly giving their time, effort and money in support of community improvements. The purchase of recreation equipment and the distribution of Christmas baskets are just two examples of their many charitable activities ... Citizens who volunteer to serve in the fire departments, on recreation and planning committees, and, indeed, who decide to run for public office demonstrate a commitment to the community not many of us are prepared to make ... Last on the list, but first in any consideration, are the people in Glengarry themselves, always ready to lend a hand in times of trouble and tragedy ...6

Hard work and self-sufficiency are also said to be characteristic of the local area. The typical Alexandrian is thought to be a more reliable worker than the softer and better-paid city worker. The town has often had to survive the neglect that has routinely characterized the provincial government's treatment of all peripheral regions, with the community having to pull together to compensate. This is an appealing self-image, one offering openings to its residents for selfcongratulation and one holding out to visitors and observers a hope that persistent Canadian dilemmas can be resolved. The self-image of Alexandria, like that of other small towns and rural communities, is set up as a contrast to the large city. To longtime local residents, the city is a place of unseemly wealth, mostly undeserved. Its inhabitants are engaged in a frantic search for gain that leads to a fast-paced rat race. There is no real sense of community; in its place is a kind of anonymous isolation that produces a heartless, hedonistic selfishness. In this kind of environment, crime abounds, and people take endless precautions for the safety and security of their families and possessions. Alexandria, in the image of its inhabitants, is everything that the city is not. Where life in the city is busy and complicated, life in the town is simple and cozy. But for all that the small town's self-image is meant to justify living there, an element of ambiguity always exists in judgments about the

21 The Lie of the Land

city - a mixture of envy, distaste, and sense of superiority. The city, after all, does offer some freedoms and choices that are sought after by those outside it. The city's occupational range, consumer choice, and openness have their attractions to small-town dwellers who have experienced their opposites. In Alexandria, the emphasis placed on the separateness from, but accessibility to, the alien city is symptomatic of the ambivalence toward the outside world that is so characteristic of the place. The fact that Montreal and Ottawa are little more than an hour's drive is part of what makes the town special. Just as the city has ambiguous standing in a small town such as Alexandria, so does the individual outsider. The outsider is alien, particularly if from a city, and represents values thought to be the antithesis of the values prevalent in town.7 The outsider can come to represent power, impersonality, corruptibility - all those things the city itself represents. But in some circumstances, such a person can also be a source of authority and expertise legitimized by that outside world. Just as the native Glengarrian who "makes it" in that world beyond the county's boundaries acquires a special kind of standing, so too can and do some outsiders who have measured up to the cosmopolitan world's standards of success. In any event, the outsider who moves to the area, or invests in it, is thought to have given the area a vote of confidence. A measure of the continuing sense of community solidarity in Alexandria and Glengarry is that the migrant is forever a newcomer. One man, jaded after years of living in the community without full acceptance, speaks of his experiences, particularly among Glengarrians of Scottish origin. I really don't think they accept you ever. I think your great-grandfather almost has to be born here before they accept you. They're very insular; they have hundreds of relatives here, and they really don't need you. We're not fully accepted into their society; we don't do things that they do. It is a family sort of thing. They came from a foreign country and settled here, and it has been handed down from generation to generation. They created clans over here; really they are more Scottish than the Scots. They perpetuate all the Scottish traditions here - the kirking of the tartans, etc. There is a strong, strong feeling of ancestry here. They call people other than themselves "johnny-come-latelies" and "outsiders."

Because the town's self-image is of a warm and welcoming place, town residents would deny that they exclude newcomers or outsiders systematically. If newcomers feel outside the community, the

22 A Small Town in Modern Times

reason is said to lie in their reluctance to get involved, or in their insistence on retaining "big city ways." The Dutch are often cited as model immigrants to the area - good farmers and good neighbours who have integrated well - but lots of other people who come in from the outside are seen to "keep to themselves" or to associate only with other newcomers. The readiness to distrust the outsider is a characteristic of the farm communities that have given the region much of its culture. In areas such as Glengarry, traditional rural life is idealized to a certain extent. Farming is conceived of as a "natural," and in that sense a particularly good, life. The production of food is thought to be in some ways the fundamental employment of humankind, upon which all else depends.8 The wariness of outsiders, then, comes from a belief that they represent less honourable occupations and lifestyles. It also comes from a suspicion that outsiders either do not understand or denigrate rural communities and values. This sense of being misunderstood is reinforced by long decades of economic marginality and political neglect. The wariness is especially widespread among the Scots, who cling most ardently to traditional images of the community and who are most likely to see their world as being eroded by migration into the area. The local person's belief in the community's solidarity creates fears that the outsider will disturb the delicate equilibrium and open up divisions within the community. When there is conflict in this community, it is usually blamed either on outsiders or on a tiny minority of self-serving "agitators." Pressure to secure French-language rights, for example, is routinely said to originate with a tiny and unrepresentative minority of French Canadian radicals, most or all of whom are assumed to originate outside the community. The tendency to distinguish clearly between newcomers and established members of the community does not mean that all of the latter are equally acceptable. Locals will tell you that there are good people and bad people in town.9 Good people work hard; they do not try to pretend they are something they are not; they keep the peace with family and neighbours; they contribute to the community; they do nothing to excess. Bad people show off, or do things that give the town a bad name. They often come from bad families - in this and other traditional communities you are known by your family. You are so-and-so's grandson or nephew, and you are held to be as good or as bad as your family before you. If you are from a bad family, you may be given a chance to prove otherwise, but face a steeply uphill climb.

23 The Lie of the Land

Just as Alexandrians freely suggest that not everyone in town is an asset, they acknowledge that in particular respects the town does not match their overall image of it. While arguing that the essence of the town is a harmonious one, for example, some of Alexandria's long-time inhabitants would say that some slippage from earlier times has occurred. Some townsfolk acknowledge that conflict does occasionally occur, that vandalism is becoming something of a problem, that people do not volunteer as much as they used to. Still, they will likely blame this on outsiders, on television, on "modern ways of doing things," on government. The Glengarry News is an important guardian of the Alexandria and Glengarry self-images. Social columns from town and from surrounding villages talk about who is visiting whom, who is going where. Sports news gives ample coverage to the wide range of local activity, highlighting the names of star players of all ages. Church socials, Women's Institute meetings, club events - all those things that would be lost in the shuffle of a city's media - become a vivid part of the life of the whole community by their place in the local paper. Much of the coverage is folksy, with a warm and familiar coloration. It is friendly reportage, the stuff on which a community is maintained. B E Y O N D THE IMAGES! CLASS, GENDER, AND L A N G U A G E

As is true of all communities, the self-image or dominant culture conceals as much as it reveals. It underplays or sidesteps the continuing regional disparities affecting the area and the extent to which it is subordinate to outside institutions and forces. Many of the jobs held by Alexandrians are paid at levels significantly lower than those that prevail in most urban areas, and the town has a large number of people living close to or below the poverty line. (See Table 1.1.) The development of a world-scale corporate economy and the increased mobility of international capital have seriously impinged upon the autonomy of all local communities, in addition to constraining the manoeuvrability of local political institutions.10 Although it has benefited economically from these developments, Alexandria is in a highly vulnerable and dependent position, more than ever reliant on the good will of outside investors. Three of the town's largest plants are branches of firms with multi-national reach, and most of the remaining firms have specialized markets that go far beyond eastern Ontario. The only resource they draw from the

24 A Small Town in Modern Times

local area is labour, which is valued for its ample supply, compliance, and willingness to work for low wages. The political life of the town is also more than ever influenced by outside forces and institutions. Province-wide standards increasingly shape local government actions, and as purely local volunteer activity is replaced more and more by publicly financed social and health-care work, to the advantage of those in need of assistance, some of the intimacy of the local area declines. The cultural distinctiveness, too, has been reduced by the increasing influence of national and big city media. Local people pay a great deal of attention to the weekly Glengarry News, but more and more of them also subscribe to Ottawa and Montreal newspapers, and more of their time is spent listening to television and radio stations that are carriers of urban values. The process of change has made Alexandrians less familiar to one another. Many townspeople, particularly in the middle classes, look outside the town for their cultural and occupational standards.11 The world of work also contains much that is new to the area, so that the waged and salaried labour that men and women engage in is not widely known to those outside a particular work place. The local economy was once more integrated than it is now - its various parts more closely connected to one another, more mutually interdependent. At one time, the economic life of the community centred on Main Street and was based largely on independent artisans and shopkeepers, who survived on the spending of countryside inhabitants. The character of work changed only gradually over time, and it was firmly rooted in the local market for goods and services. The work men and women do is central to their lives and to the life of their community. The image people construct of themselves is defined in large measure by their occupations, and their status within the community is substantially dependent on what they do for a living. Inequality is an inescapable component of economic relationships in a market-based economy, so the fact that there are major inequalities in this small town should come as no surprise, even if it is unacknowledged in the self-portrait presented by many of the town's residents, and in particular by its business and political leaders. In Canada as a whole, the economic growth throughout most of the post-war decades has not narrowed the income gap between rich and poor; neither has it altered the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in the labour force have little control over the work they do. The work life of the more than 1000 men and women who produce in the town's manufacturing plants is not so very different from the

25 The Lie of the Land

work lives of manufacturing employees in large urban centres. Their labour is usually specialized and tedious, much as work in urban factories is. There is little opportunity for most workers to develop a sense of accomplishment or an identification with the product of their labour. As with most work in the city, the work here is severed from or alienated from the rest of social existence.12 That work is also paid at rates that are lower than in large cities, as demonstrated in a general way by the income figures provided in Table 1.1. The economic structure of Main Street has changed much less than the manufacturing sector has, and in some ways the commercial life most closely reflects the town's self-image. Even in the large IGA at the south end of town, a friendly familiarity exists among many of the customers, the staff, and the owner. The rest of Main Street is lined with the kinds of small shops and offices that would have lined it a hundred years ago. Here, perhaps as much as or more than in town industries, though, the relationship between employees and managers or owners is profoundly unequal. Wages are often close to the minimum wage, and because much of the work on Main Street is part time, the wage package contains few benefits. A large number of the employees are women, many of them young and waiting for something else to take them away from this kind of work. The most economically privileged of Alexandria's residents are the doctors, lawyers, dentists, real-estate and insurance brokers, local plant owners, branch plant managers, some of the store owners, and a few retired farmers who managed to cash in on high land values. Some educators are also in that league, as well as a few emigre Montrealers who have retired to the area or who commute to urban jobs. The visible gap between well-off and ordinary townsfolk is less stark here than in larger centres and less elaborately played out in contrasting life-styles, but with the privilege that does exist in Alexandria comes a capacity for choice that is absent for most of the town's citizens, choice that is easily passed on from one generation to another. Middle class and upper middle class standing also produces ties to the world beyond Glengarry County, and familiarity with the workings of that outside world provides leverage within the community. Family structure is very much characterized by a traditional division of labour. Men take only modest roles in household chores or in the care of children, and the rigid norms of masculinity that tend to become reinforced in high school are retained without much adjustment in later years. Women's participation in the labour force is almost exclusively in sectors that are poorly paid and vulnerable to lay-off, such as the garment industry or service and clerical work

26 A Small Town in Modern Times

in Main Street shops and offices. The best jobs for women are the professional jobs in nursing and teaching, although these positions are characteristically supervised by men. In any event, most of the women who hold jobs at the hospital or the high school are from out of town. The inequality in the roles of men and women within the family and in the labour market is deeply embedded in the social, economic, and political structure of society at large. In urban areas, particularly in middle-class circles, some changes have occurred in family relationships and in the range of occupations considered open to women, but gender inequality remains deeply embedded in the organization of work and in institutionally reinforced values about the roles of women and men. In Alexandria, as in most small towns and rural areas, there are even fewer challenges to traditional roles than in cities. The only signs of questioning of the usual division of labour are in the school boards, particularly the public school board, but the questioning is mild-mannered and the progress slow. The local high school has inaugurated a modest program of introducing senior students to non-traditional occupational ideas, but little avenue for that kind of change exists for those who stay to live and work in town. No one is visibly challenging the norm that women take almost exclusive responsibility for housework and child care, even though Alexandrian women have entered the work force in substantial numbers since World War II. Even at the level of rhetoric, there is little change in sex role expectations, and as a result, the unequal choices facing men and women are rarely questioned, and therefore rarely translated into "issues." The relationship between English and French is another area in which there seem, at first glance, to be fewer tensions or issues than in other parts of Canada. Alexandria's leaders trumpet with special pride the town's bilingual peacefulness, and recent arrivals from the Montreal region join in celebrating the apparently amicable relations between English and French. The town is contrasted to nearby Quebec, which is seen as a destructive hot-bed of conflict instigated by French Canadian "separatists." Recently, it has also been contrasted to other parts of Ontario, and to western Canada, where English Canadian backlash against French Canadians has arisen with particular ferocity. In Glengarry, bilingualism is widespread, particularly among francophones, and conversations easily switch from one language to another. On the face of it, there is ample testimony and considerable evidence that language-group relations are friendly. Inevitably, though, the community's social life is deeply affected by language differences, and the mixing between French and English

27 The Lie of the Land

is less than it seems. Relations between English and French have been more visibly strained in the last decade than in the decades before, and in this respect Alexandria is not unlike other Ontario communities with mixed populations. The focus of conflict in Alexandria, as elsewhere, has been the school system, in particular the rights of francophones to their own schools - in both the public and separate-school systems. One of the most serious controversies in the town's history broke out in 1980 over the apparent increase in separation between English and French wings of the local high school. Some francophones in town and in educational circles across the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry sought more complete autonomy for the French wing, while other francophones and almost all anglophones sought a retention of what they perceived to be a bilingual school. The mixing together of two or more languages invariably poses inconveniences and irritations, doubly so when the history of their linguistic relationship is marked by inequality. French Canadians long occupied a subordinate position in a Canada dominated by anglophones and by the English language, and in some respects they still suffer disabilities because of the language they speak, particularly outside the province of Quebec. Protest and counter-protest have been natural products of the traditionally unequal mix of languages in Canada, and there should be no surprise in finding echoes of that in any community where the two language groups are represented in substantial numbers. French-English relations in Alexandria are less unequal than in most areas outside Quebec. French Canadians are in the majority in this town and have gradually acquired more rights and more influence in the economy, in the local school system, and to some extent in politics. Even with these advances, though, the English language retains a privileged position. The municipal council and many other community institutions claiming to serve the whole town still operate largely in English; encounters between francophones and anglophones almost always result in an English conversation; and a good deal of separation still exists between anglophones and a large proportion of the francophone population in town. The town could teach the rest of Canada a number of lessons about FrenchEnglish co-existence, but not as many as townspeople imagine. POWER AND POLITICAL QUIESCENCE

In spite of the various inequalities evident in Alexandria, the town's political life bears almost no testimony to them. Undercurrents of

28 A Small Town in Modern Times

resentment may well be directed at distant centres of power and privilege, but the marginal and dependent position of this area has always reinforced a certain acquiescence to authority and a reluctance to rock the boat. The history of Glengarry and Alexandria illustrates the strength of traditions of loyalty and the mechanisms mobilized by community leaders to maintain quiescence. The very existence of social divisions has been denied and conflict usually avoided. Election campaigns for local, provincial, and national office rarely pit competing models of community development against one another, and candidates rarely talk openly about inequality in the region. Local council meetings rarely address significant issues, and local politicians avoid controversy. Despite the fact that some of the inequalities in this and similar small towns are just as, or more severe than, those in urban centres, political life is significantly more quiescent. Outside of electoral politics, there are few signs of organized challenge to the established order of things. Most of the town's industries are unionized, but union locals tend to be relatively docile or to restrict their demands to a narrow range of issues. In small towns such as this, union agents from regional headquarters are unlikely to set up test cases or to establish negotiating strategies aimed at breaking new ground. Union members and agents alike are all too conscious of the vulnerability of local industrial investment. They are also commonly imbued with a culture of deference to authority, more widespread in rural and small-town communities than in large urban areas.13 There are exceptions. Instances of defiance in the face of established authority can be found in Glengarry's history - for example, the election of reformers to legislatures, the mounting of strikes against prominent local employers. In the present day, one consequence of the closer ties of the town to national communication networks is that local citizens are more able to compare their own lives and relationships with national patterns. To the extent that inequalities or cultural distinctiveness on a national or a regional basis emerge as the subject of political controversy or conflict, Alexandrians are sometimes able to see local parallels. French Canadians have been quite successful in raising voices dissenting from the status quo and in effecting change in their relations with the dominant English-speaking population. Workers have protested wages and working conditions, even though limited by fears that employers will pick up stakes and move to more peaceable communities. Of all groups, women are the most constrained by traditional norms, but a few local women have organized to establish or demand services previously denied them.

29 The Lie of the Land

The dominant self-image of the town suggests that protest and conflict are abnormal - not part of the essential community - and that they are routinely instigated by outsiders. One of the assumptions upon which my analysis is founded is that political quiescence in the face of inequality is not a natural state and that for silence to dominate the political landscape it must be sustained by institutions and people who benefit by retaining the status quo. In his artful study of southern Appalachia, John Gaventa suggests that we examine the kinds of barriers put up to prevent certain issues from being raised.14 He also suggests that we explore the forces and institutions that have shaped the values held by people in a community. Many people in situations of profound powerlessness, for example, believe in ideas or in social arrangements that reinforce their deprivation. Even if they have been treated as if they are expendable work horses by their employers, they often adhere without question to the principle that gives an entrepreneur the right to make all decisions about the disposition of labour under his control. A resident who has good reason to complain about the pollution from a local plant may nevertheless completely support the argument that owners of private property should be able to do whatever they wish with their land and holdings. As Gaventa does, I pay particular attention to crises and attempts at protest, because these are important windows onto the true nature of the community. The story of a garment factory in the 19505, for example, can lay bare the way consensus on class and business issues is mobilized; it can illustrate the potential for opposition; and it can demonstrate the power of outside business to pull investment out of town. The outbreak of conflict over the local high school in 1980 provides an equally penetrating view of French-English relations and of the process by which norms of solidarity are shored up and challenged. Much of this study of Alexandria focuses on the exercise of power, and here, too, are contradictory tendencies, some of them with parallels in urban centres, some of them distinctly small-town. One school of thought sees power in all communities as concentrated in the hands of a small cohesive class or "elite."15 In Alexandria, it is true, the power to influence community affairs and the ability to exercise significant choice over occupation or life-style are restricted to a small minority of people. More than ever, influence depends on familiarity and connections with the world outside Glengarry, something that remains the privileged domain of professionals, government officials, and industrial managers. However, the town is no longer dominated by a tightly knit "elite" of local notables (as it might have been up to World War I), but by a variety of individuals

3o A Small Town in Modern Times

with access to different parts of the world outside, where power and influence actually reside. In most of this analysis, attention is focused on those who have less power rather than those who have more, on those who have less rather than more visibility in the town's affairs. More attention is focused on workers than on managers, more on women than on men. The analysis is in some ways a chronicle of those Alexandrians who have been left out or treated only marginally in the traditional accounts of Glengarry history. The task is to go beyond the obvious - to reach beyond the image of the town so assiduously cultivated by most of the town's notables and many of its ordinary residents. The task is to chronicle the major forms of inequality in this small town, and to understand why such inequality sometimes produces division and conflict, and why it usually does not.

CHAPTER TWO

Industrial Development and Economic Dependence

It was in the midst of Glengarry's farms, a world away from the centres of power and privilege in Montreal, Toronto, and Kingston, that Alexandria grew from a few small dwellings in the 18205 to a village of under a thousand inhabitants in the 18703 and then to a small town during its first manufacturing boom at the end of the century. Relative prosperity lasted until the end of World War I, when manufacturing employment declined. Only after World War II, particularly after 1960, did jobs become plentiful in town once again. By the 19805, Alexandria had developed a healthy, diversified industrial base, offering more local employment than ever before. Growth during this period occurred despite a strong trend toward a concentration of economic power in large corporations centred in the urbanized regions of central Canada. Most small or purely local industries, dependent on local resources and tied to the region's agricultural economy, had long disappeared.1 To some extent, the town's role as a service centre for the surrounding population had also declined. More than ever, though, the town has established for itself a role in a corporate economy increasingly dominated by national and international players. As a result, prosperity has come to depend on the town's attractiveness to investors far beyond its borders. In tracing the industrial history of the area, we are seeking to understand the conditions under which manufacturing becomes implanted in an area such as this. A close look is taken at post-war economic growth, in order to explore the balance of forces making small towns more or less attractive to business. Indications exist in various countries in the Western world that certain kinds of industry are moving away from large metropolitan centres to the less con-

32 A Small Town in Modern Times gested areas immediately adjacent to them, and this kind of "halo" effect could operate to Alexandria's permanent advantage in its relationship to Montreal. But the area's economic base contains elements of fragility. For example, growth relies to a certain extent on very particular (and perhaps only temporary) conditions in the province of Quebec. Because economic development in Alexandria depends on its remaining a "quiet" town, it is helpful to explore the area's history in search of the ways in which norms about protest, conflict, and authority were developed, in short to explore the foundations for the contemporary culture of loyalty and the prevailing pattern of quiescence. EARLY IMMIGRATION AND GROWTH

The period from initial Loyalist settlement in the 17805 to the 18703 in Glengarry was marked by continual population growth but only modest economic development. Table 2.1 includes population figures for the area from the time of its first white settlement, as well as a chronology of important historical benchmarks. Poor transportation was one of the factors hampering growth, but even after the first arrival of railways at the south end of the county in the 18508, growth of the area's agriculturally based economy was slow. Near the end of this period, Alexandria was developing as a small village serving the surrounding farmers, but was too far away from a railway to have anything but small and entirely localized manufactures. Table 2.1 Population Growth and Historical Benchmarks, 1784-1986 Population Alexandria 1784 1824

Glengarry 1,000

75

7,084

1831

10,333

1841

12,546

Historical Benchmarks Loyalist settlement Bishop Macdonell owns mill at Alexandria Macdonell powerful; reform pressure building Union period; liberal democratic reform

33 Development and Dependence Table 2.1 (continued) Population Historical Benchmarks Alexandria

Glengarry

1851

—

17,596

1861

800

21,187

1871

800

20,524

1881

-

22,221

1891

1,614

22,447

1901

1,911

22,131

1911 1921

2,323 2,195

21,259 20,518

1931

2,006

18,666

1941

2,175

18,732

1951

2,204

17,702

1961

2,597

19,217

1971

3,240

18,480

1981 1986

3,271 3,246

20,254 20,987

J.S. Macdonald - Glengarry MP, government leader D.S. Macdonald dominant in Alexandria Railway promotion; slow growth in Alexandria Railway to Alexandria; rapid growth in manufacturing Manufacturing boom led by Carriage Works French Canadian population growing; boom continuing Alexandria incorporated as town Carriage Works and other manufacturing companies decline Depression, large-scale welfare in Alexandria War; local unemployment high; first garment firms Local industries (GTL, etc.) grow; Carnation established Sacony's, other garment industries come and go Diverse private investment and publicsector growth Influx of Quebec firms Manufacturing boom continues; free trade

Source: 1931 Census of Canada, vol. 1, p. 3349; 1951 Census of Canada, vol. 1, pp. 6-41; 1971 Census of Canada, catalogue 92-701, pp. 2-62; 1981 Census of Canada, catalogue 93x-942, pp. 1-146; 1986 Census of Canada, catalogue 92-114, pp. 2-17 - 2-18; MacGillivray and Ross, A History of Glengarry, 2, pp. 103, 107; Ewan Ross file cards. Note: Estimates for the population of Glengarry in 1784 and for Alexandria in 1861 and 1871 are based on information provided by MacGillivray and Ross, who cite 1871 estimates of the village's population, although they suggest that the true figure lay below that - between 600 and 800. The estimate for Alexandria's population in 1824 is very rough, based on the fact that early accounts indicate that there were 12 buildings in the hamlet the year before.

34 A Small Town in Modern Times

Early survival and growth were greatly dependent on the favour of governmental and military officials in the colonial capital, at first for the provision of land and supplies, later for the construction of roads and subsidy of railways. The area's most influential leaders were men such as Sir John Johnson and Bishop Alexander Macdonell with connections to centres of political power. Although they were sometimes effective in extracting favours for their countrymen, the county remained largely bypassed by progress. The first white settlers in what came to be known as Glengarry were Loyalists of Scottish ancestry, largely from the Mohawk Valley in upper New York State. Some had left in 1776 for Montreal, at the outbreak of hostilities between British and Americans; others left as late as 1883 after a stint of fighting against the republicans. At first, colonial authorities rejected the idea of settlement west of Montreal along the St Lawrence River and Great Lakes. It was Indian land, and for security reasons, the British were reluctant to offend native tribes.2 But the waves of Loyalist migration to Montreal and other staging areas added pressure on the colonial authorities to establish new settlements, and as survey reports on the excellent quality of some of the land up the St Lawrence and along Lake Ontario came in, the authorities' sense of obligation to the white Loyalists took precedence over the native claims. The British acquired vast tracts of land, some of them obtained through questionable tactics, some with promises subsequently broken.3 In 1784, a year after surveys had begun, the British struck a bargain with the St Regis band that claimed much of what is now the United Counties - a compromise that gave natives title to a strip of land on the west side of the present county in exchange for the rest. The first wave of about 1000 Loyalists travelled up the St Lawrence to the new territory that same year, the 250 lots in the first two townships settled by Catholic and Presbyterian Scots, the townships farther west receiving, respectively, German Calvinists, German Lutherans, and Anglicans. For the Scots in particular, Sir John Johnson (from the Mohawk Valley) was the patron, and he was granted a large quantity of land in what is now Charlottenburgh Township. Within two years, 500 more Catholic Scots emigrated from Glengarry County in Scotland to the back concessions of these two townships, which would come to form the new Glengarry, and within another year they built a chapel at St Raphael's. Other groups of Catholics and Presbyterians established themselves in the few years to follow, often driven from Scotland by the destitution inflicted upon the Highlanders by clan leaders more attracted by the prospect

35 Development and Dependence

of income from sheep grazing than by the retention of tenant farmers to work the land. Like the Loyalists before them, these early immigrants came illequipped for farming in the difficult conditions that the new Glengarry threw up before them. Farm houses were small and rough, animals few, machinery almost non-existent. Clearing as much as 50 acres was hard for most families, and cultivating enough crops even for subsistence was difficult. Glengarry was settled by people who were determined to be farmers. A great deal of the land was just as determined: it wasn't going to provide a good living to farmers. Some was stony, some was marshy, some was swamp and some was a mixture of all three. The only really good land was in the river villages and it was so flat it was very difficult to drain. The original settlers ... were largely Highland Scots and a few Germans, very determined people ...4

Famine struck some areas in the new territories in 1789, and again as late as 1815, by which time almost all of Glengarry's farm lots were technically occupied. Harvests were poor enough that petitions for rations were sent to the government in the few years after the War of 1812, one petition in 1816 claiming that over 500 families were suffering from total crop failure. Economic development seemed not to be a priority for the colonial administration. Partly because of the success of the American Revolution, the British authorities attached more importance to ensuring order and loyalty along the St Lawrence and Great Lakes border. If roads were built, for example, their placement had much more to do with military security than commercial growth. When the canalization of navigable waters was undertaken, the strategic vulnerability of the St Lawrence waterway drove the authorities to favour the Ottawa River as the key to transportation westward, farther back from the border. Right from the beginnings of Upper Canada, Glengarry was beyond the margins of power and privilege. Even Montreal was a long way away by the standards of the day, and the colonial administration at York was several times further. The regime put into place in 1791, at the time when Upper Canada was carved away from Lower Canada, was highly centralized, embodying a distrust of the democratic principles being put into practice south of the border. The elected assembly was to have as little role as possible in the governance of the territory, and municipal government was simply non-existent. Power and influence went to those who shared the

36 A Small Town in Modern Times

preoccupations of those who ruled at York, and were able to help secure the loyalty of local residents. Because the British and Upper Canadian governments feared the "republican" and "democratic" elements among the original settlers, the tendency developed that those appointed as Justices [of the Peace] were from the Tory elite, such as retiring army officers, wealthy landowners, and the Governor's favourites from among the provincial office-holders. Unfortunately, few of these sympathized with or even understood the kind of problems which faced the pioneers.5

Elements of a highly unequal class society were implanted in the Loyalist settlement along the St Lawrence from its earliest days. Land grants were based largely on military rank (most of the first settlers having served under Sir John Johnson in the war against the Americans), with officers entitled to up to 10 times the land of ordinary enlisted men. Some of the officers, including Sir John himself, even brought some of their slaves over, despite the colonial authorities' attempts to discourage the importation of slaves from the American colonies.6 Part of Governor Simcoe's design was to build up a kind of local aristocracy that would help maintain order and loyalty throughout the colony. He was able to gather the support of prosperous merchants, administrators, and military officers eager to sustain hierarchy in the various parts of the colony, although in the first few generations of settlement, the harshness of conditions in the countryside made differences in rank and in size of land grant less significant than had been imagined by the leaders of this authoritarian military state. Even in those areas most densely populated by Loyalists, deference to authority could not be assumed, since from the earliest period of settlement there were reports of unrest - of "a very dangerous Jealousy and want of Confidence between the Majority of the settlers and their late Officers."7 But gradually the instincts of loyalty took hold, or at least the recognition that acquiescence to authority was indispensable for the survival of the region's inhabitants. It was in such a world that a man such as Alexander Macdonell could rise to prominence. Before and after immigration from Scotland, Macdonell was active in military affairs, taking an especially vigorous role in preparations for war against the Americans in the years leading up to 1812. He was also involved in settlement schemes, through his connections with the influential (and notorious) Canada Land Company. He had close ties with the Montreal

37 Development and Dependence

business community, particularly with the fur traders of the Northwest Company. And, of course, he was a major figure in colonial ecclesiastical circles. In 1817, Macdonell built a grist mill on the Garry River, northeast of his parish church at St Raphael's.8 Thinking of the potential for a village site near the mill, he bought the two lots of land downstream of the mill site, and a small hamlet grew up. The first name given it by local inhabitants was in Gaelic - Moulain an t' Saigart (Priest's Mill) - but within a few years the name Alexandria came into use, a tribute to the priest who became Upper Canada's first Roman Catholic bishop. The community grew slowly. By 1823 there were only 12 buildings, including the mill, two stores, and a hotel. (Even a decade later, in 1835, a visitor described the inhabitants as living in a "rude and barbarous condition."9) By the 18205, Macdonell was essentially an auxiliary member of that ruling "aristocracy" of colonial administrators, military officers, clerics, and merchants that came to be called the Family Compact. He had become known and respected as "a good subject of His Majesty, and usefully active in promoting the views of the Government."10 He regularly exerted influence in elections to help secure votes for candidates favourably disposed to the government and regime, and he constantly assured the colonial leadership that his fellow Glengarrians were indeed loyal. From his position of influence, Macdonell was able to secure patronage for Glengarrians. Since the first settlement of Upper Canada, local inhabitants had come to depend on the modest offerings provided by the military and by the government. The first settlers received tools and rations; subsequent generations depended on the military to buy what little farm surplus there was, as well as to build roads. The government provided jobs of prestige and common labour alike, and obtaining those jobs depended on intermediaries such as the priest from St Raphael's. This patronage, however, did little to improve the economic prospects of the county or to ameliorate the lot of the average Glengarrian. Macdonell, like his Family Compact friends, failed to understand the hardship typical for Glengarrians. He utterly disdained democracy, seeking rather a preservation of the existing rigid class system. Illustrating that view was his plan for a new school in the area. It is my intention to establish the principal school at my place of Residence in the County of Glengarry, in order to be under my own Superintendence and direction, and for this school I wish to procure a few masters in this

38 A Small Town in Modern Times country [England] of Superior talents and learning capable of educating gentlemen's sons upon a more liberal and extensive plan than what would be necessary for the lower classes of settlers."

For a man such as this, even "progress" had to be viewed with suspicion, because rapid change could unsettle the hierarchical fabric of society. The very stability of Glengarry helped to preserve its order and its loyalty, and these were far more important than material gain. Across the two colonies along the St Lawrence, pressure for reform built during the 18305. Unrest was partly a product of the regime's resistance to even the slightest move toward democracy (governing in accordance with the preferences of a popularly elected assembly, for example), but it was also a response to sluggish economic growth. In the face of calls for reform, Bishop Macdonell continued to defend the old order in the strongest possible terms, heaping abuse on radicals as "contemptible and despised in the eyes of every person in this Province who has the least title to respectability or character."12 Those Glengarrians who had the right to vote were certainly not ready to embrace calls for a complete overthrow of the regime. However, there was some local support for William Lyon Mackenzie, even though by that time the espousal of Mackenzie's ideas was risky.13 Also, just before the outbreak of rebellion in 1837,tne county elected a reformer over the objections of Macdonell. The rebellions did fail in the short term, but the reform movement gradually took hold in the years following the constitutional reorganization of 1841, which united Upper and Lower Canada into a single colony. Bishop Macdonell had died just the year before, and with him went the most powerful symbol in Glengarry of that old and outdated order. By the end of the decade that united Lower and Upper Canada, "responsible government" was entrenched, and some of the democratic reformers thought radical in the 18308 found themselves in positions of political power. The regime was still a centralized one, although a degree of democracy was established at the county, town, and township levels. The Sandfield Macdonald family dominated the political life of Glengarry throughout this period, and in fact right through the first half decade of Confederation. John Sandfield MacDonald represented the county in the pre-Confederation Canadian legislature from 1841 to 1857; was premier for two years in the i86os; and then became Ontario's first premier in 1867. He was a moderate reformer by the standards of the 18405, arousing little of the distrust of man-

39 Development and Dependence

ufacturers, financiers, and privilege in general that was characteristic of more radical reformers of the Union period. What Macdonald did represent was a new emphasis on the importance of commercial growth. He was one among many politicians who actively promoted government subsidies for new railway construction, at the same time holding personal investments in railways and standing to profit from government assistance.14 Macdonald was part of a political regime that was guided by mercantile dreams of an empire on the St Lawrence. Improvements in transportation were crucial to expansion, and the commercial links first established by natural waterways and then embellished by canals were being further secured by railways. Railroads had already developed a certain mystique by mid-century, embodying "progress" itself. For the Canadian colony along the St Lawrence, the railway offered the prospect of year-round transportation and the tantalizing prospect of luring commerce from the rapidly populating American midwest. The colonial administration provided enormous subsidies and guarantees for countless railway projects, including the huge Grand Trunk Railway built along the St Lawrence waterway in the mid18505. The squandering of public monies on excessive railway building generated resentment among the farmers of western Ontario, but Glengarrians were less critical and offered almost unbroken support to the priorities of the governments of their day. The intensification of trade and communication links along the St Lawrence route promised enlarged markets for the farm products of the countryside. For those few who could afford to buy or barter for manufactured goods, it promised greater access to the products of city factories. But railways constituted a mixed blessing in many of the areas where they were built. They fueled an agricultural and manufacturing boom, but the huge sums of money spent on them probably hampered long-term industrial growth in Canada, not only by imposing great debts on the central government and on the many local governments induced to provide subsidies, but also by preventing the expenditure of needed funds on roads.15 The specific location of railways could heap great benefits on towns and villages at station points, but could equally spell the death of other communities. Even if railways created the potential for manufacturing and commercial growth of places along their path, in the long run they secured the hegemony of the largest cities. The coming of the railways and the general prosperity that characterized the 18505 did not lead to any dramatic change in the for-

4O A Small Town in Modern Times

tunes of Glengarry's farmers. Cash income was low throughout this period, and the move toward more sophisticated forms of soil management and crop handling was extremely slow. Because the climate was more suited to hay and coarse grains such as barley and oats (rather than wheat), the local farmers were less able than other farmers to take advantage of export markets. During the i86os, when the rest of North America experienced something of an industrial revolution, with manufacturing in Montreal and Toronto rapidly expanding, Glengarry prospered only very little. The hamlet of Alexandria was growing modestly by this time. Donald Alexander Macdonald, brother of John and locally known as Donald Sandfield, had bought most of the land in and around the settlement in 1844. At the time, he was only 26 years old, but he had already made a substantial start to an entrepreneurial career through his participation in the building of the Beauhaurnois canal near Montreal. In the next decade, he built or expanded a number of stores and mills, and in 1857 the village had almost 40 businesses of one sort or another. In that same year, Donald Sandfield took over his brother John's Glengarry seat in the colonial legislature, continuing to combine politics with his commercial interests for the next 23 years. Alexandria's growth suffered, however, from its lack of effective links to the outside world, as well as from the poverty of the farms around it. The trip up the Military Road from the Grand Trunk railway station at Lancaster was still a long one, highly dependent on the weather and the seasons, the road described by one traveller as "possibly the worst road surface in the province."16 As late as 1871, Glengarry still had very poor farming, and little in the way of manufacturing. In 1871, Donald Sandfield Macdonald and 13 other men applied for a charter to build a railway from Ottawa to Alexandria and south to the Grand Trunk line. To assist in financing, the promoters employed a method developed in earlier railway building, that of exacting tribute from local municipalities. The townships of Kenyon and Lochiel each promised payments (not just loans) of $40,000 each, and paid out a combined total of $50,000 early on in the project.17 Those grants were no small indication of the hopes vested in railways to create better times. Work on the railway started but soon stopped, in part because of economic depression and in part because of corruption and mismanagement (some people accusing Macdonald himself of embezzlement).18 New financing in the early i88os allowed for the completion of the Canada Atlantic Railway, and service that linked

41 Development and Dependence

Alexandria to Ottawa and Montreal was operating by the end of 1882. ALEXANDRIA S FIRST MANUFACTURING BOOM

The i88os saw Alexandria expand into a prosperous manufacturing town (its boom lasting 40 years), despite continuing poverty in the surrounding countryside and a nation-wide recession lasting through most of the period from the mid-iSyos to the mid-i89os. The influential men of the area were no longer the politicians able to extract public works expenditures and patronage, but the local "captains of industry" - men such as Hugh Munro and Jacob Schell. This boom period depended on the skill and drive of such individuals, and in the end it lasted only as long as they lived, local manufacturing eventually succumbing to the centralizing trends inherent in the industrial revolution that was enveloping the continent. The quick end to prosperity in the 19205 highlighted the fragility of the local economy and entrenched at least for a time the notion that the region contained little for its ambitious young. In the early i88os, Glengarry was still a county of "ramshackle farming," agriculture made even more difficult than usual by the widespread economic depression. Mortgage loads on many farms were so heavy that it was unrealistic for the sons of farmers to carry on with farming. Migration out exceeded migration in, and overall population started to decline in the late i88os or early 18905. Young men were particularly prone to leave in search of better opportunities, even more so with the increase in national prosperity after 1896. *9 The benefits of the railway for Alexandria itself were dramatic. At the time it was incorporated in 1884, the village was considered the richest parish in the Catholic Diocese of Kingston. The population grew rapidly; by 1891 it exceeded 1600 - more than double the population of 1871.20 The prosperity of Alexandria was intimately linked to the growth of two manufacturing enterprises, one the product of a business partnership between Hugh Munro and John Mclntosh, and the other a result of the acumen of Jacob T. Schell.21 Hugh Munro, a farm boy from nearby Charlottenburgh, had opened a blacksmith shop in 1877, and hired his cousiri John Mclntosh as wheelwright the following year. They built carriages on the side, and by 1885 they had enough business that they built a three-storey building under the name of M & M Carriage Works and employed 15 men.

42 A Small Town in Modern Times

In 1886, M & M established production-line techniques, and the resulting high output per worker allowed low retail prices and a rapid expansion in sales. Needing only a small profit margin per vehicle to survive, the firm was able to overwhelm the small carriage shops in the area, which were all but reduced to repair shops by the turn of the century. In 1897, the partnership was ready for major expansion. In a move that would be repeated by other manufacturers in later decades, Munro and Mclntosh went to the council and argued that they would build a new plant only if the village would guarantee that there would be no increase in assessment or water rates for 10 years. The request was granted, and production facilities expanded. In the following decade, the company opened branch warehouses in St John (New Brunswick) and Winnipeg. In 1908 the firm produced 5000 cutters for the winter trade and 6500 buggies for sale across Canada, and through most of this period employed close to 300 local men. By the early years of the new century, both Munro and Mclntosh had used their business success to launch themselves into politics. Munro was elected reeve of the village in 1900, mayor of the town in 1908, and member of the Legislative Assembly in 1911 and 1914. His partner was elected to the local council in 1903 and remained prominent in local affairs until his death in 1914. There had already been a long-established pattern of mixing business and politics in the county and, indeed, in the whole country. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, all of the area's most prominent politicians - Donald MacMaster, Pat Purcell, Donald McMillan, and R.R. (Big Rory) McLennan - were involved in banking or money lending, and all but one were active in railway promotion or contracting. At the time that the Carriage Works was the area's largest employer, J.T. Schell was expanding his enterprises, providing additional manufacturing employment in the area. He had arrived from Woodstock, Ontario, in 1882, and within two years he had two saw mills and one cheese box factory in operation. By 1896, 124 men were employed in Schell's various enterprises, and within a few years of that plants were set up in western Quebec and the Ottawa Valley, employing a total of up to 300 men.22 Like Munro and Mclntosh, Schell was active in politics, becoming a village councillor in 1898 and a federal MP in 1900 (holding the seat for two terms). He used political connections to his advantage, not only in obtaining a railway construction contract in 1908 and supplying post office interiors, but later in securing government war contracts. There were other manufacturers operating on a smaller scale than the Carriage Works and the Schell enterprises. A bottling works

43 Development and Dependence

begun in 1893 operated through to the next decade. A shoe factory owned by Hodgson Brothers began operation in 1897, gaining a militia contract for 1800 pairs of boots. By that time, the town boasted almost 60 commercial establishments, offering a much wider assortment of trades and goods than had been available in earlier decades.23 The boom was also evident in the development of other facilities. The first telephones had been installed in 1894, and electric lighting had been inaugurated two years later. St Margaret's Convent and new public schools had been built during this same decade, as had a number of the commercial blocks that still give Main Street a distinctive air. The population topped 2000 by the turn of the century, and in 1902 Alexandria attained "town" status. In this period of expansion, as "progress" came to be identified with the interests of business, the local manufacturer or contractor occupied a position of virtually unassailable prominence and virtue. Munro and Mclntosh were especially heroic because they had originated from Glengarry and succeeded in a larger arena. Their capacity to understand, and in some ways manipulate, the outside world made them the symbols of a golden age in which Glengarry exported a number of successful entrepreneurs.24 The dominant value system heralded those who made a material success of their lives, and often treated less kindly those who did not. In December 1898, for example, a young woman in "indigent circumstances" appeared before the local council, asking for assistance. "As it would set a bad precedent," she was refused.25 When war was declared in 1914, Alexandria was still prospering, but signs of weakness were appearing in the local economy and important changes were occurring in the social make-up of the town. The beginning of hostilities, though, postponed a reckoning with change. The signing of the armistice on 11 November 1918 occasioned a day of celebration, with bells pealing, factory whistles blowing, and Main Street thronging into the evening. But townspeople had reason to share the concern about jobs that was widespread across the country. Soldiers returning home would be wanting jobs and expecting things to be better than they were. By war's end, the signs of trouble in the local economy became more visible. J.T. Schell's death in 1916 dealt a serious blow to his local enterprises. By 1918, the Carriage Works was being sold to outside interests and its markets lethally threatened by the rise of the automobile. Hugh Munro had turned down an earlier offer to produce cars, and although the company's fortunes were sustained in part by the war-time demand for ambulance bodies, 1918 was the last really good year for the company. (The last carriage was man-

44 A Small Town in Modern Times

ufactured in 1929.) A few much smaller manufacturing enterprises had emerged, including a woollen mill, a broom handle factory, and a wood pipe factory, but they did not last more than a few years. Graham Creamery did last, starting in 1922 and operating with considerable success well into the post-World War II period, but it employed only a modest work force. It was a cruel coincidence, as Ewan Ross says, that the Depression began just as the last of Alexandria's industry was disappearing. Brutally thrown back upon its role as a merchandising and service centre for the local farming community, a community itself badly mauled by the Depression, the once promising little industrial town found it had little insulation left between itself and calamity.26

By 1931, there were 236 men unemployed and 356 dependants of those men, in a population of 2006. Even those high numbers did not include those who had completely given up the search for work or take into account a number of women who would have wanted and needed to work, but were considered ineligible as long as there were men without jobs. The official figures alone, though, showed that more than one-quarter of the population was left completely vulnerable in the face of depression. Alexandria set up a relief committee in 1932, but the burden on the local government was an impossible one. In 1933, more than 500 people were on relief; in 1935, more than 600. By 1938, one-third of the town was on relief, and the town administration's cheques were being dishonoured by its own bank. Even the advent of war did not substantially reduce the crisis. In 1940, expenditures for the 649 people then on relief in Alexandria actually rose by 8.3%, making the town one of the "least improved" in the province.27 To make matters worse, the federal government stopped supporting relief payments for employable heads of families of 45 years of age or younger, and the province imposed a $35,000 limit on the local relief expenditures it would subsidize. As Alexandria's 1939 relief had been in the amount of $42,000, the measure forced the town to cut back at a time of continuing need. During the late 19305 and early 19405, a few small manufacturing enterprises started up (a bottling works, a canning factory, a hockey stick manufacturer), but, as in the previous decade, few of them lasted. The shortage of cash within the town and in the surrounding countryside left a serious mark on Alexandria's Main Street business life, the number of commercial establishments in town dropping from 76 to 43 between 1934 and 1941.28

45 Development and Dependence

One change evident by war's end was an increase in the number of jobs available to women. The locally owned Alexandria Glove Works, opened in 1937, was increasing production and employing 40 women by 1944. Two Montreal firms came to town in about 1941, Brittanic Converters providing sewing jobs for 20 at first and 40 by 1944, Guarantee Glove and Sports Garments providing additional jobs. Tarran Furs, set up in 1944, provided between 20 and 30 jobs. In Canada as a whole, the demands of war-time production and the drain of men overseas increased employment opportunities for women, some of them in trades previously thought of as exclusively available to men. The shortage of labour was acute in a wide range of occupations, and the urban garment industry suffered from the loss of sewers to better-paid manufacturing work normally open only to men. The result was a search for cheap labour in smaller communities still close enough to urban centres to make transportation inexpensive. This was to be the first major incursion by outside investors, setting a pattern for the post-war decades. INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION FROM 1945 TO THE 1980

From his barbershop vantage point on Main Street, Gerry McDonald saw the town of his youth emerge from depression to a prosperity it had not seen since the end of the first boom. Before the '205, Alexandria was a going concern. They had Schell's mill, they called it, just up the hill. There's no sign of it there now - it's all gone. And up there also there was a woollen factory - right beside. Up at the station, there was a lumber mill - Lacombe's - they made broom handles, and did a lot of custom sawing. And then there was the carriage factory. And by cracky there was maybe 300 men or more that worked there. At noon hour when that whistle blew, the streets of Alexandria would be pretty black with people - pretty busy. I went back to school in '33, '34, '35. This was the '305, and we were envious of any youngster who got work cleaning up a yard - maybe he'd get fifteen cents or a quarter for that and he could go to the show. Then, even the boys that did finish high school, they went up north. I know many of them that went up north to work in the mines until the war broke out. They joined the service, and a lot of them didn't come back. I got a high school picture there - 1934 I think - and you can pick a lot of them out that never came back. I started with the barbershop in January '45. Business wasn't too bad. The town felt basically the same, but it was much busier - there was more

46 A Small Town in Modern Times coming and going. There were a lot of people being discharged in '45. Where before the war, you wouldn't see too many on the streets, from 1941 on it was much busier. Most people had a few dollars; factories were starting up. In the late '405, Cholette's sash and door factory started up. It wasn't until '5O-'52 that Carnation came. That was a big deal, because they promised the farmers they were going to pay them more than the cheese factories were. Carnation was considered good work. Working there today, you're considered very lucky with pay, fringe benefits. Glengarry Transport started from a two-truck operation. It was the Sheppard brothers that started that. And then Gerard Lefebvre came in, he took over, and boy, he went just right up. He knew what he was doing, and he was just a smart guy. And now it's a multi-million dollar affair. It was in the '505 that Sacony came. There had been a lot of little small operations of sewers - a lot of people doing sewing in their houses - shirts, and blouses, skirts and things - for contractors. So they knew that there were a number of sewers in the area. And they hired a lot of people - a lot of sewers. So everything went well until it started to decline, and then they pulled out. And then Brown Shoe came in to that plant. But where I'd say maybe eighty per cent of the employees of Sacony were women, it turned out that almost seventy-five or eighty per cent of the employees of Brown Shoe were men. Whether that was better or not, it still gave the men work. During this time, business was steady. I'd say business was fairly good for everyone who was in business - the grocery stores, the butcher shops - everybody was doing alright. First Sacony's, then Brown Shoe, then Square "C" set up over there - a lot of people came into town and they'd get their cheques on Thursday night or Friday, and most of the shopping was done in Alexandria. Everyone has done well. Money was alright in the industries. Some paid more money than others, but they all got by. The money that was made by all these workers - they went out and they bought homes. As a result, all that land over there is built up with fine homes. Anybody knowing Alexandria well in 1945 and coming back in 1984, they'd find an awful lot of difference in the amount of homes and the buildings and the upkeep.

Immediately after the war, employment prospects for men remained scarce, but more jobs existed than before the war, and there was some evidence of modest growth, particular under the leadership of French Canadian entrepreneurs. Georges Lanthier's bakery, begun in 1932, had undergone one expansion already and by the end of the 19405 was inaugurating another. Rolland Cholette was manufacturing wood mouldings under the name of Alexandria

47 Development and Dependence

Sash and Door, slowly increasing sales. Gerard Lefebvre's Glengarry Transport Limited (GTL) was formed in 1947 with five pieces of equipment. The most actively growing sector of the local economy, though, continued to be the garment industry. Alexandria Sports Wear came from Montreal after the war, and at about the same time Mike Barbara expanded his glove works operation, employing 40. Soon afterward, in 1948, the Stotland Dress Company from Montreal began operations under the name Glen Dress (eventually buying out the Glove Works in 1955). There were other garment firms, generally lasting only a short time and employing only a few sewers each. The early 19505 saw the beginnings of a change in both the scale and the ownership pattern of industry in Alexandria. The optimism that marked the period is reflected in this historical account provided by the Glengarry News: In retrospect the year 1950 appears to have been the watershed when Alexandrians turned their backs on hard times and depression and set their sights on a brighter future akin to those good years at the turn of the century. That was the year town council emptied the mill pond, cleaned up its shoreline and returned water to an attractive new lake. With the draining of the pond, it seems, we drained away those pent-up miseries of unemployment and depression. As water returned to the dam site it apparently brought a new spirit of optimism that put us on the road to prosperity.29

The Canadian economy as a whole was in the throes of what turned out to be a long boom, with growth being recorded in almost every year from 1946 to the 19705, and unemployment remaining low throughout most of those years. This was also a period in which large corporations were continuing to increase their share of the country's production and sales, and in which American ownership of Canadian industry was increasing. Small-town economies such as Alexandria's could have been affected in quite different ways. The overall prosperity could well spill over from metropolitan areas into smaller communities. On the other hand, the centripetal force of such development could draw manufacturing more than ever into large cities, leaving little room for the development of small-town industry. The increase in garment-industry jobs in Alexandria was a sign that industrial growth could be attracted to small towns, but the 1952 opening of the Carnation Milk Company plant was a stronger vote of confidence - an indication that the town could be an attractive

48 A Small Town in Modern Times

investment site even for an American multi-national corporation. The number of employees at Carnation during the early years of the decade remained small, reaching about 20 by 1955, but the wages and quality of working conditions established the firm as the most desirable employer in the area. By 1955, locally owned industries such as the bakery, the sash and door factory, and Glengarry Transport were expanding, although the total number of manufacturing jobs available to men was still less than 150. Employment for women was still much more widely available, as it had been since World War II, and was continuing to grow. Glen Dress now employed over 80; Guarantee Sports Garment had over 30; and a new contractor named Harry Flax had over 20 sewers in a small plant, along with 25 working at home. In that same year, news came that an American garment maker was interested in establishing a large manufacturing facility in town, promising hundreds of jobs. Like many other American firms at the time, the Josef-Augstein Company wanted to establish a branch plant in Canada in order to take advantage of the Canadian market without having to pay import tariffs. They might well have invested in Montreal or Toronto, but the size of the garment industry already in place made skilled labour hard to find and expensive by the standards of the industry. The Montreal garment firms themselves were coming to Alexandria, lured by the prospect of stable labour markets that could serve as supplements to the core work force in Montreal itself. These reserves of labour were less likely to be unionized than urban work forces, and less able to press for higher wages or more restrictions on management. Alexandria was especially attractive because of the skills already built up by women working for the garment firms of earlier years. The coming of the Josef-Augstein Company - called "Sacony's" by local residents after the brand name of clothes they made - was especially dramatic. The plant envisaged by the company was larger than any industry since the M & M Carriage Works, and even if the town had been experiencing some growth since the war, jobs were still in short supply. The eagerness of town leaders to please the company says much about the importance of such investment for the town's well-being. The town first learned of the prospect of a new industry in a Glengarry News story reporting on a trip made by Mayor George Simon to New York City: there was word of a plant that could provide jobs for up to 300 people. But other towns in eastern Ontario were competing, and the us investors were looking to the munici-

49 Development and Dependence

pality to demonstrate its hospitality by financing the erection of a suitable factory building. A meeting of local businessmen was called to discuss the raising of capital for such a project. The News editorial on 24 February reflected the optimism of the moment. It is too bad every Alexandrian could not have been at last Thursday's meeting on industry. For there may be some citizens still unaware of the fact that Alexandria is on the march, its business and professional men united as never before in a determination to bring industry here.

Within a few weeks, more than $40,000 was pledged by local investors, and the Josef-Augstein Company confirmed its plans to come to town. Plant construction began as soon as winter ended; in the meantime job applications were processed by the town hall, and production began right away in temporary quarters. Even before ground was broken, projections of the numbers to be eventually employed in the plant soared to 700. The plant's opening in October of that same year (1955) was the occasion for much congratulation and optimism. The American executives talked about how much better the residents of a small community are to work with than their city counterparts, assuring Alexandrians that, with the continued co-operation of the town and of the new plant employees, the future was bright.30 The new plant was in some ways a better place to work than the small garment factories already located in the town, and a few workers left places such as Guarantee Sports Garment in favour of Sacony's. One of the more skilful sewers who worked in the new plant remembers the plant fondly in comparison with the others The plant had lots of room - ceilings were very high. It was light - there were lots of windows. They had lots of fans; and they had soft music all the time. That was the first time I had worked in a plant with music - it was really nice. With the garments they were making, the machine was lighter, and it wouldn't make that much noise. The machines were brand new - very fast. There wasn't as much dust. They were making very fancy clothes. They were selling to Eaton's, Morgans - all over Canada. You could get a bathing suit in those days for five dollars, but their bathing suits were twenty-five, thirty, and thirty-five dollars. We always had Christmas parties - we'd have a big dinner in a hall - a big banquet, and gifts and all that. We had never had that with the other places. The plant put a lot of money into the town. After work they'd all go out: you couldn't get in to any store in town. I remember, on Friday night, lots of people would go and eat in restaurants - so it was good business for everyone.

5O A Small Town in Modern Times

Even as the plant opened, however, there were signs that optimism had been inflated. A mid-November newspaper story reported only 60 women and 20 men at the plant, and although a display advertisement in the paper asked for an additional "75 girls," the total numbers were a far cry from the 350 predicted in October. In addition, questions had been raised, from as early as the summer, as to the wage levels offered in the plant. On each occasion that doubts were raised, Mayor Simon and other town officials were quick to defend the company's base wage scales, echoing exaggerated management claims about how much a skilled worker could earn on the plant's piece-rate system. Support for the company among leading citizens intensified near the end of the year, in order to gain community approval for a measure designed to provide it a tax break similar to that which had been offered to Carnation at the beginning of the year. If you want this company to expand and erect more plants and buildings and engage more employees, then we must vote "yes" on this by-law. Everyone in Alexandria will benefit from this industry, every taxpayer ... Alexandria must grow, we must have more industries, we must give these industries every consideration possible and every concession possible in order to have them locate in Alexandria. This is only a start, we will have more industries become interested in Alexandria, when and as soon as these industries see that Alexandria is favourable to bringing industries to our town.31

Although fixed assessment was approved by just about everyone in town, early in 1957 signs of discontent surfaced among plant workers. Organizers from the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union arrived in March with a view to organizing the plant. Town officials and leading businessmen united in their attempt to dissuade workers from unionizing, offering to form a grievance committee of their own to listen to employee discontent. But within a week or two, a majority of employees had signed union cards, and even those employees who were otherwise uneasy about labour unions seemed to agree that the company was making a lot of money from the labour of Alexandrians. Three area residents wrote to the Glengarry News about pay and working conditions in the plant, in support of the unionization bid. That a union was necessary in the sweatshops of Alexandria is all too apparent when one realizes that wages as low as 40 cents an hour were offered, and that top wages have not as yet reached a dollar an hour for experienced machine operators.

5i Development and Dependence It would seem that some industries have settled in Alexandria to get away from the prosperity which is sweeping the country. It seems that some of them have tax dispensations and some free services, if not free buildings. It would be greedy of them to ask labour to work for half-nothing. Their sister industries compete while paying accepted wages and high taxes in prosperous communities. Why should Alexandria support weak sisters? If some industries threaten to move out rather than pay regular wage rates, call their bluff, and let them go and try to get a cheap deal somewhere else ... A union might put some savour back into the situation. It isn't much of an honour to be patronized by industries which don't pay their way. There are better customers. Get them - or allow a union to make these better for you ... Personally, I think it is high time the standard of wages in this type of industry was raised ... I would venture to say that our town of Alexandria has about the lowest wage scale of wages anywhere in the Dominion ... Let's face it, the big reason that this type of industry moved to Alexandria was that they knew they could get cheap labour in the area.32

A three-year collective agreement was arrived at in August of that year, with significant wage increases and a reduction of the number of hours worked. But there were constant disagreements through the next year about the rates of pay set for particular operations, and there remained a widespread view, as one sewer remembers it, that "they wanted you to make a lot, but they didn't want to pay you that much." In July of 1959, Sacony's announced that it was transferring production to Montreal, complaining of difficulty in finding "dependable labour" in the local area. It is clear that this and other companies had moved to town with an understanding that in such an area unions could be avoided. Two years before, in 1957, Glen Dress had picked up stakes and moved out of town, the owner being quite open about his refusal to recognize the legitimacy of unions.33 Further evidence of difficulty in the local garment industry was provided in 1959, with the announcement that Guarantee Sport Garment was closing down local operations, eliminating 32 jobs. Shortly after that, Harry Flax declared that newly established industry pay rates would make it impossible to continue production in Alexandria. Even if most of the jobs at stake were low paying and insecure, the industry that had been the largest employer in the town since the end of World War II seemed to be slipping away. Economic prospects appeared bleaker than they had in a decade. The slowdown in Alexandria toward the end of the 19505 was in part a reflection of a nation-wide recession, with unemployment in

52 A Small Town in Modern Times

Canada rising to 10% by the early 19605. Prosperity quickly returned to the country as a whole, however, and within a few years national unemployment declined to 4%. Alexandria would feel some of the beneficial effects of that economic buoyancy, but it would be a decade before local residents could truthfully talk of boom. Near the end of 1959, the Perth Shoe Company, a subsidiary of the American-based Brown Shoe Company, announced an interest in taking over the now-vacant Sacony plant. In what seemed a replay of the optimistic forecasts provided by the previous incumbent, Brown management anticipated as many as 200 jobs. Once again, the town offered to fix assessment, and once again the Board of Trade joined with town officials in persuading townspeople to vote "yes" for the tax concession. By mid-year in 1960 70 people were working at the plant, and because most of the employees at this early stage were men, the plant was seen as an especially important addition to the town's manufacturing base. From 1960 on, there was a steady stream of good investment news for the town. Carnation and Lanthier's bakery both planned expansions to their plants. The year 1964 saw the construction of a large plant for Square C Textiles, a Montreal-based firm later merged into Consolidated Textiles and re-named Consoltex, its peak local employment growing to almost 200.34 Glengarry Transport was well on its way to becoming a major trucking firm, expanding its routes to Toronto on the west and Shawinigan on the east, with 500 trucks. By 1974, the company had 185 employees in town, including some of the most sought-after jobs around. Alexandria Moulding (formerly Alexandria Sash and Door) was at that time employing about 90, Lanthier's bakery about 100, Carnation about 130, and Brown Shoe up to 140. In 1975, a second shoe company arrived in town from Montreal. A branch of the Montreal-based Rosita Shoe Company, Alexandria Footwear was initially set up with only nine employees as a response to a strike among Montreal employees. In 1978, Rosita won a major contract for producing Adidas shoes in Canada, and, within a few years, Alexandria Footwear was employing 150 women and men to produce German-designed shoes for the whole Canadian market. Some of the shift of production to places such as Alexandria had to do with the search for the highly skilled labour it takes to make shoes. One employer in the shoe business described the difficulty. It was almost impossible to get sufficient labour in Montreal. Pattern cutter is one field - to train a pattern cutter from scratch would take three years. You have to know material, stitching, machinery, adhesive systems. In a plant of this size, you need three or four people like that. We sometimes

53 Development and Dependence have to go to Europe. We took a year to try to find someone for one job advertised in Montreal; went to Manpower - couldn't get it. It's always a problem to get good women to stitch - it takes a long time to train a stitcher. It takes six months to a year before you get any money back. There are also more attractive jobs in Montreal than sitting down at a sewing machine for eight hours a day. People's hopes and aspirations are different nowadays. Stitching is always a problem, whether here or Montreal or St Jerome. So that's the reason for satellite plants. They can supply the basic uppers; then those can be further processed much more rapidly in the city.

The specialization of the Alexandria Footwear plant was indicative of a more general trend in the town's industries. The Brown Shoe plant had narrowed the range of its production somewhat, concentrating now on men's shoes. Lanthier's was also narrowing its production range, by the end of the decade contracting out some of the fancier or more unusual bread products that it marketed. The textile plant, which had once woven fabric in addition to dyeing it, restricted itself only to dyeing and finishing synthetic material, leaving the weaving to other specialized plants within the same company. Carnation was by this time a specialized component of a Canadawide system, producing only dried milk products. Two other industries moved to Alexandria from Montreal during the 19705, their migrations to Glengarry indicative of a new attraction to investment. Both Glengarry Glass, a small plant producing sealed glass panes, and Woodings-Railcar, a firm producing railway-related products, were motivated to shift at least some production to the Alexandria area, partly because of their owners' distaste for political developments in the province of Quebec. The availability of lessexpensive labour was also important, but Quebec's political and economic climate added extra appeal to the area just over the Ontario border.35 The garment industry was also expanding once again in Alexandria. A couple of the firms that had left Alexandria in the 19505 returned, recognizing the value of the pool of skilled labour in the area and the difficulty of getting and keeping skilled labour in Montreal. Lucky Legs, one of the several firms to move in and out of the old Armouries building at the north end of town, at one point grew to over 130 employees. Entrepreneurs complained about what they conceived of as excessive regulation of the needle trades in Quebec. We couldn't exist in Montreal. Quebec labour laws, unions - there are a lot of things running against you - makes it harder to operate. We're working

54 A Small Town in Modern Times in a labour business - we sell labour. Someone gives me one thousand dresses and says "sew them up for me - here's three or four dollars each." If I get them sewed for two dollars, I'm making money; if it costs me threefifty to sew them, I'm in trouble. So basically, I've got to make sure my labour is the right price. Being in Ontario gives us an edge. In Quebec, there's a Joint Committee for the needle trades. The Joint Committee sets wage rates; every three or six months, they give out increases, and they have certain benefits you have to provide. On top of that, they watch you very closely. Our industry is a thirty-five hour week, with a maximum of eight hours overtime. You cannot work overtime Friday, Saturday. In Ontario, there's an advisory committee in Toronto. Employees still get paid holidays, vacation pay - a small percentage of their pay. There's also a thirty-five hour week. But you're allowed to work Saturday if you want, and you're allowed to work certain paid holidays. They let you work if you want to. Also, they're in Toronto: they come down here once a year; we go out for a cup of coffee; and the guy goes back - he's happy. As long as you're paying your minimum rates, your vacation pay, you're okay, they don't bother you, they let you operate. That's important for a small businessman. In Quebec, there are just so many headaches - they bother you, they pester you, they chase after you. By the end of the decade, in a replay of the late 19505, factory sewing was once again declining. Lucky Legs, for example, had pulled out of town, at least in part because of unionization.36 But contractors employing home sewers for the Montreal garment industry had grown in their place, one Montrealer developing a network of up to 50 home sewers, and two local contractors bringing the total number close to 100. The businessman quoted above talks about the advantages of shifting to home sewing. We're getting the same prices for garments we got in 1977. My overhead has gone up - my cars, my trucks, my gas, my thread, my wages. So the margin is squeezed, and we have to be more efficient. In the 19705, the cost of labour was about fifty-five to sixty per cent of sales - forty-five per cent left. Today we're down to twenty-five to thirty per cent. So we have to be more efficient. We have to watch our overhead, and we don't make as much money. We do more volume. We're in a situation where we're up against imports from the Orient. So in our industry, moving to home sewers is the only way we can survive. People say we're going back to the way we were thirty and forty years ago, when the industry was all people sewing in their homes. We went through a phase of automation in the plants in the '705 - pneumatics, hydraulics,

55 Development and Dependence automatic computerized machinery - we did everything to try to make the garment cheaper. The sad part is that we don't have the production runs in Canada to make that work. The size of the market in Canada is just too small. It comes down to labour: it doesn't matter how much automation you have, you still have to pay a girl six dollars an hour plus benefits. In Hong Kong or Taiwan, they're paying fifty cents or seventy-five cents an hour. The girls in the factory are paid on hourly rates. Apart from the space problem, it has been getting too expensive to have them all in the plant, on hourly rates. Some of them have been with us six or seven years - they were earning between seven and nine dollars an hour, plus twenty per cent benefits. I couldn't afford it - I'm getting the same price that I was in 1977, and I just couldn't afford it. It's a matter of survival; I'm in the business to make money; I'm not in the business to pay people. If that's the only way it can be done now, that's the way I have to do it. It's unfortunate, but our industry is that way.

Home work was banned in the United States over 40 years ago. Although not illegal in Canada, home sewing networks often operate close to underground in order to evade what little regulation there is over pay scales and benefits. In Canada as a whole, about onequarter of the 120,000 people employed in the garment industry work at home.37 The average wage for the industry as a whole is one-third below the average manufacturing wage, and home workers earn substantially less than workers in garment factories, and receive almost no benefits. The attraction of contractors to the home sewing system, then, lies partly in lower labour costs. Keeping wages down is made easier by the sheer impossibility of unionizing such a dispersed work force. The home work system also avoids the expense of building or renting factory space. Moving material from one worker to another creates extra costs, but in a small town such as Alexandria the expense and inconvenience are minimized. Contracting out also permits infinite flexibility in engaging or disengaging particular sewers, which is useful in turn for maintaining compliance and for adjusting the labour force according to the demand for work. The flexibility inherent in home sewing is advantageous not only for the contractors, but for the Montreal-based manufacturers. They are able to keep the numbers of factory sewers down, knowing that increased demand can be met by contracting out. With the increased competition from the Pacific Rim countries, flexibility and agility in responding to market changes have become more important. Unable to compete on price or quality, Canadian manufacturers have to

56 A Small Town in Modern Times

offer speed of delivery and flexibility of service, all of which reduces stability at the manufacturing end. Another advantage in home sewing for the manufacturer, of course, is that the very existence of an extremely low-waged corps of home sewers serves to depress factory wages, since there is a continuous threat of more contracting out imposed on factory workers.38 For Montreal manufacturers, it matters little where the home sewing networks are located, since the extra costs of being situated outside of Montreal are absorbed by the contractors and their sewers. Alexandria weathered the recession that began in the mid-1970s more successfully than most small towns in Canada - indeed more successfully than some large cities. Between 1976 and the early 19805, official Canadian unemployment levels had risen from 8% to over 12%, with unofficial figures considerably above that. By 1981, inflation had topped 12%, and the real incomes of the country's wage earners were falling. Although a few firms in Alexandria were adversely affected by the absence of economic growth at the national level, and the garment industry suffered from recurrent unsteadiness, manufacturing employment in the town increased almost continuously through that period. In the early 19805, employment levels were higher than at any point in the town's history, far eclipsing the manufacturing boom at the turn of the century. By 1981, local unemployment was slightly below the Canadian average, and within a couple of years of that, more noticeably lower. 39 During the early and mid-igSos, local companies (Glengarry Transport, Alexandria Moulding, Lanthier's) continued expanding, and more firms were migrating from Montreal. In 1986, three new industries were setting up plants, and three firms already in Alexandria were planning major expansions. Table 2.2 indicates how diversified the Alexandria economy had become. As Table 2.3 shows, industrial employment more than doubled during the two decades from 1964 to 1984, a rate of increase substantially greater than that for Ontario as a whole. The total value of the goods manufactured in town industries also increased faster than the provincial average - at almost double the rate. In fact, data from a Statistics Canada survey of manufacturing in Ontario municipalities suggest that much of the gap that remains between the "value added" per employee in Alexandria and that in Ontario as a whole results from the high value-added levels in large plants with more than 200 employees. In plants with between 20 and 200 workers, the average value added per employee in Alexandria is about the same as it is in Toronto.40 By the end of the decade, though, a few trouble spots were evident. Foreign competition was threatening the two shoe companies,

57 Development and Dependence Table 2.2 Industries, 1987 (more than 10 employees) Date of Establishment in Alexandria

1932 1943 1947 1951 1959 1960 1964 1975 1976 1977 1978 1981 1981 1983 1984 1986 1986

Industry

Ownership

George Lanthier & Fils Alexandria Moulding Glengarry Transport3 Carnation Sanilit Brown Shoe Consoltex Alexandria Footwear Alexandria Blouse Contractor G & E Sewing Contractor Woodings-Railcar Lise Contracting Regal Knitting Farley Windows (Windoors) Bakers Pride Tradition Windows Laurin Inc.

Alexandria Alexandria Alexandria usb Alexandria us Montreal Montreal Montreal

57 217 200 125 10 143 168 100 55

Alexandria

30

Glengarryc Alexandria Montreal Montreal

19 20 20 20

us Montreal Alexandria0

32 100 20

Number of Employees

Source: Scott's Directory, 17th ed. (Oakville, Ont.: Southam Business Information and Communications Group 1988-89), supplemented by estimates about sewing contractors. a b c

GTL employs a total of 2000, but about 200 are based in Alexandria Carnation is now owned by Nestle's Originally headquartered in Montreal, then transferred to local area

especially with the removal of most shoe import quotas at the end of 1985 and the prospective removal of tariffs on us imports resulting from the Free Trade Agreement.41 Consoltex had always faced tough international competition, particularly from Asian producers, and the Free Trade Agreement increases the likelihood of incursions into the Canadian market of low-waged American producers.42 Late in 1989, when one of the two window manufacturers in town (Tradition) went into bankruptcy, some locals blamed free trade. Glengarry Transport was also facing stiffer competition, partly as a result of us-inspired deregulation of the trucking industry; in any event the company was reducing local employment by transferring more of

58 A Small Town in Modern Times Table 2.3 Manufacturing Industries, 1964-84 Alexandria 1964 1984 NUMBER OF

1964

Ontario 1984

12

15

13,000

15,000

40

63

57

58

181 148 45% $1.28 $2,559

483 321 40% $7.71 $15,910

68 86 56% $2,682 483 $2,580 $3,275 $6,781

105 34

ESTABLISHMENTS

Average number of employees PRODUCTION WORKERS

Male Female % Female Average wage/hr Average income/yr

402,373 107,385 21% $2.12 $4,551

468,804 158,713 25% $11.02 $23,360

161,977 57,201 26% $6,145 728,936 $5,030 $7,489,116 $10,273

171,746 81,664 32% $31,479 880,927 $25,708 $50,962,100 $57,846

NON-PRODUCTION STAFF

Male Female % Female Average salary TOTAL EMPLOYEES

Average salary VALUE ADDED (000)

Per employee

24%

$25,057 943 $17,259 $42,429 $44,994

Sources: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Manufacturing Industries of Canada, Section G: Geographical Distribution, 1964, 38, 42, 88, 98.; Statistics Canada, Manufacturing Industries of Canada, Sub-Provincial Area, 1984, 54-5, 180-81.

its operations from Alexandria to Montreal.43 Declining house construction was forcing cutbacks and lay-offs at Alexandria Moulding, and more widespread recessionary decline was threatening other firms. Still, the industrial base of Alexandria has remained larger and more diversified than ever before, providing over 1000 manufacturing jobs in the area. As indicated at the outset, investment in the area depends on Alexandria's retaining some characteristics associated with economic marginality. But the delicate balance of factors that have created a climate attractive for manufacturing appears to have remained largely in place, lasting even through the serious recession of the late 19705 and early 19805. That favourable balance may well last through the prospective recession of the early 19905,

59 Development and Dependence

but increased international competition, intensified by the Free Trade Agreement, will pose considerable challenges to the local economy. REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT

Alexandria's success in building a diverse industrial base since the end of World War II, and in particular since the 19605, has defied the centralizing and urbanizing tendencies built into a free market economy. Experience in most countries suggests that the advantages some regions have over others entrench themselves. The initial growth poles in an economy become points of further concentration of advantage, so that economic development becomes circular and cumulative.44 Even in isolated areas, more and more of the goods that are bought and sold are produced by large corporations with head offices and production facilities located in dominant regions. Pronounced regional disparities have existed since the first European settlement of Canada and have long been central elements in federal-provincial relations. The unification of some of Britain's North American colonies in 1867, with the later addition of others, was in some measure an attempt to extend the reach of a commercial and manufacturing empire centred on the St Lawrence and Lower Great Lakes corridor. Many of the differences in the role and prosperity of central and peripheral regions in that early period are still factors dividing regions in contemporary Canada, adding force to the argument that such disparities are deeply embedded. The relationship between the Glengarry area and the more prosperous urban centres in Ontario and Quebec bears some resemblance to the disparities between larger-scale regions such as Atlantic Canada and Central Canada. Many of the factors that draw investment to the central region of the country also draw it to alreadydominant urban centres; and some of the factors that make the peripheral Maritimes less attractive for many investors are at work in rural and small-town regions such as Glengarry County. Yet we know from the experience of Alexandria in the last generation or so that some investors are drawn to such areas. Analysing the balance of factors affecting the geographic location of manufacturing investment is critical to understanding the solidity of Alexandria's current boom, and such an analysis is a crucial prelude to understanding the character of work in local industry. Dominant regions and metropolitan urban centres have an enormous advantage over other regions in the size of the market that

6o A Small Town in Modern Times

they constitute for all manner of goods and services. Business is attracted to cities such as Montreal and Toronto for their population size, as well as for the number of other businesses already in place. A town such as Alexandria offers little in the way of a purely local market, since the population is small and since most of the industries already established do most of their purchasing outside of the area. On the other hand, the dramatic improvements in road transportation over the last 30 years have made places such as Alexandria much more sensible as locations for manufacturing products with wide marketing ranges; there is quick access to the large Montreal market and ready access to the transportation corridor heading west to Toronto. Several of Alexandria's plants have widely spread markets, increasingly so as they have grown more specialized. The ease of transportation to Montreal in particular makes relocation to Alexandria possible even for those firms whose market is mainly Montreal. Truck transport is relatively inexpensive, particularly if the output of a plant is not too bulky and is destined for a single distribution point or reprocessing point in Montreal. A good example is Alexandria Footwear, producing a specialized product for shipment to Montreal headquarters. Advances in communication technology also make it easier for large firms to establish production facilities at some distance from one another and from company headquarters. Physical separation still creates inconveniences, but far fewer than would have existed before the development of sophisticated computer and telecommunications links. The automobile industry has been at the vanguard of change in this regard, locating specialized plants in widely separated centres, and the practice is now common in other industrial sectors. The fact that Glengarry Transport, one of the country's largest trucking companies, is headquartered in Alexandria also means that the area is better served than it would otherwise be for shipping products into and out of town. The location of raw materials sometimes determines the placement of manufacturing industry, although this is less commonly true in the twentieth century than it was in the nineteenth. Location close to raw materials remains critical for some industries, certainly, for example pulp-and-paper processing and metals production, but a large proportion of the manufacturing sector is geographically independent of the location of raw materials. That is partly a result of an overall reduction in the cost of transportation relative to other costs of production. It is also a reflection of the fact that most manufacturing entails a complex array of components, some of them raw materials, others processed goods, all of them coming from

61 Development and Dependence

different areas. Large metropolitan areas are advantageous for most manufacturing, in that they are major transportation hubs, with ease of access to sources of a wide range of products. They also offer a full range of utilities that many smaller communities cannot provide. The Alexandria area is not rich in natural resources, and the town itself has only a limited supply of water. Apart from Consoltex's dependence on large quantities of water, however, none of the industries now established in the area really depends on local raw materials - unlike the industries that led Alexandria's first boom at the turn of the century. Alexandria Moulding, for example, ships in wood by rail from as far away as the west coast of the United States. Carnation obtains some of its ready-dried milk powder from Toronto. Consoltex ships in pre-woven rolls of fabric from other plants within the company. The transportation links available seem to give these industries sufficient access to the materials they need, particularly because the range of materials used by most local firms is limited. Large cities have decided advantages over small communities in the services available for raising and manipulating capital for investment. Banking and investment services are more sophisticated, and professionals working in the area are accustomed to dealing with larger sums of money. In the view of one observer of local investment, Banking services may be a problem. It depends on the manager, but generally speaking in a small town you've got either a guy just starting out or a guy heading for retirement. In a place like this typically you have a credit limit of three thousand dollars or five thousand dollars which he could approve on his own signature; anything more than that has to go to Toronto or Montreal. I could go and talk to the assistant manager in the main branch of a city and he can sign fifty thousand dollars without anyone else's authority. The small town manager may also not necessarily know business. He deals a lot with retailers - maybe he understands that. But he really doesn't understand sawmills, so he doesn't want to get too involved in that. He's not that adventuresome.

One local businessman who sought major financing for expansion discovered the limits of local banking, although was able to find support outside of town. The banking here - let's face it - a town like this size has banking capacity for the average level of community business. I had to do some outside looking, to do all that I have done here. When I did it outside, then they

62 A Small Town in Modern Times were ready to do it here. Glengarry Transport is another example - they had to go outside for banking. They don't have time to wait a week for an answer - they need the answers immediately.

Improvements in transportation and communication facilities do in fact make cities such as Cornwall and Montreal closer, and in that sense entrepreneurs wishing to raise capital for investments in places such as Alexandria have options open to them. For large firms seeking to establish production facilities in Glengarry, the local banking facilities are of little significance anyway. It is where the company is headquartered that financial services need to be most sophisticated, not where the manufacturing facilities are placed. Raising capital to invest in small-town areas can be eased by government policy. Until recently, municipalities were able to give industries tax breaks, and entrepreneurs were adept at pitting one against the other in order to maximize the benefits. Now provincial governments are major competitors in the game of attracting investment, and most are prepared to offer handsome subsidies for job-creating investment. Some of the subsidies available are designed to redress regional imbalances; for decades eastern Ontario has been the target of special government grants.45 Few clear indications exist as to whether government regional policy effectively shifts investment toward disadvantaged areas. Manufacturers are accustomed to believing that some grants will be available regardless of where they locate. In any event, many of them decide on location first, and then look around to see what kind of public assistance is available. As one prospective investor in the Alexandria area observes, You are not setting out to find out what government programs are around, and then figure out what you are going to do, because chances are the government program tends to be a bit short-termed in nature for you to base your whole investment on that. Most of the investments tend to be longer term; you figure out what you want to do; and you see if you can find a program that helps you along.

Still, in those cases in which an investor has some choice or latitude in location, regional policy incentive structures might well play a role. A manager of one Quebec-based company established in town believes that initially the company was attracted by government programs encouraging investment in places such as eastern Ontario. Another businessmen with experience in government grants policies agrees that incentives can make a difference.

63 Development and Dependence Particularly with today's high interest rates, many investors couldn't go ahead without financial incentives. It has helped some industry start up. Maybe a certain amount would have started up without grants, but in a lot of cases, I'm sure it is the difference between surviving and not surviving, or deciding to go ahead or not go ahead. With financial incentives and so on, you can encourage them to go to a place that wouldn't necessarily be their first choice.

A number of Alexandria's industries have taken advantage of these grant schemes for initial set-up or plant expansion. In some instances, too, government training programs have helped local industries develop skilled labour. There is reason to believe, then, that government assistance does play some role in making areas such as Alexandria attractive to investors. Industry's dependence on both skilled and unskilled labour has traditionally drawn investment toward large urban areas in alreadydominant regions, with their huge pools of labour. The scale of postwar immigration to such cities as Toronto and Montreal has in fact created a "reserve army" of cheap and docile unskilled labour, providing continuing inducement to manufacturing investment. In addition, cities have always had a wide range of highly qualified labour - skilled both in the traditional crafts and in the new technology (in computing for example) - as well as the variety of people required for management personnel. Finding middle- and upper-management personnel in a small community is hard, since almost everyone who goes on to the kind of higher education required for such positions leaves town. The range of services and industrial skills in a large urban area has also meant that a firm has a complete range of supports for the production work engaged in by the plant. Suppliers are close at hand, as are the skills and facilities required to repair or replace machinery. As one observer of local industry argues, If you want someone to service something, they're there in a big city. If a guy in Alexandria wants to get his machinery serviced, he'd have to beg and plead to get somebody to come in and see him - he'd sooner try to deal over the phone and mail something than go and see him. And how easy was it to operate out of Alexandria during the last mail strike?

Many of these advantages continue to draw investment to concentrated urban areas. On the other hand, a number of firms can shift production to smaller centres. A few of Alexandria's industries are simply production branches of firms headquartered elsewhere,

64 A Small Town in Modern Times

with shortages in particular skills or management personnel handled by transfers from other parts of the company. A few of the other firms that have moved to town are small companies with relatively simple production lines. They have quite small management structures, with some management personnel recruitable in the area and only modest requirements for skilled labour. In a general way, the labour required to handle machinery in Alexandria's industries does not need elaborate training. Most machine operators can be trained in a week or two and can be readily transferred from one machine or operation to another. Some skills, such as those related to the garment industry, are, relatively speaking, as amply available in Glengarry as they are in a large city. If specialized skills are necessary, a firm can sometimes make do with importing one or two people to the local production facility or with training local workers to perform at least the basic functions required for everyday production (often with the help of government programs). In any event, the kind of craft workers sought - millwrights, machinists, electricians - are in short supply even in big cities. In the opinion of two local managers, the overall labour picture in small communities is not at all unfavourable. Labour is always a consideration, but most places in Canada have a good labour supply. Our best labour in our other location is boys off the farm tinkerers, and those sorts. You give them a little training and show them how to weld properly and give them some decent tools and that sort of thing - they are better - they are tinkerers and they don't mind working hard - they are generally prepared to give a day's work for a day's pay. There are disadvantages to a small town, in getting and enticing the higher level of quality of people to come. But the advantage is that if you develop them here you're not likely to lose them. It balances out in the long run.

If labour can be found in sufficient quantity, relatively low wage rates can often be a powerful incentive for a company to move to small towns. The contrast in wage levels between cities and towns is less stark than it once was, and wages in some industries are tightly regulated by national labour unions, regardless of location. But for many jobs, employers can, in the words of one local politician, "get by with cheaper wages." Firms arriving in town routinely expect to pay between $1.00 and $2.00 per hour less than in Montreal. In the early 19805, one of the small factories in Alexandria was paying $5.00 an hour for labour that would cost $8.00 in Montreal

65 Development and Dependence

(from where the plant had migrated). Tradesmen are sometimes paid less than half what they would get in the city, as this industrial manager attests. The labour rates are lower than in Montreal too. Your building costs are lower; quite often your services are cheaper. You get an electrician in here - ten dollars an hour. In Montreal it's forty dollars. There are a lot of advantages like that.

At least as significant as low wage levels is the greater "reliability" and "loyalty" of labour. In some small towns, firms can take advantage of an essentially monopolistic privilege in the local labour market. This has been less true as industry has diversified in Alexandria, but it is still the case that workers have fewer options than they would in a large city, and they often have more recent memories of circumstances in which no work was available in the region. Many of the town's workers, particularly the older ones, are therefore grateful to have any job and are likely to stick with that job. Over the years, a number of firms that have come to Alexandria from other places have been attracted by the prospect of nonunionized labour.46 According to one local observer, Unionization is quite an important consideration. They don't want to have to deal with a union. They don't want people going out on strike; they would prefer not to pay union wages - sometimes the difference between union wages and non-union wages is considerable. As much as anything it's that they want to be boss - they don't want the union telling them how to run their company.

Most blue-collar workers in Alexandria, in fact, are unionized. Still, they are thought by most manufacturers to be more reliable and are generally prepared to settle for more traditional management practices and lower wages than their urban counterparts are. The garment industry provides the most dramatic illustrations of firms enticed to Alexandria in search of lower cost and docile labour. When the managers of the Josef-Augstein Company (Sacony's) eventually left town in the late 19505, they were unabashed in their admission that they came because it was a non-union town. Presumably, non-union meant for them the freedom to pay low wages and to manipulate labour without incumbrance. When that became less possible, they moved. At least two other garment firms that have operated in town since that time have left for the same reason; the lesson has not been lost on local sewers, who still resist union-

66 A Small Town in Modern Times

ization. In more recent years, garment manufacturers were drawn to Glengarry as a way of escaping Quebec provincial regulations over employment in the garment industry, particularly over home sewers. The regulations cannot be considered stringent, since exploitive wages and working conditions are still common in the province, but regulation is less stringent in Ontario. One inducement to re-locate some production facilities is the relatively low cost of land in rural areas or smaller communities. One of Alexandria's particular advantages is the inexpensiveness of serviced lots in the industrial park, some of them, in the early-to-mid19803, as cheap as $5000, a small fraction of the cost of similar land in Montreal or Toronto. Land costs are particularly important for production facilities requiring a large amount of space. According to one manager, In our case we decided on eastern Ontario for very strong reasons. We think you have to be close to the headquarters of our major buyers, in Montreal, but our stuff is so big that it's not the kind of business you would plunk down in Toronto or Montreal. We need a good-size piece of property, and we want a railway siding, all within easy driving distance of Montreal.

Although not usually a major cost of production, utility rates are sometimes lower in small towns, and some firms are able to extract major concessions. The kind of production engaged in by Consolidated Textiles, for example, required the town to expand its facilities for treating water, and the importance of the plant for local employment allowed it to obtain lower water rates. Political climate is also a consideration in the placement of investment. In Alexandria there are two dimensions to the matter, one having to do with the "friendliness" of the welcome offered by local authorities, the other having to do with the perceived unwelcomeness of the political climate in Quebec for some businessmen. As the manager of one small firm in Alexandria has remarked, "A small-town council looks after you more." Two other managers have similar reactions. We haven't had too much contact with local politicians, but it has been pleasant. For instance, they are holding our people's hands and showing them where to buy or rent, telling them about schools and churches, social activities, where the hospital and these kinds of thing are. It is important to people with kids and families. The town was very helpful in finding space. The town here has always been helpful - the mayor and council, and the businessmen in town - they've

67 Development and Dependence always been very nice. They're always pleased to have any labour industry around. Any time you need anything, call up the mayor. In two minutes, he's back to you, and he'll do anything he can to help you - anything.

Although the political climate created by senior governments matters even more than whatever local governments do, since it is they who manage the subsidies available for capital investment, local actions can make a difference. Alexandria has established a fully serviced industrial park and will sell or lease land at bargain-basement prices. If re-zoning is required for placement outside of such areas, most local authorities are more than willing to oblige, marshalling all of the traditional rhetoric of progress and growth to minimize objections by local residents. The local council can also act indirectly to limit the tax burden on industry through its overall fiscal conservativeness and its willingness to provide industries with special facilities or rates on public utilities.47 One of the factors benefiting Alexandria is the political climate in the province of Quebec, thought by anglophone investors in particular to be unfavourable. The political situation in Quebec is very important. You've got Alexandria Footwear here; their parent company in Montreal. Why didn't they put that one in the province of Quebec? You've got Regal Knitting here. Why're they here as opposed to some small town in Quebec? Railcar - when they were still headquartered in Montreal, they located a plant in Lindsay, Ontario. There's a sewing contractor here, he's out of Montreal - and another sewing contractor here who sells all his stuff in Montreal. Talk to the manager of XYZ company here and ask him what the situation is vis-a-vis the border - it makes a difference in his business.

Another experienced observer, a manager, comments, One obvious reason to get out of the province of Quebec is because life is already a hassle without the language hassle on your hands. We just could not run our business in French - we couldn't be bothered. Even though some of us are quite fluently bilingual, it just wouldn't work because our sister companies and our buyers all operate in English. Quebec taxes, too, but the language hassle is the bad one. You've got enough characters from various governments putting their noses into your business, but having someone telling you what language you have to operate in - we spent more than two years looking for a place!

Although a succession of Quebec provincial governments has made a point of making itself attractive for private investment, a

68 A Small Town in Modern Times

number of entrepreneurs have chosen either to leave the province or to establish production bases outside of it. The province's language legislation requires some business concessions to the majority language of the province, and for a time it restricted access to English-language education essentially to the children of native anglo-Quebecers. Although a good many English-speaking firms learned to accommodate themselves to legislative requirements, a number of investors found the language laws impossible to live with, for emotional reasons more often than for practical business considerations. Their difficulty was, as much as anything else, a resistance to anyone telling them how to run their businesses. (Taxation levels are another irritant cited by businessmen who have moved, although the differences are moderate enough that they would not have produced significant migration on their own.) Bigger firms wishing to locate out of the province, but still needing the kinds of services that only a big city can provide, tend to move closer to Toronto. But smaller firms have had the option of moving to relatively nearby regions just across the border, in some cases retaining Quebec-based production or management facilities. For most such firms, the singular attraction of Alexandria is the fact that it is the Ontario town closest to Montreal, with ready access to good transportation routes into that city. What is at stake, then, is not so much an expansion of markets westward, claimed by some of these firms as a motive to re-locate, but a retention of a Montreal market from outside the province of Quebec. Because some of the firms that have moved to Alexandria are small, the decision to re-locate can be heavily influenced by the personal preferences of the owner. In many such cases, the fondness for the social, recreational, and cultural life available in a big city can keep a businessman in an urban area even if a purely economic calculus would suggest moving away. Yet there is some point at which a large metropolitan centre becomes congested and socially undesirable even for those with the disposable income to enjoy its pleasures. Entrepreneurs able to make their own decisions about location will sometimes opt for a more peaceable setting, to the benefit of areas such as Alexandria. An observer of regional investment comments: One company I know of has a manufacturing manager from nearby. He'd just love to put a plant here in this area. There are any number of other reasons - a guy wants to buy a farm and live on it, and farm prices are good here. You'd think the decision would be very economic and cold, but it isn't. Being close to a golf course may be important. An investor may agree that a Toronto location makes sense: "But I'm going to Moose Pastures

69 Development and Dependence because I went up there once and I met the mayor and I met all the top people and they took me out to the curling club. My wife is a shy woman and she felt right at home with these people. I feel she would adjust better; and at this point I'm not really interested in making more money. I'm interested in having a good life and a company which does reasonably well." Somebody comes into town asking where there's a good fishing hole; what the schools are like; how many beds are in the hospital. Often a person is attracted to a place by the people - they're friendly or hard-working, intelligent or whatever - the kind of people they'd like to live with or have working for them. Often it's the deciding point.

Lxuring almost all of the first century of Glengarry's settlement, prosperity was elusive. The social hierarchies being built and the wealth being accumulated were located in larger centres, and those local men who shared in that status and wealth were those who left the county. When the railway came to Alexandria, it helped spur a period of industrial growth that linked the town more closely to national trends and national markets than it had ever been. It was because of access to these markets that Alexandria grew as the first manufacturing centre in the county, and it was in these circumstances that a new class of local entrepreneur emerged. These industrialists built a fragile boom, however, highly dependent on their own initiative and connections, sometimes reliant on technologies that were soon overtaken by events. Alexandria has survived the transition in the Canadian economy, from what might be called "entrepreneurial" capitalism to "corporate" capitalism. In the earlier stage, small- and medium-sized firms, many of them family-owned and located in small- and mediumsized towns, played an important role. With the growth of large corporate enterprises, fewer market shares were left to small firms, and many small communities lost their livelihoods. The corporate capitalism of the present day leaves room for local development only as an adjunct to the growth of metropolitan centres, and few small towns have much attraction for business.48 The particular location of Alexandria, however, has allowed it to take advantage of a "halo" effect, by which certain types of manufacturers have departed congested urban centres for the areas within a 100-150 kilometre radius, in order to take advantage of cheaper land and sometimes less costly and more "reliable" labour.49 Apart from Carnation, which began production on the basis of plentiful milk supplies in the area, most of the early post-war investment in Alexandria from outside the area sought women as skilled workers in the needle trades. It was only in the midi96os and beyond that manufacturing jobs were available

70 A Small Town in Modern Times

for men in substantial numbers, paying higher wages than the jobs dominated by women. In Canada as a whole, the long boom period after World War II had made male labour in the cities expensive, highly unionized, and sometimes scarce, and the political climate in Quebec has added an extra incentive to search for workers outside Montreal and just across the Ontario border. The industries that have moved and stayed in town have little to do with local raw materials and local markets. Most of them can move away from town as easily as they moved in and can find some other municipality and work force prepared to grant them the kind of co-operation they want. Even the firms that are locally owned are more likely to make their expansion plans according to market criteria than emotional attachment to the area. Local politicians know as well as anyone how easy it is for investors to choose other municipalities, and many other townspeople do as well. When the town authorities talk in welcoming terms about outside investment, they are reflecting a core idea in the town's dominant culture as well as an essential need for jobs. The town's self-image of progressiveness means an uncritical "arms-open" view of such investment. The reactions of town leaders to the prospect of new investment in the 19805 may have more finesse than it did in the 19505 when the Josef-Augstein Company moved to Alexandria, but an almost complete absence of critical judgment remains over the quality of employment likely to be created by prospective investment. In such a climate, dissent and division are actively discouraged by town leaders. From the very beginnings of settlement in the area, protest and dissent against authority have been difficult to mobilize. In the 18305, Glengarrians sympathetic to the cause of William Lyon Mackenzie usually had to conceal their views for fear of retaliation from loyal Highlanders. In World War I, opponents of Canada's involvement in an imperial war remained low key in the midst of an area where loyalty to the British crown was unquestioned. Such loyalty was constantly emphasized by the press, by the schools, by politicians, and by clerics of all denominations.50 In like fashion, dissent from the notion that Alexandria's entrepreneurs and managers are beyond reproach is made very difficult. The threat of labour protest against Sacony's united the town's influential citizens and its press in a round of condemnation, not of the pay and working conditions at the plant, but of those who dared to protest. Editorial advice to the citizens of the town on first hearing that Sacony's might come to town illustrates precisely the prevailing ideology: "If we are to progress we must show a united front, a

71 Development and Dependence

happy, contented community of good neighbours."51 Today, each new industry planning investment in the town is treated just as uncritically. The local Chamber of Commerce, the press, and local politicians join together in praise for the company and its managers, who after all have given the town a vote of confidence. The ideology of progress, then, encourages passive acquiescence and reinforces gratitude for the availability of jobs that the town long had to do without. This dominant culture ignores or sidesteps the extent to which industrial growth in Alexandria is built upon working conditions and wage levels that would be thought unacceptable in environments in which workers had a wider range of job opportunities and more effective union organization. No less than in Munro and Mclntosh's carriage factory at the turn of the century, the work of men and women in Alexandria's plants today is a world apart from the everyday lives of the town's most influential citizens - especially those citizens who hold most firmly to the town's dominant culture of peaceableness and loyalty.

CHAPTER THREE

The World of Wage Labour

Alexandria's post-war industrial boom has generated more jobs than the town has ever known. The average wage in town has increased significantly since the 19405, improving the standard of living of local workers, increasing the size and quality of the housing stock, and generating good business along Main Street. These boom years reinforce the local view that Alexandria is a good place to live and that progress has equal benefits for all. The predominant view is that if some people do better than others, it is a result of their hard work and skill. Inequalities may exist, but they are not as severe as would be found in the city and not so great as to constitute social class division. Although it is historically true that the agricultural base and overall poverty of the region restricted the amount of wealth that could be accumulated by any one segment of the population, inequality has always been a feature of the social landscape of Glengarry, often reflected in and legitimized by the political regime. When commerce and industry developed late in the nineteenth century and villages such as Alexandria grew, social class divisions became particularly pronounced and rigid. It was still possible for Glengarrians of ambition to start up businesses or to emigrate and make fortunes elsewhere. But gradually, even in Glengarry, the transmission of wealth and privilege from one generation to another reinforced inequality. The development of the Munro and Mclntosh Carriage Works was a sign of the pattern of development across the industrializing world. The world of craftsmen was being supplanted by a factory system in which the labour of workers was purchased by entrepreneurs who then controlled the manufacturing process in all respects. The organization of work into a production line removed much of it from the kind of skill that was traditionally practised in carriage making,

73 The World of Wage Labour

and the pressure to produce quickly made for a work environment more tightly disciplined and controlled than any that had been experienced in the area. The shift from craft to production line also created in work "a thing apart" from what was once a more integrated human existence.1 The carriage factory and industries established in town since World War II built unprecedented sales on such an organization and discipline of work, as well as on wages lower than urban rates.2 Production in any free-market system inevitably entails a profoundly unequal meeting of labour and capital. White-collar and blue-collar workers have formal democratic rights in the political arena and increased choice as consumers, but choice and democracy are all but absent during the eight hours or so that they labour for wages or salaries. What freedom the worker can gain in social and political activity is stripped away at the job.3 The inequality between worker and manager is built into the way production is organized in a free-market economy. Free enterprise engenders whole sectors of the economy that depend on cheap and flexible labour and that employ women and members of racial minority groups to meet their requirements. Their reliance on these "reserve armies" of labour in turn entrenches gender and racial inequality in society at large. An examination of power and inequality in any community requires attention not only to the political arena, then, but also to social and economic arenas. Not only do relationships at work constitute power relations in their own right, but they also shape the standing of people in the broader community. The world of manufacturing provides ample illustration of the ways in which most of the town's wage earners are dominated by those who control the productive process, particularly because investors can move to other municipalities. In this analysis of paid work, I aim to penetrate the superficial images of benign progress in Alexandria, examining the everyday world of work to reveal how social-class differences are experienced by the men and women in the labour force. Work in this town has many of the discontents associated with labour in larger communities, and even though the relationship between labour and management is more peaceable than in many city counterparts, it is not as friendly as is commonly believed. There is, to be sure, more social contact across class lines in a small town such as this, but in some ways social barriers are more insurmountable than in large urban areas. For all that Glengarry lore is filled with stories of ambitious men of modest backgrounds finding success in the great world beyond the county's boundaries, the typical experience of the post-

74 A Small Town in Modern Times

war years is for the most talented of working-class children to compete only for working-class jobs, while modestly talented middleclass children go on to university and attain middle-class occupations. OVERVIEW OF MANUFACTURING

The industrial boom that accelerated after 1960 created a wide range of manufacturing jobs. At the time of the 1986 census, 32% of the working population residing in the town were in manufacturing work, as compared with 22% of the province as a whole. A survey conducted in 1984 by Le Point counted 1192 jobs in local industry, as compared to 634 in the commercial sector and 185 in the service sector.4 As in the rest of the province, work in the manufacturing sector can be thought of as a spectrum between two distinct categories primary and secondary.5 In the primary labour market, wages are relatively good, jobs fairly secure, working conditions reasonable, and labour unions firmly established. Firms are usually large; work generally centres on expensive and complex machinery; and the pressure to keep up with technological progress is substantial. In the secondary market, firms are usually smaller, wages much lower, working conditions poorer, jobs more insecure, and management more traditional in techniques and less constrained by unions. Employees in the primary sector are mostly male and in the secondary are either female or from racial ethnic minorities. Two large categories of workers in Alexandria share a number of the characteristics of the secondary labour market - garment workers and shoe makers. Although the two shoe factories in town employ a number of men, the sewing and stitching involved in the production of garments and shoes are almost always done by women, considerably skilled in their work but among the lowest paid labourers in the area. Alexandria's secondary labour market was exploited before industries in the primary market were established, as firms in large cities such as Montreal encountered labour shortages and began looking farther afield. Apart from the two shoe plants, most of Alexandria's large plants tend more toward the characteristics of the primary labour market than the secondary, although small-town economies such as this one seldom have very large and technologically advanced firms. The production lines in Alexandria's primary-sector firms are dominated by large and costly machines, such as at Carnation and Consoltex, with fewer workers per unit of output than in the secondary labour

75 The World of Wage Labour

market. The investment in machinery and the reduction of labour, however, is not as great as in the automobile, steel, and petrochemical industries and the wage levels not nearly as high. The first wave of Alexandria's post-war industrial boom, then, arose from the transfer of production in the secondary market from large urban areas to places farther afield. The second wave has arisen from the transfer of small and medium-size firms in the primary market, some of them seeking cheaper and more docile labour, pushed even further in that search by political changes in the province of Quebec. WORK IN THE PRIMARY LABOUR MARKET

The expansion of the primary labour market, as already indicated in the previous chapter, has entailed two sorts of developments. One is that a few local firms have grown by capturing large regional markets; Glengarry Transport and Alexandria Moulding have each employed up to 200 local people in recent years (though less than that at the end of the 19805); Lanthier's bakery provides jobs for up to 150 people in the manufacture and delivery of bread (only the production staff being in the direct employ of the company). All three businesses are family-owned, and stamped by the personalities of the family members who run them. The second development has been that of outside firms shifting investment to Alexandria; Carnation now employs up to 125, Consoltex close to 150, the two shoe plants combined up to 300 (though less at the end of the decade), Farley Windows about 140, and a number of smaller industries less than 50 each. Almost all of the production work in the primary sector is done by men, most of it organized in production lines in which the most complex tasks are handled by machines. Labour is concentrated on feeding and maintaining this equipment, and on handling the material that emerges at the downstream end of it. The investment in more sophisticated machinery and specialization of product output over the last two decades have important consequences for the character of work and for the way it is supervised. In exploring the world of work in this sector, we look in particular through the eyes of one man - Denis Quesnel. Although at the time of interviewing he had become a "group leader" - a step below foreman - he still spent most of his time doing what he had done throughout his career at Lanthier's - tending the machines that prepare dough, bake bread, and wrap loaves. The work that he does is in many ways similar to the work done in other plants, and his

76 A Small Town in Modern Times

story of growing up and finding work is similar to the stories that could be told by countless of his counterparts in other plants. Most of the men who tend machines in Alexandria's industries grew up in working-class or farm families, with only a narrow range of options thought open to them. Denis Quesnel was born in 1957, the youngest of six children. Like the others in his family, he didn't expect anything other than an ordinary job. When I hit fifteen, I started working part-time at the bakery. I would work after school, maybe a total of ten or fifteen hours a week for the first year. My older brother had started there and it just so happened that I was looking for a summer job and he mentioned it to the foreman. I worked on the pastry side, like cleaning pails and stuff like that from applesauce and raisins and filling for pies. In the early years, it was a lot of bull work. They figure it's the youngest ones who think they know everything, so "well, we'll give them the dirtiest job to do." I didn't really like that. Even today, if I had a choice to go back to school or go to work, I would take work. I never caught on to school. Besides, the money was getting better as I went. I was at the age when I wanted a car; I didn't want to go to school anymore; and I wanted to start working. I didn't expect to be an airline pilot or a social worker. I didn't expect to be anything out of the ordinary. By then, all the others in the family were out of school.

In the kind of family that Denis grew up in, there was little sense of choice about future life and little sense of control over the present. Making ends meet was a real and constant struggle, not the artificial self-induced struggle that middle-class families talk about. There is little sense of nostalgia for childhood; growing up was quick, without the prolongation of adolescence that middle-class offspring are often able to effect. One of the people interviewed by Lillian Rubin, in her masterful study of working-class families, said about his teen-age years: [Going] to college was never discussed. It never occurred to me to think about it. That was something other kids - rich kids - did. All I knew was that I'd have to work, and I didn't think much about what kind of work I'd be doing. There didn't seem much point in thinking about it, I guess.6

Denis Quesnel could easily have said the same thing. To plan for the future to the extent of imagining a stint at college as preparation for a career depends on the individual having a notion of being able to control his or her fate, and it is precisely that sense of choice and

77 The World of Wage Labour optimism that is most absent in working-class upbringing. In the midst of a daily struggle to survive, as Rubin says, "of what can children dream?"7 When the boys in such working-class families work part-time after school, it is usually not to save up for college or to buy "extras," but to supplement the family income or to get the only pocket money they will have access to. Work becomes the centre of existence for most men, regardless of class, but it happens earlier for workingclass adolescents than for middle-class. It is not unusual for young men in Denis's position, recently out of school, to move between jobs seeking out better pay and more appealing work. They only gradually reconcile themselves to what is available, recognizing that most jobs that are realistically attainable are routine and require modest skill levels. One job seems as good, or as bad, as another. After I had been [at Lanthier's] four or five years, I decided I wanted to try and get my apprenticeship as an auto mechanic. I always liked working on engines. I had re-wired my own car, and I'd do all the mechanical work on it. I knew it was something easy for me to learn and I would be good at it. I went and saw this guy - this was in June - and he told me, "I'll be needing an apprentice in September; you come back in September and for sure I'll take someone." So I quit - figured I would take two months off and then work for this guy. Come September, he says "I'm sorry, but there is no work." So I got left holding the bag. Then I went back to Lanthier's and lasted about a year-and-a-half. After that I started to work beside the arena - they called it Elegance - kitchen cupboard manufacturer. But they went bankrupt, because their main plan in Valleyfield burned, and this plant was too small for them to survive. So everybody there was put out of work. After that, I went to Bordeaux's in North Lancaster - meatshop. I was there approximately six months. It wasn't paying all that good, so I was just there until something else came up with better pay. Then about six months after I'd been there, I called in to Cholette's - Alexandria Moulding. I was there about two months; I got laid off because they didn't have enough work. That's five years back - 1977. I started back at the bakery in 1978, for the third time. At the time, they were stuck for a man and needed somebody with experience, and they didn't have time to train the next fellow up. I knew the foreman, and managed to get in. What I liked about the place at the time was job security. You were sure of a job twelve months a year. Everybody needs food, and that's what we were making. It's like everything else, though, it's a job and you need a

78 A Small Town in Modern Times job to survive. It's work there or work somewhere else, as long as the money is good. You go work somewhere else and it becomes just a job too, once you learn everything.

Family connections play an important role in getting into a particular job. Young people looking for work can often get a job more easily if they come from a family thought to be "good workers." They are also likely to be attracted to a job where they will be near family members and friends. The jobs available in the primary labour market remain largely restricted to men - perhaps even more so now than in the past. At Lanthier's and Consoltex, for example, there is a semi-official policy of not hiring women for production work. At the time when the Consoltex plant did weaving as well as converting, the payroll included a substantial number of women, but now only a few remain. In Denis Quesnel's view, the exclusion of women at Lanthier's makes little sense. They say "women couldn't do the job." I think it's a lot of bull. I could see maybe a few jobs, because it's heavy lifting - over a hundred pounds. But I think there's women that could do maybe half the jobs. To me if you're there to work, it wouldn't matter to me if it be male or female, as long as the work gets done. A woman could do my job probably just as well as I could do it. A lot of men, their pride would be hurt - that's why they'd say a woman can't do the job.

Of the capital-intensive firms in Alexandria, only Carnation has a policy of opening up jobs traditionally thought of as men's work to women, in part because of a head-office policy decision in the United States, but perhaps also because the plant has moved into production-line work that is thought more suitable for women (work involving packaging small envelopes of powdered milk product). The half dozen or so women now in the plant faced a complex set of challenges when first hired, as the following account by a former worker suggests. The work is very menial. There's one job where you're bagging off from this big dryer - dehydrated product. And the bags are eighty pounds, so you're lifting eighty pounds, which is very difficult especially for a woman. Now there was one girl who was used to throwing bails of hay, so it's nothing for her to do it. But I just about died. The most I ever lifted was my children. And this was to lift them five high. I was determined not to

79 The World of Wage Labour ask for help at that point. But there were quite a few who would come over and help you when you were on your fifth row. I would never ask, but if they offered ... And there were quite a few of the men who resented having women in there at first. For the first year or so, they were all polite enough not to say anything, but then you hear things. Some said they wished the women didn't have to bag, and would get lesser pay for their week. There's a lot of pressure on the women to do their job well, whereas there isn't as much on the men. They can do what they want, but if a woman sits down she's picked on. Men tend to get away with a lot more with the foremen. And they expect the women to do the cleaning up a little. We really resented that at first, but we did it because we wanted to keep our jobs and we just assumed that was part of the job. After you're there a year or two you see that the men aren't doing this, and are getting by just fine. But there are certain times when it's a little rough. You have to take a lot of their humour. I was a little nervous at the start - a few practical jokes. But I think any rookie would get that. A couple of men were real flirty types, and I really had problems with them. There was a little bum-slapping. But among a hundred and five men, there's always going to be a certain number of jerks.

This sort of initiation process is very much defined by traditional male standards of physical endurance and mental "toughness," so that women entering the plant must learn to adapt to what amount to male standards of behaviour. If they succeed, they seem to be accepted, although in most plants they are not even given the opportunity to try. Work in the primary labour market is centred on machinery that sets the speed of work. The cost of that machinery often requires multiple shifts so as to maximize its use. Overtime is also common, since a sudden expansion of demand for the plant's product must be met by making yet more intensive use of the machinery at hand. Denis Quesnel's work experience provides illustrations of the extent to which his labour and that of his colleagues is focused on and determined by machinery. I started as general help. They started training you on simple machines. You worked at the end of the bagger: you're bagging the bread, and you got to put the bread in the trays. From there, they show you how to operate that machine. Then, they'll switch around and go to the next machine, and it's a little bit more difficult. And then you move up. The first period I worked at the bakery I was able to operate all the machines except two -

80 A Small Town in Modern Times except the mixers, the two hardest. When they take you on as machine operator, if you don't know the machine, they give you two week's training with another operator. I prefer working as a machine operator than a helper. The money for an operator is about fifty cents an hour more than for a helper, and it seems to me that you don't work that much as an operator. You just make sure that the machine is running. As a machine operator, the machine is working for you; but as a helper, you are like part of the machine. We have a plant schedule that you got to follow. A batch of dough has to come out every fifteen minutes. If you don't follow that, the afternoon shift is late. And then what happens is you come in the next morning and you can't catch up. It's very important to stay on time. When a machine breaks down, it has to be repaired right away. When the oven is hot, it holds thirty-two hundred loaves of bread when it's full. When it stops, you don't want that burning, so you got to be on the ball. You got not even five minutes to get it going. You always have to be on your guard. For example, after we have our break, no matter what, the oven has to go, because after a while if the oven is stopped it could catch fire. A major break-down is one that stops production for an hour - might be once every three months, six months. I don't like the shift I'm on -1 start at 1130 in the morning and I get home ten, eleven, twelve noon - it depends on the days. For the summer, it's not bad - you start early in the morning and finish before it's too hot. But it's hard to get up in the morning. I wish it would be six or eight in the morning to two or four in the afternoon - something like that. Now, I get maybe four hours sleep at night. Sometimes, I sleep maybe three hours in the afternoon, and you get up and you are tired and drowsy and you come to eight o'clock at night and you go back to bed, and you get up and you are still drowsy. It's not like sleeping eight hours straight, getting up, and having a clear mind. The shift toward more specialized capital-intensive production that has been characteristic of most of Alexandria's plants subordinates workers more clearly than ever to the machines they operate. In the early 19705, Lanthier's bakery dropped the pastry department, limiting the range of production lines and the range of materials over which they needed to maintain expertise. (That move also eliminated most of the women among the production staff.) The simplification of production and investment in new machinery greatly increased productivity, and might well have threatened a reduction in labour force except that a dramatic expansion of markets in Cornwall, Ottawa, and even west-island Montreal has meant that the production staff has stayed about the same size.

8i The World of Wage Labour

Specialization has placed firms in a better position to compete in highly pressured markets. With the narrow range of products, though, comes the risk of sudden collapse of sales. In the early 19805, for example, the market for the product specialized in by the Consoltex plant declined by close to 50%, though lay-offs were averted by a work-sharing program sponsored by the federal government. The specialization of the Carnation plant has meant that it, too, is subjected to lay-offs of up to 35 workers resulting from seasonal variations in demands for its products. At Lanthier's bakery, as Denis Quesnel indicates, the training period for all the production-line work except the operation of the mixer is two weeks - less if an operator has been a helper before that. As investment in new and more sophisticated machinery proceeds, as it must for the bakery to retain or expand its competitive position, most of the tasks required on the production line will be simplified even further. The maintenance of machinery will be transferred more exclusively to those trained especially for that task, with more and more repair work moved to highly specialized locales out of town. Talk of using more computer-aided machinery has already begun in the plant, and although employees would have to adapt to new routines, it is doubtful that the adaptation would entail an increase in overall skill level. The other plants in the primary sector have undergone similar transformations over the years. The Consoltex plant's specialization in dyeing and finishing large rolls of nylon fabric has allowed it to acquire increasingly sophisticated machinery, which either soaks fabric in dye or feeds rolls of material through the various steps required to apply a finishing coat. Most of the employees, who are machine operators, can learn to keep their machines going in about a week (although to be good at it may take a few months). Any single worker may have two, three, or four machines to tend, an increase over earlier times that reflects the growing simplicity of operating more complex machines. Since production at Carnation has not been as uniformly transformed by technology, a good deal of hand work remains. There are various production lines, each connected either to a different kind of dried milk product or to a different stage in manufacture. The modest size of some production runs means that operations are less modernized than they might be in larger plants, although some jobs are being threatened by technological change. If the glass line on which Coffee Mate is bottled is modernized, one person may well do the job that used to be done by four. Not all such change eliminates jobs, but one seasoned employee could imagine the day

82 A Small Town in Modern Times

when the same level of production could be sustained by less than half of the existing employees. There's an older fellow responsible for supplies about to retire; he may be replaced by a computer. There's three people like that, who haven't been replaced. I hear from maintenance that there's a lot more automation. I would think that's a real fear.

Even more than the sort of technological change characteristic of several of Alexandria's plants, shift work symbolizes the subordination of human existence to wage labour. Lanthier's always operates two shifts, with a third shift often mounted during the summer months to cope with the augmented demand for hot dog and hamburger buns. Denis Quesnel works during what for him are unnatural hours, disrupting the sleep that he needs to restore himself for work and family responsibilities. Some of the men, however, like the evening and night shifts better than days, in part because supervision is sometimes more lax and the "big bosses" are no longer around. Some, too, are able to fit a night shift into their routine lives. But most of the workers on the floor at Lanthier's and other plants have to change shifts regularly - usually every week so that they are no sooner accustomed to one daily rhythm than they have to alter it drastically. In an analysis focusing on the lot of women in a working-class community, Meg Luxton pointed to the difficulties faced by the men on shift work and their wives. Workers on weekly rotating shifts cannot sleep properly and their eating patterns are disrupted. The result is general irritability, headaches, constipation and a host of other physical ailments. The social and psychic effects are more elusive.8

One of the women Luxton interviewed complained that shift work was a constant reminder that her husband's work came first. The family, she said, could never settle into a pattern. Overtime is often added to shift work at Lanthier's and a few other plants. Although most men relish the opportunity to earn more money, overtime can also be a disruption. The pressure to work beyond ordinary hours is most common at Lanthier's during the summer, a time when it is least welcome. The older employees, who have been working 10 hours a day during the summer for 25 or 30 years, may well be accustomed to it, but few seem really to like it. As one worker comments, "When we have to make two hours overtime every day, it's tough. You work ten hours in front of the oven, at a hundred and ten degrees!"

83 The World of Wage Labour

Although it is their work and their lives that are affected by the deployment and re-deployment of machinery, the workers who tend those machines have no say in the decisions about new investment and very little about how work is organized. In the 19805, the decisions made by the management and headquarters of the plants in Alexandria appear to have paid dividends, contributing to the maintenance and, in a few cases, the growth of demand for labour. But without a say in what happens, workers in these plants are often uneasy about technological change and all too mindful of their own vulnerability. The money earned by Alexandrians for this work is a far cry from the wage levels of large manufacturing plants closer to the technological leading edge, but it is high by local historical standards. The best manufacturing wages in town are at Carnation and Glengarry Transport, averaging around $13.00 an hour, about $1.50 higher than at Lanthier's and Alexandria Moulding and close to $3.00 higher than at Consoltex. The benefits packages are also better and, at Carnation in particular, the working atmosphere less pressured. Wage differentials within most of these plants are modest, even supervisory staff earning only slightly higher incomes than production workers do.9 The narrowness of the range is partly a reflection of the similarity in skill levels between most of the jobs performed on the production lines; however, it also reflects the preference of union locals, interested in reducing the divisions within a plant by bargaining for a simplification of job classifications and a narrowing of wage ranges. Although the wage levels in local plants are lower than those in comparable urban factories, the character of the work itself is not categorically different. It is hard work, often numbingly routine, with almost unending pressure to keep up production levels. Denis Quesnel likes the job he now has, finding satisfaction in solving the puzzles that present themselves to him, but recognizes that most of the work in the plant is unappealing. In the Alexandria plant, we make the bread, hot dog buns, hamburger buns, dinner rolls. In the other plant [since burned down] they make the whole wheat bread, the kaiser rolls, raisin bread - all the odd breads. They don't put out the amount that we put out in products. What they do in eight hours down there we could do in four in Alexandria. We've got the speed machines. Within one day, like today, they're looking at maybe 14,000 dozens of hamburger buns and 40,000 loaves of bread. As a bagger - they don't wrap it that fast now - but they could wrap a bread-and-a-half or a bread-and-a-quarter a second. So the guy working at the end of that has to be rolling pretty good. And the oven - you've got

84 A Small Town in Modern Times fifty loaves of bread coming out every thirty-five seconds. It takes hours to get the line going, but then that line keeps going. The guy at the end of the machine, he has to keep up with the machine putting the bread in the trays. And it's boring because you're just standing there and moving your arms back and forth. And you do that for eight hours. And things can happen. A guy that went off a while ago got three fingers chopped off by a machine. He said he was lucky he didn't have his whole hand there. He had his eye on the machine and he pulled his hand out a little late - he didn't make it in time. Not very nice to see. I see some guys - they could be pulling out a rack - and the rack is heavy, and they get their hands caught between two racks. Each rack has two hundred twentyfive loaves of bread - a pound-and-a-quarter each. So you're looking at three hundred and fifty pounds just bread; then you got the pans, about five pounds apiece; then you got the rack itself which might weigh about a hundred and fifty pounds. So there are quite a few accidents. It's hot, too, near the oven. I think they hide the thermometer on us so we won't see, but I know in the winter when it's ten, fifteen degrees below [fahrenheit], right in front of the oven its ninety degrees. When I say in front of the oven, I'm talking about ten or fifteen feet. In the summer, I'd say it might be a hundred and fifteen or a hundred and twenty degrees. It takes certain people that could take the heat, because I've seen some people, they try, and they pretty well pass out in the first hour.

At all of the plants in this sector, there are jobs that are physically demanding. Heat, a major difficulty at Lanthier's, is also a problem for some of the work at Consoltex and Carnation. One Carnation employee comments, The worst job of all is cleaning the dryer. You go in there and it's about a hundred and ten degrees, and you've got to sweep it down, and scrape the stuff off with a chisel - you get Coffee Mate that's caked on. That's a killer job, though you get to take lots of breaks.

Heavy lifting is entailed in some of the jobs in all of the primary sector plants. In some plants, there are loads sufficient to cause back trouble, and at Carnation there have been grumblings about the plant exceeding provincial stipulations about the maximum weight that employees should be routinely lifting. As one employee says, One hard job is where you're in an incredibly noisy place - you're bagging off from this big dryer - dehydrated product. And the bags are eighty pounds. They rotate that job - you might get that every second week, and only two hours for that day. But there's another job with seventy pound

85 The World of Wage Labour bags that people do for eight hours, and after eight hours of that, you're tired. People wreck their backs over the years.

Other industrial safety issues exist at virtually all of the plants. One of Lanthier's other employees echoes Denis Quesnel's comments, indicating that the pressure to produce often leads to corners being cut despite official policies about safe operations of machines. You forget how dangerous machines can be. You're so used to working with machines, and they may not necessarily be unsafe, you make it unsafe. You remove a guard because it gives you more room or because it's faster, and then you just live with it. A foreman might say "put it back," but then as soon as he leaves you take it off. We have a lot of part-time students, and they don't get the proper training, as far as proper procedures and safety are concerned. Once you get in there, you want to do your eight or ten hours - you want to do the best job you can - you don't have time [for proper procedures] - you find excuses.

The cleanliness required in a food processing plant such as Carnation also means that some employees are being repeatedly exposed to toxic cleaning compounds. "It's strong stuff; it goes in to you; and over the years it does damage." At Consoltex, some departments use strong, smelly chemicals, the finishing department suffering from both smells and excessive heat that are especially intense because fire hazards require that the area be closed in. Tedium is the most pronounced feature of the production-line work in most of these plants. Even at Carnation, the plant with the most variety of tasks and the most frequent rotation between tasks, the work can be unspeakably tedious. As one employee remarks, The majority of time when you first start is spent on what's called the bartelts, which is the packaging. That tends to be the least seniority people. It's incredibly boring, and it takes all you have just to keep your mind alive. You're taking boxes off a belt, loading them with hot chocolate, putting them back on the belt, taking two or more boxes off the belt. There are four people assigned to that, so you shift every half hour. It's hard to talk because the machines are on - if you do, you get a headache.

The work on these production lines is highly subdivided, involving only modest levels of skill, and having little sense of connection with a final product. It has almost no intrinsic interest and little potential for creativity. Over the years, this and other productionline work takes a serious toll that is hard to measure, but evident enough to one worker still relatively new to the job.

86 A Small Town in Modern Times People who have been there for twenty-five years; it's like they're dead or something. It must take quite a toll after twenty, twenty-five years - a lot of lost hopes.

Even if the character of work in the primary-sector plants in Alexandria is not much different from work in city plants of similar size, labour relations are different. The ideology of "getting along" and avoiding open conflict is stronger, for one thing, especially among older workers. In addition, the value attached to working hard may be more ubiquitous in a small town with rural roots than in a large city, particularly in an area such as Glengarry, where for generations people have had to work extremely hard to keep up with the bare essentials. Management is sometimes accorded more respect in a small town like this one than in most urban plants. A special kind of deference is often given to local entrepreneurs. Most residents know people who have tried to make a living from a small business, a farm, or a craft, and because of that direct personal contact, they often come to accept the legitimacy of "making a living" out of business. The very idea of profit is questioned in some Canadian labour circles, but not much in Alexandria. The case may be clearest in attitudes toward local entrepreneurs who have done well. The family owners of the town's domestic industries - the Cholette brothers of Alexandria Moulding, the Lanthiers of the bakery, and the Lefebvres of Glengarry Transport - are accorded considerable standing in the community, especially because each of their businesses grew from modest beginnings. The respect and admiration accorded such people are protected within their own work force by their not being in the front lines of supervision. It is not managers but foremen who discipline workers or complain of mistakes. Managers are "upstairs," grappling with the financial complexities and competitive pressures involved in operating a business. Because they operate behind the scenes, they can be surrounded by a certain mystique. (Local owners can sometimes engender mixed reactions from employees, though, in response to the stubbornness often characteristic of private or family-based ownership - an unwillingness to genuinely accept the rights of workers to organize collectively and a resistance to worker pressure of any sort.) Outside investors and managers are sometimes granted a degree of grudging respect by plant workers, because of the vote of confidence represented by investment in the local area. Many workers

87 The World of Wage Labour

are all too conscious of the choices open to investors and recognize that profitability is a prerequisite to the maintenance of jobs. Even if local workers have reason to complain about management in these firms, they have a hazier target than do workers in locally owned firms. From the perspective of a shop floor in Alexandria, the organization may well be a faceless one, run by distant figures known only in the faintest of outlines. The major decisions affecting what is produced are usually made elsewhere, with the local plant superintendent acting only as an implementor, in some ways caught in the middle. Carnation is an example, with authority over production decisions and labour relations highly centralized in either the Toronto or the Los Angeles headquarters. This sense of distance creates the potential for more acrimonious labour relations than in locally owned plants, but that potential is moderated by the fact that large national or multi-national firms are sometimes more professional in dealing with labour than family-owned firms are, and more accustomed to the sorts of demands that may emerge in the collective bargaining process. The respect accorded to management by local workers does have its limits. The local management of firms owned by outsiders are likely to be outsiders themselves, perhaps arriving only recently from other plants in their companies' networks, and often living outside of the town itself. In many ways they are aliens to much of their work force, no matter how congenial or clever they may be. Speaking of one plant manager, a production worker comments, "He gets along, but he's not on a friendly basis with the guys: he's up here and you're down here and he doesn't come down that much." Workers often think of shop floor supervisors as having crossed a crucial and irreversible divide that separates management and labour. As a group leader, Denis Quesnel occupies something of a middle ground between ordinary workers and supervisors at Lanthier's. In my position, as group leader, there's a lot expected from me from both sides. Some of the employees - they will be afraid to talk to the foreman, so I'm the messenger boy in between. They're having trouble and before they get the foreman they'll come and get me, and three-quarters of the time I am able to help. The foreman may come up and there is a pile of bread three feet high, and the machine has stopped or is jammed, and he'll get down the guy's back and say "What the hell's going on; why isn't your machine running; what happened; it doesn't break down by itself." They

88 A Small Town in Modern Times know I'm not like that. I'm in the union like them, so they come and get me. And we get things going again, hide the buns under the machine! Then I'll go in the back and re-make some. I don't want the job of foreman - they know that. I figure I have enough responsibility - there's not much difference in pay between a foreman and what I am doing now. I think, too, a lot of guys figure you go to foreman and you've turned against them. Then they see a difference; they figure, "He is foreman now; he is my boss." As soon as you put the word "boss" in somebody, well it's like you're in jail and they are the warden coming around. I get the impression that the foremen are afraid to give out warnings. Because if they give out warnings, then they're going to get a bad relationship with the employees. What would happen is - let's say a foreman would come up and give you a warning. The following day, I could guarantee that the employee would foul up - he'd just keep his eye on that foreman for a full day, and if he just stepped out of line once you'd have a grievance with that foreman. This would drag on and on. In any plant, relations can be particularly strained with personnel brought in from the outside. An employee in one local plant comments on some past supervisory appointments. They foolishly hired a few men off the street and made them foremen. They didn't want to pay experienced workers and then train them on the job. It is just not a good system. You can't expect the respect of employees having someone off the street telling you how to do your job. It is easier to take an order from a man who you figure is at least your peer or above - if he has worked his way all the way up and we know him. In most town plants, though, the relationship between workers and their immediate supervisors is more relaxed than in city plants. There is a lot of kidding and good natured bantering, and supervisors generally act with a light touch. Carnation, with the lowest turnover of any plant in town and therefore the most experienced work force, may have the most easy-going atmosphere. Most of the work is done efficiently by people who know what work has to be done, and they are able to relax a little. The foremen are pretty good on the 3:00-11:00 - they'll let you bring a book. As long as your machine is going, you can read. In the daytime, they don't like it too much, because you get lots of visitors. But 3:00-11:00 after 5:00 once the big wheels have left - they don't say nothing. There's

89 The World of Wage Labour lots of freedom - you're not tied down. You've got to watch your machine, but you can talk to whoever you want.

Many supervisors, particularly those who have risen through the ranks, have relatives and friends in the plant with whom they have social relations outside of work. In some cases, a foreman may find it hard to discipline a friend or cousin, but generally the workers and supervisors do not find the closeness of ties between them problematic. Most workers much prefer to be supervised by someone familiar. A worker comments on his foremen. Foremen often don't have to say too much. Some foremen push; others don't so much. You can't go faster than your machine. I get along with the foremen; most of them I play sports with. You'll get some guys who think they know more than guys who have been here thirty years, but you get those kinds of guys everywhere.

Says another worker, I have a foreman I have gone fishing with. I worked for him for thirteen years. We had to just realize that he has his job to do and he was not there to do us favours. After so many years, he knows you know your job and so he leaves you alone.

Even when staff are experienced and local, however, the relaxation of supervision is severely bounded and is conditional on workers keeping up with their machines and maintaining what the management regards as appropriate production levels. Once the speed and manning levels around a machine are established, supervision is essentially determined by the machinery itself. At Carnation, for example, production quotas are established for each shift, and each hour the foremen know whether production is up to speed or not. This presents little difficulty during the autumn and winter, but hot weather makes the products stickier and quotas harder to meet. There have been attempts at speeding up production overall, some of them successful. On Friday night, no one wants to work 'till 11:00. We'd be doing "sixtwelve" - six bags of instant milk in a box, and twelve boxes in a big container. The foreman would say, "if you can do fifty boxes extra, you can leave at 10:00, and we'll fix your card for 11:00." Well, that was great everybody was sweating and going. We're used to sixty-two an hour, so four hundred and eighty or five hundred a shift - they figures we could do

go A Small Town in Modern Times that in seven hours. So that was all fixed. But he wasn't doing us a favour: now they do five hundred and sixty-two in a shift. We were mad, but you can't do nothing. And that's all hand work. You come back home and you're dead.

One of the clearest indications that Alexandria's industrial workers recognize a group interest distinct from management is the extent to which they have organized themselves into union locals. One after another, workers in almost all major plants in town have won the right to union representation, usually in the face of management hostility. The sense of insecurity that was especially characteristic of the town's industrial base until the 19605 delayed the mobilization of pressure to unionize, and the experience of unionization at Sacony's in the mid-1950s heightened fear of the consequences of organizing. From the 19605 onward, considerable insecurity remained, based on fears about foreign competition and on the recognition that most outside-owned firms could pull out of town relatively easily. But the climate of opinion has changed, and a sense of job security has increased. The Carnation plant in Alexandria was the first of the company's Canadian plants to be unionized, and the union local there is also the longest standing continuous collective bargaining unit in town. Before the certification of a bargaining unit, Carnation's management had many of the habits of employers in non-unionized companies today. Plant workers would sometimes be paid noticeably different rates for the same sorts of jobs and would get different raises. Workers were encouraged to keep their wages secret ("Here's a five per cent raise, keep it under your hat"); hiring and laying off were also marked by favouratism. There was widespread fear of retaliation in response to any attempt to unionize, one long-time employee recalling that "you just had to mention the word 'union' and you were fired." Still, workers did take the first careful steps, as one long-time employee recalls. The union was organized in 1963. Someone made contact with the Brewery Workers union - inquired around town about which union would be best; there was someone in the plant who knew somebody who knew somebody else in the breweries' union in Toronto. In March '63, a few people got together and started talking about it in the plant. So we contacted Toronto. In three days, we signed up everybody in the plant - a little over a hundred people. Someone from the union came down to meet us at the beginning, explained what we had to do. He signed us up at that time. Signing up other people was left up to the three of us. Very positive reaction. We hit

91 The World of Wage Labour the people we figured were most favourable first - we figured over fifty per cent - then the others. There was only one who really resisted. A couple of others we were scared to approach; we avoided them. Then in May we got a notice from the Department of Labour. Until then no one knew everyone really clammed up. The superintendent was shocked.

The relative ease in organizing Carnation was partly due to the small size of the town and the interconnectedness of the plant workers. A union official compares this kind of setting with others. In a big city, when you're organizing a plant, you're more likely to have a wide range of opinion about unions and about everything else, whereas in a small town where everybody knows everybody else, quite often a consensus can develop more easily. A small town is a more homogeneous community; the employees in a plant are more homogeneous. Some guy in a plant in Toronto may live in Mississauga, the guy next to him in Scarborough, the guy next to him in North York - miles away from one another. In a small town, you see the people you work with on a casual basis outside of work.

A few years after the 1963 organization of Carnation, and with the help of a few of that plant's workers, Consoltex employees unionized with the Amalgamated Textile Workers, already firmly rooted in the Cornwall area. A few years after that, workers at both Lanthier's and Alexandria Moulding joined the Teamsters. The support for unions in plants already unionized is strong. Unionization is thought to have generated a substantial improvement in wage and benefit packages, and to have significantly narrowed the room for arbitrary styles of management. Even though the union membership in most plants is inactive between negotiation rounds, most of the locals in Alexandria sustain a high level of activity and commitment in comparison to that in other similar-sized towns (in the view of union organizers with experience in a large number of small manufacturing communities). In a few of the plants, there have been contests for union leadership, some fought with spirit. It is not unknown for over 90% of a plant's union membership to vote in these elections and for levels of participation to be particularly high during negotiations for a new collective agreement. When the negotiating team, joined by an agent from the union's headquarters or regional office, meets with all employees to consider which proposals will be pressed for at the bargaining table, the atmosphere is often lively, with participation from a wide cross section of the membership.

92 A Small Town in Modern Times

Not all union locals are alike, of course. The array of issues raised at the bargaining table, the degree of consensus, and the extent of militancy varies from one plant to another in Alexandria, depending on the level of wages, the character of the industry, the length of time the union has been in the plant, and so on. One union organizer comments, Carnation has been unionized for a long time; the work force is quite stable and generally older; and it has a quite good and fairly solid collective agreement. The parties are fairly comfortable with the relationship - they have a set of understandings that they operate with. It's like a pair of comfortable shoes: you may have occasional problems with them, but you know where you stand with them.10

In contrast, two plants in town have more firmly entrenched reputations of militancy - Consoltex and Lanthier's - and both have had strikes punctuated by minor violence. A 1980 contract dispute at Consoltex was marked by a brief wildcat strike, followed by an official strike, centring on wages. It was a time when turnover was extremely high, reflecting relatively poor wages and bitter labourmanagement relations. Management was at times arbitrary and apparently reluctant to address even the most basic concerns about working conditions. According to one worker, We've had a lot of wildcat strikes. One time it was over the heat. One time it was one of the machines that was smoking. They complained to the company - complained and complained. Then finally, they just went out. Then they fired a girl one time, and the people on the floor figured she shouldn't be fired, so they walked out and got her job back. The plant is known for that, though the last while it seems better.

Lanthier's has a strike record similar to Consoltex. Some nonLanthier workers blame that company's confrontational labour relations record on the Teamsters union, echoing union rivalries that go far beyond the borders of Alexandria. Differences in union style may well have a role in exacerbating conflict at the bakery, but so, too, does the management style, described by more than one worker as "stubborn." Without knowing the Lanthier situation in particular, one experienced labour negotiator talked of labour relations in large companies often being easier than in small family-owned ones. Sometimes it makes it easier when you're'dealing with a very large company, if you get people who know what they're doing at a bargaining table. They're able to cut through the shit a lot faster and get to the point. Someone who's

93 The World of Wage Labour inexperienced may end up making the bargaining more difficult. I would rather deal with a professional guy who does this sort of thing for a living rather than a guy who comes in and says, "This is my plant, and I've got no experience in labour relations, but I'm going to run it."

Even in the plants thought most militant, however, members of the work force do not all share the same views about management and about strike action. Denis Quesnel has these observations, for example, about Lanthier's. There was a strike a few years ago -1 wasn't working there at the time - I was working at Cholette's - 1977 I think. The last contract, it went though by one vote; it's always close like that. You have fellows there that are dedicated to the company - they may have been there ten, twenty-five, thirty years - and you go and offer them nothing and they gladly accept it. They figure that we were good enough to have a job and we never had a job - this was our first job and all this. And then there's other people saying, "Well, we're just married and we're paying high mortgages and car payments and everything else, and with what it costs to live and all we need more." And the older person may have no payments - everything may be paid off - may have payments but not as much as the younger guy starting off. It looks to him as if he is making good money for what he has to pay. That's basically the reason why the vote is so close. And the worst part about it is that the company knows. They will say, "The guys are aiming for say one dollar an hour and the older guys will take maybe fifty cents," so they will give you fifty-five cents, and as long as there are just over half jumping at it, they're doing fine. The older guys will be happy because they think they are getting a good deal, and you've got the younger guys that are far from getting what they want. That's when it's really bitter, right after a contract going through like that.

The difficulty of confronting the strike option is evident in the reactions of these three workers, employed in three different plants. If I think about a strike personally, I am married with children on the way, and buying a house. We are an average company with an average salary. Mind you, there is room for improvement, but I don't see that a strike would gain it. Everybody loses in a thing like that. Clients begin to think that every two years there'll be the same damn thing; people don't get their proper service. A lot of people are hurt during a strike. Tempers run thin, in a small place, and there are fights within the union. There's always some who are never satisfied. There's always others who don't like the contract, but they sign for it, because they can't afford to go

94 A Small Town in Modern Times on strike. When you get in front of the table to sign - yes or no to strike you've got to think of lots of things. You've got a family, kids: how long's it going to last? It can last a day, a week, it can last six months. If your wife's working, it's not so bad; but lots of people, their wife's not working. The food's got to be on the table just the same. Today, you can't afford to go on strike - most of the companies don't give in no more. "You don't want to come back, that's it, we move, we close the door." It is harder to have a strike here [in Alexandria], 'cause your choice once you're all on strike is very limited. In the town of Alexandria, how far are you gonna go? Am I gonna take an odd job in Cornwall, where I'm gonna travel thirty miles to go there and then thirty miles to come back, and then go back thirty miles tomorrow again? No. If you're in the big city, then the selection is a lot bigger.

Differences in view provoked by concerns about lay-offs and plant closure were especially prevalent in the early and mid-1980s, when unemployment levels were higher (although in a town such as Alexandria, where downturns can occur as a result of decisions made by far-away head offices for reasons quite apart from overall business cycles, worries are constant). Divisions among workers are less pronounced when it comes to mobilizing against what are thought to be clear transgressions of normal management practices. Denis Quesnel has talked, for example, of the ways employees can get back at foremen who overstep normal bounds in telling them what to do; two workers at other plants have similar stories to tell. There was a trainee [brought in from the outside] who was starting - he was trying to show that he knew everything - and the only thing he knew was on the calculator - how many boxes an hour you're supposed to do. But a man is not a machine. A machine will work steady, and a man can only do so much. You're not as good at 2:00 in the afternoon as you are at 7:00 in the morning. He was trying to get too much out of the guys, and the first thing you know, they had a wildcat - everybody walked out, demanding that he leave. He left - they shipped him to Aylmer. One foreman we had there was a little cocky. If you want to push the guys and they don't like that, they'll put the blocks to you. There's lots of ways you can screw up your machine and say it's mechanical, and you can put the production way down. Then, the foreman hasn't produced what he can produce and it doesn't look very good. Each foreman has a record and has an area to look after. If his production isn't the same as the other foremen,

95 The World of Wage Labour there's something wrong. It's easy to fix these machines so you don't get production. And all those little things - the guy could fix it himself, instead of going down to the other end and getting the mechanic. If you start riding the guys, they'll just get worse.

Although labour relations are substantially softened by the closeness of ties among workers on the shop floor, by the personal contact with supervisors and some managers, and by the sense of vulnerability that permeates small-town business and industry, workers in most town plants have shown a willingness to defend their interests vigorously, even in the face of explicit or implicit threats from management about the security of jobs. But local labour cannot push the costs of labour over the levels that induce outside investment to town, except at the risk of losing jobs. WORK IN THE SECONDARY LABOUR MARKET

Another side of Alexandria's manufacturing growth has come from the postwar expansion of the low-waged and vulnerable secondary labour market, most of it in the needle trades. The two shoe factories together have employed up to 300, but are now closer to 200 as a result of heightened foreign competition. Brown Shoe is located opposite the hospital in the building originally built for Sacony's in the 19505; Alexandria Footwear built its own premises in the industrial park early in the 19805, moving from the Armouries on Main Street. Until quite recently, there were about the same number of women sewing garments as there were men and women stitching shoes, many of them working at home. From a high of about 200 late in the 19705, the number of garment sewers has decreased to about fifty, half of them at the small Regal Knitting factory in a deteriorating wartime building on Main Street. Most of the manufacturing jobs in the secondary labour sector are held by women, and even highly skilled work is paid at subsistence wages or below. The job security is less than in the primary sector and the protection from arbitrary management practices not as great. There are union locals in the two shoe plants, but they do not have the bargaining strength of the unions in the primary sector, in part a result of the constant pressure of foreign competition. Because much of the secondary market is women's work, it is less visible than work in the primary labour market. Because wages are low, and women are often asssumed to be earning "extra" money, jobs in this sector are often not thought to be real jobs. This is

96 A Small Town in Modern Times

especially true of part-time work and of work done in the home. When home sewing was as common as it was a decade ago, few townspeople had much sense of the extent of garment making in the area or of the poor wages and working conditions. The following claim by one influential resident is stark testimony to the low profile that the secondary labour market has. I don't think we have any low-paying industries, as such. There might be a couple that people say are low paying, but they are certainly all way above the minimum wage. Of course there is Glengarry Transport here, who pay fantastic wages, and the Carnation Company has fantastic wages also. This kind of sets a trend, so the people have a choice as to where they go. Often companies will seek out areas that are in less prosperous regions in order to lower the wages; but we don't expect anybody to work for nothing. Right off the bat, when these firms come up, we discourage them from any efforts to get cheap labour, produce for a while, and then take off again. We are a little choosy for our industries.

The needle trades have a long history in Alexandria. During and after the war, a series of garment makers and retailers sought skilled sewers and stitchers in the area. Some businessmen set up small plants; others contracted work out to women who sewed at home. One firm followed another, sometimes picking up the remnants of a firm gone bankrupt before it. With the notable exception of Sacony's, the garment firms that established in the area have been from Montreal, routinely shipping raw materials out to Alexandria and then taking back finished garments for sale and distribution in the city. The migration of needle-trade jobs to Alexandria has always been spurred by the search for cheap labour and looser constraints on management. As a result, Alexandria's secondary-sector manufacturing workers labour under conditions that are not much better than the sweat shops of the cities. The work life of Lucy Lavigueur, who for about 20 years worked as a sewer, most of that time at the Regal Knitting factory, provides a particularly close look at the difficult work life of women in the secondary labour market. My father worked on the railroad, and his grandfather before that. He laid track. We went to school here - went through grade eight, then I quit. The teacher said I really should be going to high school, which was true. I like to read and to learn; but anyway I quit. I had a lot of responsibilities at home. I had three brothers older than I

97 The World of Wage Labour am, one that's retarded a bit. The other two never took responsibility for anything. If my father would come home drunk, they wouldn't watch over my mother so he wouldn't do anything to her. So I kinda stayed behind all the time and I just got fed up with it, and I figured if I went to work then maybe a little bit of load would be off. At around seventeen, I went back to work [after an earlier job at Brown Shoes], for a small garment maker, cutting threads. It was a small shop and we had a lot of fun there. The boss was very nice - maybe that's why he didn't stay in business too long. I think he was from Montreal. I worked there for about two or three years, and still lived at home - paid eight dollars a week board. They laid us off after a while, and in those days you couldn't find work. There was Brown Shoe; there was the textile plant, which wasn't running really full blast at that time; and there was another shop - Glen Dress - in the same building where I am now. Who owned it, I don't know. I'd say there were fifty employees there, in that small place. At that time, I wasn't into sewing, I just wanted to cut the threads. But after I cut threads for a while, the supervisor asked if I would like to try the sewing machine. She needed sewing machine operators and there weren't that many around, so she asked if I wanted to try out, and I was good. You can usually tell if a girl will ever produce, just from the way she holds the material and handles the machine. I guess she thought I could, and I guess she was right. I liked the girls there. A lot of them were from Alexandria and had worked for the shop above the restaurant. But the floor lady was the type of person who didn't talk to anybody. She was boss. I went to work and that was it. I used to come home and I really didn't want to go back there. But the work was good; the pay was good for that time; and you couldn't get that much work in Alexandria. I worked there till after I was married and I was pregnant with my first child - 1967. I met Raymond for the first time on the bus we used to take to Cornwall, to the Bingo. I was eighteen when we were married. The year after, I was pregnant. Then I went to work at Lucky Legs - up at the old Armoury. It was big - a lot of people there. There must have been about two hundred employees there; it was really going for a while. I liked to work there. We made everything from pants to jackets to dresses; you name it, they had it. I stayed there for two years. Then I got operated on for gallstones, took a break, and went back. I knew all the floor ladies so there was no problem of getting my job back. Then I had my other child, and I didn't work for about two years after that. My husband was willing to go back to school then - went through for a welder's course. After that we moved, because there was no opening for welders in Alexandria. We lived in Deseronto for a while, and I got a job

98 A Small Town in Modern Times at Lee Jeans, but it was monotonous. I stayed there for about three months, and then got a job at the Quinte Beach nursing home - there was an opening in the laundry room. After we had Kelly, my third child, we moved to Ganonoque. Raymond got a job and was getting good wages so I didn't have to work. Then I got pregnant again, so there goes another two years. Now I was up to four kids, so I didn't work until Randy went to school. We came back to Glengarry - must be at least five, six years ago. We moved back to Alexandria when my husband got work in Green Valley. When we moved back into town I went to Regency [Regal Knitting], where I work now. I must have gone there four times before she hired me. So I went back the third time, she says "you really want to get in here." So she hired me in September and I've been there now for five years. You know what I'd really like, if I could over afford it? To go back to school. I would really like that. I'd have to finish my grade nine, ten, twelve, and then see. I'd like to get a chance to learn something. Not that I don't think that I have a good profession, because it is. But I think it's a profession that's declining. Right now, what would really interest me would be working with animals. I'd like that.

For most of those who work in the secondary labour market, growing up had the same absence of choice as for those who ended up working in the primary sector. Here, too, the memories of childhood are not especially fond ones. Not everyone faced the kind of family tension that Lucy Lavigueur did, but many did. Girls often bore heavy responsibilities from an early age for the household chores that their mothers could not bear alone. For girls (and their parents) getting married and living happily ever after was the only dream they allowed themselves. From the 19505 onward, most of Alexandria's working-class women expected to work for at least some time, often beginning well before the end of high school years. Some had no choice, needing to earn money to help the family meet expenses, and later needing to keep two incomes to handle the expenses of their own young families. As in Lucy Lavigueur's case, though, the jobs have to be worked around pregnancies, infant care, and the work of husbands, and jobs are often in unstable industries in which lay-offs are frequent. As in the primary sector, getting a job is made easier by having relatives or friends in one or another of the plants or in the home sewers network. But more than in the primary sector, getting a job in the secondary sector depends also on skill. Few employers are prepared to train sewers beyond a three-month period, and they

99 The World of Wage Labour

will insist on speedy work to ensure that they are "getting their money's worth." One sewer at Regal Knitting estimated that it can easily take two years to be fully trained, and then only with considerable dedication. Even for home work, it is not unusual for a contractor to find that for every five sewers taken on, only two end up being good enough to survive in the business. Some of the skilled work in the secondary market is done by men, for example the leather cutting and the operation of large machines in the shoe factories. Even though at Alexandria Footwear, a few women broke through the barriers surrounding some of the betterpaid jobs, because men's work is less interrupted by child rearing and child care than women's work is, the men in the secondary sector can gain more seniority and therefore more protection from the lay-offs that have recently afflicted the industry. Within an already disadvantaged sector, then, women are the most disadvantaged. As with work in the primary sector, shoe making and garment making are organized in production lines, with each individual operator performing a single task at any one time and the garment or shoe then passed on to the next operator. Shoe making is only rarely put out to home sewers, partly because the machinery is larger and more specialized and partly because the room for error is smaller and the supervision therefore closer. Both local shoe plants have followed a path characteristic of factories in the primary sector in narrowing the diversity of their product. Alexandria Footwear is particularly specialized and its plant quite up to date. At its peak, it was employing 175 people and shipping 7-8000 pairs of Adidas a week to Toronto. Garment workers are less likely than shoe makers to work in factories, and they have a longer history of suffering from market volatility. Alexandria has had up to two-hundred women engaged in factory work assembling clothes, and sewers in the area have seen a dizzying array of small factories set up and close down. Two small factories are now in operation, one run by a woman who started business as a contractor with home sewers and is now employing about fifteen workers. The other is Regal Knitting plant, which produces "Regency" clothing for a Montreal company, the highest quality garments made in the area. (The exacting standards required for assembly is one of the reasons the work is concentrated in a factory, under closer supervision than would be possible with home work). Because Regal's Alexandria plant acts as an auxiliary production unit for the core facility in Montreal, the work load varies enormously in a pattern that is typical of the local garment industry. In slack times, up to three-quarters of the sewers in the plant can find them-

ioo A Small Town in Modern Times

selves laid off; in busy times, all can find themselves pressured to work overtime, their hours totalling as much as ten hours a day, six days a week. Home work has always played a part in the local industry, supplementing the work undertaken in factories. For a time, during the 19705 and early 19805, home work was the dominant pattern. Contracting work out to homes is an ancient system, long ago common in manufacturing of all sorts. Most of it succumbed to the centralizing pressures inherent in industrialization, but the techniques and machinery developed for garment making have always allowed for a certain decentralization. Even with advances in the sophistication of machines, it is still possible for a contractor to divide the labour required to assemble a garment in such a way that the various workers involved can each be working at home, physically separated from the others. The work that home sewers do resembles factory work, in that it is "section work," entailing repetitions of a single operation on one part of a garment. Some sewers can remember an earlier time when they would put together a whole dress, and home contractors may still operate in that way occasionally. But by and large, one operator will sew on collars for a few hours or a whole day, another (in another location) will hem, another will attach shoulders, yet another will do zippers. Most women will know several operations, and in the course of a day or a week will shift from one task to another, though limited in range by the particular machine at their command. A number of home sewers have worked for years and years, some of them in the factories that came to town and left in the 19505, 19605, and 19705, shifting to home work because of either the absence of factory work or the pressure of domestic responsibilities. A few still switch back and forth as their children grow older, as this women did some years back. After Sacony's closed down, I went to the Glen Dress and I worked there for a long time - maybe longer than ten years. Then I quit for a while sewed at home for them whenever a child was born. Then came back - just back and forth.

For most of the women who sew, getting paid work is essential for their own or their family's subsistence; for those with young children, working at home is the only realistic alternative. Many don't have babysitters in the family and cannot afford what it would cost to have a babysitter come in. Even if there are no children to look after, some women have to work around a schedule of preparing meals and cleaning house that is dictated by a husband's

ioi The World of Wage Labour

timetable. They will claim, as one did, that "one thing about being at home is that you can make your own hours." But what that generally means is that they can retain the flexibility required to cater to the needs of other family members. There are considerable variations in working conditions and pay within the local shoe and garment industries - variations from one plant to another and from one job to another within a single plant. But it is generally characteristic of the needle trades that wage rates are significantly lower than wages in the primary labour market and the work of women particularly devalued. Lucy Lavigueur's work experience is typical of that of many of the people who work in the local needle-trade industries. I tried to sew at home but I found it too messy and didn't pay enough either. I would start about eight-thirty in the morning, after the kids had gone to school. I would quit for dinner, and then work till ten-thirty or eleven. It wasn't worth all that work, five days a week. One week I made eighty dollars. So I told her - the contractor - "you know, I'm not making any money." "Well," she says, "the others are." That's what they do, these contractors: they get you for lower rates and they don't care whether you stay or not because they can probably get somebody else. I said, "There's no way I'm gonna work for that little money, working those kinds of hours." And it was messy. The material was sort of a velvet and there was dust all over the place and very messy. I had the machine in the little hallway, which was big enough to put the machine. When we moved back into town I went to Regency, where I work now, and I've been there now for five years. I've worked on jackets, jumpsuits, velour - a lot of velour. The clothes we make are quality. For a jacket, you might pay around sixty-five dollars, so they are expensive clothes. The floor lady tells you right away when you go in there, they don't go for how much you can make, it's how good you can make it. Especially velour, it's not like sewing in cotton; the material is stretchier so you have to be more careful. Cotton is just straight - there's no give. But velour ... is much fussier. And you make very good wages. I make from $5.35 to $6.00 an hour, sometimes more depending on what work I'm at. To me that's very good. [1984 wage levels.] The best way to make lots of money is to stay on one machine and get it down pat. But that's very tense - you're working by the clock all the time. You time yourself for every operation you get. I like a challenge - working on different machines - straight sewers for seams and darts, hemmers, overlockers, buttonholers, zipper machines. Wages are paid according to how much you produce. You're guaranteed $23.04 a day. Then you add onto this an amount that depends on whether you "make your day" or not. Each operation is given a certain time, in

iO2 A Small Town in Modern Times Montreal. If you do the work in the time they say, you have done 100 per cent. You might do better - maybe 120 per cent - and get more money. Sometimes the rates are too high - they may use one of the best girls they have in Montreal. She might be the only one doing that operation, and work at capacity all the time. In a small factory like this one, you get switched from machine to machine. You're always pushing yourself to do a little bit better than the day before. You go home depressed if you make only 70 per cent that day. Sometimes it's hard to keep up your percentage, if you end up with a difficult operation or if you have to work on something that hasn't been cut properly. The cutters are in Montreal and if there's a mistake, say, if a pocket is cut wrong or a piece of material has a flaw in it, the cutter isn't right there to redo it. If a whole batch is notched wrong, it has to be sent back, and that slows down production. If the rates are too low, and we're working at 150 per cent on an operation, sometimes they'll lower the number of minutes required. Last year, one of the people from Montreal spent a lot of time here. They figured that some of us were being paid too much, I guess. One of the girls who was working with us - she was doing just simple overlock, and her wages went up for one week a little bit too high, I mean really high - maybe $12 an hour. They knew that something had to be wrong. Mr. Grover, the owner, said "You know that they've made a mistake in the price - it has to be; you can't make twelve dollars an hour, the company is going to go under." They hired this man to come down and try to re-adjust the minutes - a whole new system of calculating out minutes.

The skills entailed in stitching shoes or sewing garments are considerably greater than the skills required for most of the work in the primary labour market. In the shoe factories, as in the garment industry, it can take six months or a year before a stitcher is working fast enough to "earn" even the minimum wage in the plant. A woman who has sewn both fabric and leather talks about the special skills entailed in sewing leather. You can't expect someone who has sewn material to walk in off the street and be able to sew leather. It's a completely different thing. Material [nonleather] is very soft; you sew it with a little crook in it, it doesn't show. But you sew in leather; it's right on top - you make a little crook in it and it shows. And you can't rip it out and sew it back. It's there, and there's no way you can hide the hole. We've got some machines, for rope stitch, and the needle is the size of a nail almost. And when it makes a hole, it's there and stays there. If they start a new girl, they'll give her something that doesn't show, so that she can get better at it, and get used to the machines. None of the machines sews the same. They all have a different speed. Some

103 The World of Wage Labour machines, you just step on it, and it really goes. Others, you have to step right to the bottom before it gets going. Leather is also thick, and you do a lot of pulling to make it fit. The seam is three-eights of an inch, and that's not very much. You have to make the seam very small.

Even those entrepreneurs who instinctively use language that devalues the work that sewers do talk about the difficulty of finding good workers. It takes a lot of time to build properly. We're dealing with labour that isn't highly skilled, although there is a certain skill factor involved. You don't just go out and hire twenty people and get twenty good ones, that are capable of doing what you need. For every five people I hire, maybe two end up good. And maybe one I can keep for a matter of years - for three to four years. [My emphasis.]

As with the work at Regal, most of the work in the garment and shoe-making industries in town is piece work, paid above a base rate only if a particular level of production is maintained. At the time that Lucy Lavigueur was talking, in the mid-1980s, the base rate at Regal was $4.80 an hour, with the average wage probably between $5.00 and $5.50, higher than average for garment making because of the high quality of the clothing and the particular skill demanded of it. At that time, there were certainly some sewers who, like Lucy, earned more than $6.00 an hour, though even they would find their pay dipping below that if they were adjusting to new operations or styles. At Brown Shoe, where a typical wage is between $7.00 and $8.00 an hour, employees build up what is referred to as an "average" a rate of pay implied by the productivity they have sustained over the previous two weeks. Averages always go down with new shoe styles, as operators become accustomed to new moves. The company makes no adjustments during these acclimatizing periods, so the earnings of plant employees suffer. The cuts in pay are a bone of contention, particularly because the process of determining new rates is obscure. What is clear to many employees at both Regal Knitting and Brown Shoe is that the managers in Montreal and Perth who set the rates are not at all reluctant to see hourly pay drop while sewers and cutters adjust to new styles. The same managers, however, are quick to react when workers earn what is considered to be "too much money." At both Regal and Brown Shoe, some workers, among them Lucy Lavigueur, like the piece work system, a system under which you have to "earn" your money.

io4 A Small Town in Modern Times I don't mind the piece-rate system. If we were on an hourly wage, I think I'd tend to fool around too much. I like to talk and make jokes and all that. I think the company would lose a lot of money with me. No, I like it this way.

Some support for the piece-rate system comes from those who feel that it helps ensure that companies make enough of a profit to stay in business. To even think of pay rates that would scare a firm away would be to undermine the foundations of the work one has. Sewers see themselves as working in an industry that cannot afford high wages and that has no strong reliable commitment to the Alexandria area. They know little about the financial structure of either the companies they work for or the industry as a whole, and are therefore in no position to question the tales of financial hardship emanating from company headquarters. One worker with years of experience in the garment industry expressed her discontent about a wage cut resulting from a change in the piece-rate system, but added, "If you want the company to stay, you got to compromise." On seeing in a Montreal store the price of a blouse she had worked on, another sewer remarked, "Wow, someone is making a lot of money from this garment which only took five minutes to make." But she then added that the price must in the end be fair and that the company she worked for was struggling to survive in a difficult market. For most workers, though, the piece-work system creates considerable pressure. That is one reason that work at Brown Shoe is thought by some of its current and past employees as a tough grind, attested to by two employees. People tend to try elsewhere for work first - the other plants pay more. At Brown Shoe you can expect to work for your money - even at minimum wage you have to work for it. I'd rather work on an hourly rate than piece work. The disadvantage of piece work is I guess the physical aspect. You know, when you're twenty years old and when you're forty-five or fifty, your output may not be quite the same. It's like a young dog and an old dog - they're both dogs but one is a hell of a lot peppier than the other.

A sewer who once worked for a garment factory that has since departed agreed that the pressures in a piece work created unpleasant tension. When I worked in the shop, there was a lot of tension. You really push

1O5 The World of Wage Labour yourself all the time. It is not strenuous, you know, but there is always a certain tension. You are glad to finish the day. You got to try and keep going. Suppose we were allowed to go for a smoke every hour. That's okay, but if you take a few minutes every hour to smoke a cigarette, at the end of the day it shows on the pay. If you have to go to the bathroom, you make sure you come back right away. It is hard on the nerves. When the machine would break, that would get on my nerves. Then the work would not be done and they would ask you to work overtime. You would have no choice, eh? If you want to see the work rolling ahead, they are waiting for you - that is the worst of it. Once my machine broke down for three hours. The girls were waiting for work in front of me. So there they were waiting and losing money too.

The worst-paid workers in this sector of the local economy are the home sewers, also paid by a piece-rate system. Few of them earn much more than the minimum wage, and many earn less. For even an experienced woman, a good day in the mid-1980s, with seven or so hours devoted to work, might have meant a total of $35.00; a less-than-good day might earn less than $25.00. One elderly home worker estimated that she sometimes worked for as little as $1.00 an hour. Much will depend on the size of the lots the sewer is working with, since doing only a few articles at a time and switching operations always slows things down. Working on a new style will also mean having to do more repairs for mistakes, and the repairs reduce the time credited for pay. The low pay rates mean that there is pressure to work all the time. The pressure comes in part from the need to make a decent income, but it also comes from the need to please contractors even when they impose last-minute jobs. Three sewers who have tried working at home have unpleasant memories of that work. It was busy around the house, but you had to put in your hours. I always had little babies so I was up early. I would get them prepared with their six o'clock feeding and then work so many hours and then do my ironing. I would take on a lot and after the kids were in bed I would pick up lost time. You have to try and get your eight hours in, or else it will not pay you. I don't like home work. As soon as you are finished your housework you are sewing, and when your sewing is done you are back into your housework. So there is no stopping. And dust and thread all over! And if you sew at home, they expect you to work day and night. They come in with maybe fifty dresses - "Can we get them tomorrow morning?" So you are more or less always rushing all the time. And then you just get fed up,

io6 A Small Town in Modern Times you know. You feel you're on call all the time. And nobody to talk to -just the four walls. Sometimes they come Friday and say it is a rush - "Can you do this for me?" I can't say no; the contractor will punish me for two or three days with no work at all. Once, they wanted them in a rush and I worked all week-end. They gave me ten dollars extra once and handed it to me the same as if it was a thousand - it was because I made two-hundred dozen.

A few women actively prefer home work to factory work. They can organize the work however they want, avoid the distraction of talk and machine noise, and concentrate on maintaining their productivity. They like being able to work unlimited hours, and some have enough speed and skill that they can earn more money than the average factory sewer. Most of the home workers, though, have no choice in where they work, generally because of the responsibility for looking after children. The pay that home workers receive is governed to some extent by provincial legislation, which stipulates that they are to receive at least the minimum wage, as well as 4% vacation pay. Even if that legislation were strictly enforced, that would still mean appallingly low wage rates, coupled with an almost complete absence of fringe benefits. In fact, many contractors are able to circumvent the law, and sewers commonly earn below minimum wage. The largest group of workers in the secondary labour market who have managed to get out of the piece-work system are those at Alexandria Footwear, where hourly rates average about $8.00. Most workers greatly prefer this system to piece rates. Mind you, each operation has a production quota, based on ratings established by Adidas in Germany, and each job grade has a fixed probationary term, within which a worker is expected to perform close to quota. It can routinely take six months for a new sewer to get up to quota in a stitching position, and some are unable to reach that point even in a year.11 In the early 19805, stitchers' wages at Alexandria Footwear were about the same as at Brown Shoes, perhaps even lower for the average sewer. The plant was unionized at the turn of the decade, though, and since then wages have risen above the level at Brown Shoe. Productivity gains made through new investment in machinery, coupled with a buoyant market in sports shoes, allowed for significant wage hikes in the mid-1980s, although the good times came to a sudden halt with the removal of import quotas and the prospect of increased competition from the us and overseas. Man-

107 The World of Wage Labour

agement recently tried to force a return to the piece-rate system, but the plant's workers were adamant, and ultimately successful, in resisting the move. The supervision of most of the work in the secondary sector has a light touch, perhaps even more than in the primary sector. In factories, most of the "floor ladies" and supervisors have had long experience on the shop floor and have intricate personal ties with other workers. This is particularly true of the women who have acted as floor ladies in various garment factories. The pressure to work and to keep up standards in most of this sector comes not from the pace of machinery, as in the primary sector, but from the piece-rate system. At Brown Shoe, for example, the pressure to work fast that is built into the pay system means that rules are lax - there are no limits on talking or on the breaks you take, as long as it does not interfere with any one else's work. In general, attitudes toward management in the two shoe factories are not much different from those in the primary labour market. Although workers in the secondary market have less bargaining power, they have formed union locals in both plants. Brown Shoe was organized shortly after Carnation, in the mid-1960s, affiliating with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. In the campaign for union sign-ups, 70% of the employees agreed to certification - not as high an approval rate as at Carnation, but extremely high considering the number of women who would have recalled the Sacony trauma in the same building only a few years before.12 By the end of the 19705, with the help of Carnation workers, Alexandria Footwear employees joined the Brewery Workers Union. Substantial discontent was evident in the shoe plant, in part over low wages and the piece-rate system and in part over working conditions. The wide radius from which the plant drew its workers made organizing difficult, but such was the mood in the plant that it took only three days to sign up sufficient numbers to make a bid for certification. As with union locals in the primary sector, worker activism is irregular, with a rhythm of ebb and flow that corresponds to the cycle of collective agreements. However, in contrast to most union members in the secondary sector, especially in small towns, workers in Alexandria seem to have an activist spirit - one that has caught the attention of this union official, citing as example the workers at Brown Shoe. The difference in this area is that people tend to be more spirited. They tend to be more union-oriented people in the sense that they stick up for

io8 A Small Town in Modern Times themselves. They're easy to negotiate with, because people understand the process. When you require a particular mandate, they're quite ready to give you what you require, which allows you to play the game with all the cards. That's unusual for southern Ontario, especially small towns. Small towns tend to be conservative by nature. In this particular area, they're more of a fighting working class. They set high goals for themselves; they don't sell themselves short. They're also not closed minded - they tried work sharing - one of the few areas that did. The people there have been quite open to going to Parliament and lobbying MPS each time the import quotas are due to come off. One year, in 1982, we put six hundred thousand pieces of mail on Parliament the same day, and these people were involved in that. They seem to be quite politically aware.

At Alexandria Footwear, the union is newer, and the workers are less experienced with the process of collective bargaining. But participation in union affairs is active by provincial standards, and contests for union office are sometimes closely fought. When company management pressed for a return to the piece-work system, the workers went out on strike. Even when their own union leaders recommended acquiescence in the face of management threats to close the plant, the majority of plant workers stuck to their guns. Still, here as well as at Brown Shoe, the vulnerability of the industry and the ease of shifting investment from one community to another make it difficult for the workers in these plants, however allegiant they are to a union local, to press as hard for wages and benefits as workers at Carnation or Lanthier's or even Consoltex. According to the same union official, That's the biggest problem they've got [at Brown Shoe] - the wage. In that industry, people don't mind working hard; all they want is a good wage for it. If they don't get paid a good wage, they get pretty upset. Most people there like their job; they just don't feel they get what they deserve. They feel they're being exploited, but not to the point where they would quit or strike. They understand that the company should make a profit - not too much profit, but enough that they'll stay there. They certainly see and know the overall picture - the problem with imports. If the company isn't making money, they would probably close this plant. This is the most antiquated of their three plants, and that creates a problem.

The women who sew garments in Alexandria are in a much weaker position than this. As a result of fears of job loss, reinforced by memories of the demise of Sacony's and other firms, unionization is not widely supported among garment workers in Alexandria. One

109 The World of Wage Labour

sewer who worked both at Sacony's and Lucky Legs recalls the unionization of both. I went from high school when this new factory opened up. It was big, so I knew I would be there for a while. Then the union came and that did it - the union did it. It didn't last long after that. A year after, that was it. That was the second factory I have been in with the union, and it never really worked.

Lucy Lavigueur is not uncritical of the management of the company she sews for, but at the time she worked for Regal, she didn't like the idea of a union either. In Montreal, they have the union, so I can't even imagine the wages that they could be getting - much higher than us. So more of the work that used to be done in the Montreal factory is sent out to contractors. I am not particularly crazy about unions. Sometimes they do some good, but sometimes they overdo it. The company has to be making money.

The position of women who sew at home is even more vulnerable than those who work in factories. In the absence of alternative work for women in the area, particularly those who are tied to home because of child-care responsibilities, pressing for better wages and more say over how much work they get is especially unlikely. Even mild complaint is difficult, as one sewer comments. I asked the other day if I could get paid more per dozen. The guy in Montreal said that if I didn't want to do it, to pass it to another person. If you complain too much they say they can bring it all to Montreal: "Do it or we send it to Montreal."

Despite the pressures on workers in the secondary market, and the weakness in their bargaining relationship to their employers, they still retain dignity and pride in the work they do. Political scientist Patrick Neal interviewed a number of workers in Alexandria's plants in 1984, providing this portrait of a long-time worker at Brown Shoe. He has worked for nearly a decade on an assembly line, and like all the workers at Brown's, he is both paid according to how much he produces and not paid a great deal. Conditions in the factory are not pleasant. He performs one operation repeatedly, although because he performs it quickly, he is one of the higher paid employees in the plant. He is proud of his skill,

no0 A Small Town in Modern Times and he takes pride in the fact that he performs under such conditions. He compares himself favourably with postal workers who "sit on their butts." For him, the gap between the conditions under which he works and those under which the postal clerk performs is not a measure of work conditions which makes his own work look bad; it is a measure of work itself, and a measure of the individual who performs that work - a measure that elevates his standing above that of the postal worker. There is a connotation of worthiness in the comparison: he faces difficult conditions, and he persists. A lesser man might not. If he is envious of postal workers, or those at Carnation, who have "cushy" jobs, it is not evident. Indeed, there is trace of scorn in his voice when he describes their work.

In Alexandria's needle trades, there is less of the alienation from final product of their labours that is so commonly found among the men who tend machines in the primary sector. The shoe makers and garment sewers in Alexandria can find shoes or dresses that they have made in city stores and be proud of the skills they have applied to their manufacture. Two sewers at the Regal plant talk about the products they work on. We do velour and denim, sometimes silk. I would rather work on quality. You can go to work somewhere else and do it any old way as long as it is pressed right. So I would never tell anyone I sewed that. As for Regency; well, I would be proud to say I did. I went into Montreal and went into a boutique and they had our line of clothing. You would never think that from starting on our machines that it would get there and look so nice. It was very nice. I figures if we can sew that good, that's okay.

Most of the manufacturing work in Alexandria, however, whether in the primary sector or in the secondary sector, is organized in ways and paid at levels that corrode this kind of pride. Men and women are routinely treated as if they are extensions of the machines they operate, and even if supervisory styles are informal in most plants, there are constant pressures to work quickly. Among manufacturing workers, those in the primary sector, almost all men, fare better than those in the secondary sector, with higher wages and more protection provided by unions. The work, however, is, if anything, more alienating than in the secondary sector, much of the skill having been taken over by machinery. Work in the secondary sector is usually more skilled, but paid at substantially lower rates, with the

in The World of Wage Labour

women working in it bearing the additional burdens of having to mould work around domestic responsibilities. WHITE-COLLAR WORK

Manufacturing is at the very centre of the development that Alexandria has experienced in recent decades, but work opportunities in white-collar occupations have increased as well. White-collar jobs are usually thought categorically different from blue-collar jobs working conditions are assumed better, supervision is more relaxed, and conflict with management is less frequent. In reality, though, many of the women and men who work in clerical and service occupations in the businesses along Main Street earn wages and work in conditions that are worse than those in the secondary manufacturing sector. Among the most vulnerable of workers in the town, they are unlikely to be organized collectively to press for an improvement in their lot. The professional and semi-professional work available in local schools and in the local hospital, also white-collar work, seems a world apart from clerical and sales jobs on Main Street - providing greater intrinsic rewards and incomes that are very attractive by local standards. But even here, serious complaints about deteriorating working conditions are common; relations between labour and management are fraught with difficulty; and the low morale among workers is particularly striking. In this sector as in others, the character of work in Alexandria seems little different from its counterparts in large cities. Main Street Work

Alexandria's commercial businesses have prospered as the town's industrial base has developed. According to a 1984 survey, over 600 people were employed in the business sector, representing 32% of the jobs in town.13 A number of restaurants and fast food outlets, ranging from the Dairy Queen at the south end of town to the stylish and expensive Priest's Mill in the centre are among the more than 100 businesses and retail outlets. There are several grocery stores, including some traditional general stores and the large IGA at the south end. As expected, the business section includes banking institutions, hardware and electronics stores, clothing stores, garages, barber shops, hair dressing salons, funeral homes, pharmacies, jewelers, alcoholic beverage outlets, automobile dealerships, hotels, real

112 A Small Town in Modern Times

estate firms, insurance offices, flower shops, lawyers' offices, furniture stores, bookstores, accountants' offices, gift stores, video rental stores, and more. Although Main Street has retained much of its traditional character, local merchants are more than ever subject to the pressure of outside competition. With travel to Cornwall, Ottawa, and particularly Montreal as easy as it is, local retailers have to keep wary eye on how much business goes outside town. The fact that the nearest rival centre is more than 50 kilometres away seems to protect grocery stores, garages, and restaurants from excessive competition, but that 5o-kilometre cushion is not at all secure for the local sellers of clothing, appliances, furniture, and cars. The precarious existence of much of Alexandria's small business has been amply demonstrated by the rapid turnover behind many store fronts along Main Street, particularly during the recessionary years of the late 19705 and early igSos.14 The work entailed in maintaining a shop or restaurant is allconsuming. The importance of retaining personal connections with customers and the reluctance or inability to hire skilled staff often mean that business owners spend long hours either in the shop or restaurant or on pickup or delivery. One general store keeper routinely spends nine hours a day in his store, six days a week. Another garage owner admits to similar hours, in addition to being considered on call by customers with car trouble at odd hours of the night and week-end. The typical business has three people working in it apart from the owner. Only one-quarter have more than five employees; only one in ten has more than ten. Most of these businesses are family affairs, children (and wife, if the shop is owned by a man) assisting at the counter or the back office. A large or medium-sized business might be able to afford to pay family members for this work; a small one may depend on the family to do the work for free. Main Street business owners generally see themselves as good employers, getting along personally with staff and providing jobs to people without much skill or experience. They admit to paying low wages, but argue that profit margins are narrow and that the wages they pay are at the going rates. They usually see themselves as benevolent bosses, not at all like their cut-throat counterparts in larger centres. They know their employees as individuals, and they help out in times of need. Some of the work on Main Street, in fact, generates personal rewards. The flexibility in hours that is characteristic of some of the

ii3 The World of Wage Labour

jobs is indispensable for some of those who fill them. Many jobs also have a kind of informality peculiar to a small town - familiarity not only in the relationship with the employer, but in contacts with customers. According to one bank employee, for example, In big cities, people don't know you, and they're very uncaring. People come into the branch from head office, inspecting, and they say we do too much for our customers. In the city, they don't even say good day to them. If a customer here comes in and they've been sick, you know that, and you say "Gee, I'm glad to see you, I hope you're feeling better." If some woman here comes in, and her husband has died or something, you may spend an hour-and-a-half with her just trying to settle up her financial business, whereas in a city, they'd say, "Go see your lawyer" - five minutes. In a country branch you can't do that.

Whatever the informality, however, many of the jobs on Main Street demand extremely hard work, and some of them require more skill than employers are willing to recognize. Waitresses, for example, are constantly having to deal with kitchens in which tempers are often short and to act as mediator with occasionally impatient customers. Usually we're supposed to get a break, but some days there's just no time for a break. My feet get really, really sore sometimes. When I first started working there, I'd come home and I'd lie down in bed. Then you'd feel your feet just throbbing. It hits the feet first and then it's overall fatigue.

Most restaurant customers are friendly in a small town such as this, but even here some are inconsiderate and look down on the waiting staff. Just because you're waiting on somebody, you know, doesn't mean that I'm any lower in the world than they are. It's only a few people, although it's the few that stick in your mind and leave an impression.

For a cashier at a grocery store, a busy day can mean 300 customers and complete exhaustion. It can also increase the likelihood that the cash won't balance at the end, and a deficit of more than a set amount at the end of the day or month might well mean pay being docked. For a bank teller, too, balancing cash at the end of the day can be difficult and pressured. During the day, she or he may have 20 other jobs to do apart from handling customers at the counter. If, after all

114 A Small Town in Modern Times

that, the cash does not add up, a teller is checked by one of the senior officers - an experience to avoid. Some employers are warm and understanding toward their workers; some are not nearly as considerate as they imagine themselves to be. An employee of one businessman (one who talks of having a warm paternalistic relationship with his workers) offers a view of what working under him is like - a view that is worlds apart from the boss's view. Sometimes, if it's not busy I'll go sit in the back for a few minutes. It's tiring on your feet all day. I tried to talk to him about a break in the afternoon, but I never really got an answer. If you miss an hour - to go to the doctor - you're not paid. If you're late ten minutes, he cuts your pay. He could give you a day a month for being sick, but he doesn't.

Here, as in the manufacturing sector, technological change is introduced without much warning and without any consultation with the staff most directly affected by it. At one grocery store, electronic cash registers have made some parts of the job easier and faster, particularly the filing of reports at the end of the day. But it is all too easy to push a wrong button and get things "all balled up." With this new technology, cashiers are also under closer scrutiny, since at any time a reading can easily be taken of the number of articles being tallied per minute and the number of customers per hour. The banking sector has been much more drastically affected by new technology, creating clear advantages for both customers and staff. Some employees have not had much problem making the required adjustments, but there have been difficulties as well, according to one bank employee. There's been a lot of strain in the last few years with their automation. Lots of extra hours when they first started - that was getting to me. I find the pressure bad. They've been telling us for years, "You're going to finish early. With this new computer system, you'll be out at four o'clock." I've never seen four o'clock - if my husband saw me at four o'clock he'd think I was sick. I haven't finished early since I've worked there. It is faster, but they haven't hired any more people, and the amount of business has increased over those five years. Everything is implemented so fast. You're not finished setting one system up, and somebody else is setting up another system. And you have to learn the bits and pieces - you never learn the whole system. When the banks decided to automate the same as everyone else, the little teller that's on the bottom of the totem pole is the one that's inputting forms, but she doesn't know what's going on at the top of the

ii5 The World of Wage Labour totem pole. And you're trying to get these forms in right, and they're coming back rejected. And you're getting very frustrated because you don't know why they're rejected. It's changing drastically, in the last few years. If this keeps up, all the pressures, and the constant change, when I'm fifty-five I'll quit. It's very nerve racking.

Main Street labour is clearly divided by gender. Men own most of the businesses and hold the better-paying waged jobs. Most of them are found in four clusters: skilled craft jobs in garages, butcher shops, and the like; sales jobs involving particularly large-ticket items, such as cars, real estate, and insurance; professional jobs, such as accountancy; and production work in small manufacturing shops. Women are heavily concentrated in subordinate positions traditionally defined as women's work - waitress, retail clerk, cashier. Some jobs for women are considerably more desirable than the average and are eagerly sought after for their higher wage-levels and more generous fringe benefits. Bank teller jobs, for example, are paid at twice the level of most Main Street work and are generally filled by women who have higher than average educational qualifications, some who have previous experience in banking. Within the bank, of course, clear gender divisions are evident. The teller jobs are almost invariably held by women, while upper-tier management and accountancy jobs are almost always held by men. The men in the bank branches are usually from out of town, working their way up an elaborate career ladder within the bank as a whole, transferring branches every two or three years. In small-town branches such as these, where transfers would entail moving to another community, the women tend to stay put and therefore have only limited opportunities to move up. The least advantaged work on Main Street is part-time (constituting one-quarter of the total jobs in this sector). Some jobs are taken up by students, but most are held by women whose responsibilities at home make full-time work impossible or who simply cannot find full-time work. Employers benefit greatly from the flexibility possible with part-timers, who can be slotted into peak hours or called in on short notice to meet sudden demands. Employers also benefit from the almost complete absence of fringe benefits, which are scarce enough for full-time jobs on Main Street, but virtually non-existent for part-time work. Some businessmen, in fact, hire part-timers but then get them to work close to full-time hours, without having to think about paying unemployment insurance or arranging for vacations.

n6 A Small Town in Modern Times

The typical job on Main Street has little job security. Hiring is often informal, through friendship or kinship networks, and those who get the bulk of the jobs have little specialized skill or background in the kind of work they will be doing. Hiring, then, has more of a trial-and-error character to it than does hiring in the manufacturing sector, and those who do not "fit in" are simply let go. Not fitting in can mean being unable to adapt to the skills required for the job; it can also mean complaining about the hours worked or the wages paid. Because only a couple of Main Street businesses are unionized, there exists no routine method for getting raises in pay or improvements in working conditions. One former worker recalled having been at a store for 11 years without a single raise. Married, with a child, he was paid the minimum wage throughout his employment there. A woman who once worked at the store reminded the owner that the minimum wage had recently gone up and that her wage should rise to meet the new floor. Within a week she was fired. More than one store owner has warned all employees that he will close the place if the union gets in. Most small businessmen are resistant to any erosion of the power to make their own decisions; they believe that they treat their employees humanely and that anyone dissatisfied with the treatment she or he receives should simply leave. The fact that many of the jobs are relatively unskilled also means that management threats to employees can be carried out with impunity. Despite the impediments in their way and the open hostility of their bosses, workers in two Main Street businesses unionized in the 19805. For years, the owner and one-time editor (now deceased) of the Glengarry News had fulminated against unionization of local industries. In 1980, however, his employees voted by an overwhelming majority to affiliate with the Ottawa Typographical Union, becoming the first certified collective bargaining unit among Ontario's weekly newspapers. In 1984, after a failed bid two years before, the employees at IGA successfully applied for the certification of a Teamsters union local at the store, apparently in the face of the owner's fury. The following year they went on strike after months of fruitless negotiations over a first contract. Although the owner was intent on breaking the strike by using the large numbers of parttime workers he routinely employed in the store (who were not part of the bargaining unit), the town mayor mediated between the parties and helped them reach an agreement after only six strike days. The mayor no doubt shared the IGA owner's antipathy to unions, but he also believed that strikes create a bad image of the town for

ii7 The World of Wage Labour

prospective investors. (He has intervened in similar ways in a few other local strikes since then.) The collective bargaining units at both the News and the IGA have strengthened the hands of the workers within them, but these unions have nothing like the power of unions in the manufacturing plants in town, even those in the secondary sector. Probably not coincidentally, shortly after the 1985 strike, the IGA owner sold the store to another IGA store owner from out of town. If the store had been smaller than it was, it could quite possibly have simply been closed and the workers put out of jobs. The readiness of businessmen to take such drastic measures to confront angry workers is not lost on others who work on Main Street. The idea of collective organization has only the slightest of toe holds and is unlikely to gain more than that in the near future. Professional Work

The public or quasi-public sector - operated or financed by government - has become a major part of the Alexandria economy. Tax dollars now sustain a significant amount of employment, including some of the most privileged jobs in town. It is in this sector that we find such major community institutions as the schools, the post office, the Human Resources Centre, the welfare offices of the province and the United Counties, the District Health Council, and the hospital. Work in these places, much of it at the professional and semiprofessional levels, allows for more individual discretion than is typical in manufacturing work and in the jobs along Main Street, and requires less constant supervision. In contrast to the commercial economy centred on Main Street, which has strong local roots and employs local people, the public sector is run and staffed more by outsiders or new arrivals to the area. It is also a sector that is shaped to a substantial degree by decisions made by the provincial government in Toronto. The educational and health-care institutions that have such an important place in Alexandria's life are justifiably the objects of community pride, but they also illustrate the extent to which the community has lost its autonomy to outside forces. They are also institutions in which the quality of work life is not what most townspeople imagine; contrary to popular belief, arbitrary management practices, exploitive pay levels, and angry labourmanagement relations also exist here. Traditional attitudes about the role of men and women in the labour force are as tenacious in this sector as they are in the manufacturing and Main Street sectors, with

n8 A Small Town in Modern Times

the most prestigious jobs likely to be held by men and the lowerstatus and lower-paying jobs by women. The work that is done, especially by women, is sometimes devalued by supervisors, and some of it, as with work in other parts of the town, is being deskilled and made more routine. Cuts in public-sector social-service expenditures over the past decade or so have taken their toll, increasing work loads and in some instances reducing job security. Glengarry Memorial Hospital provides an especially graphic illustration of the discordance between public perceptions of the quality of work and a harsher reality.15 The hospital is a powerful symbol of community resourcefulness and is always counted near the top by local politicians talking about the assets of the town. One measure of its prominence as a community institution is the number of prominent townspeople who vie with one another in taking credit for its establishment in 1965. Another measure is the extent of support it receives from community clubs - particularly the Lions - and from women who volunteer their time through the Hospital Auxiliary. In most communities, health-care institutions are generally well regarded; they are, after all, sites of care and healing. In addition, they are staffed by professionals - nurses and doctors - who are usually held in high esteem. Not much more than a generation ago, medical service in the area was woefully sub-standard and doctors scarce. Because of all this, Glengarry Memorial is characterized in glowing terms by most townspeople, as are most of the doctors with local practices. The news that townspeople hear about the hospital is almost invariably good, highlighted by annual reports of budgetary surpluses even in the face of provincial restraint. This unusual record of fiscal strength stands out among the province's small hospitals, and gives the Alexandria hospital an especially high standing among town notables. Much good can be said of Glengarry Memorial. Doctors and nurses know the great majority of their patients, and the hospital staff are able to give them friendly and personal attention that would generally be unavailable in larger institutions. The hospital has also been able to diversify the treatment available to local patients by augmenting the number of specialized doctors making regular visits to it from other places, particularly Cornwall. The number of local doctors, too, has increased since the time of the hospital's opening, with four or five now treating Alexandria as home base. The hospital has had to maintain and in some cases expand services through some difficult times. For over a decade, hospitals across the province, faced with greater stringency in provincial funding, have had to seek new ways of cutting costs. The hospital admin-

119 The World of Wage Labour

istration may try to put a brave face on its affairs, trumpeting the fact that it has avoided budgetary deficits, but the maintenance of health care standards has become harder and harder. Nurses provide much of the day-to-day care in the hospital. They have well-paying jobs by local standards, and the kinds of skill and service they provide seem to be the makings of fulfilling work. Nurses exude a pride in their profession and in the skills they have acquired both during their formal training and through their years of experience. Most of them believe that the local hospital provides good health care under the circumstances in which it operates and that a small-town facility such as this one can offer personal attention and familiarity that is impossible in a city hospital. But a number of them, like their colleagues across the country, believe that nurses are among the hospital staff members who have had to bear the brunt of the pressures on the system and that their work is undervalued by doctors and administrators alike.16 Along with non-medical staff, they have unionized in order to protect themselves against unfairly low pay rates and arbitrary management. The medical profession has a strict pecking order, and although a small hospital in a small town might be expected to have less rigid distinction of roles than a larger hospital, this one does not. The hospital is run by the administrator and the doctors resident in Alexandria, almost completely unimpeded by other staff within the hospital or by the board of directors and the local Health Council. It is characteristic of both the administrator and the local doctors that they hold very tightly to the reins of authority over medical practice in the hospital and brook no challenge to that authority. Even more clearly than in many urban hospitals, the formal hierarchy coincides with a division of labour along gender lines. All the doctors are male; almost all the nurses, receptionists, and secretaries are female; and virtually no objection is being raised to that segregation. Enrolment in Canadian medical schools shows a marked increase in the numbers of women training to be doctors. Some change may therefore come to the distribution of men and women in the roles of doctor and nurse in Alexandria, although only very slowly. *7 Nurses in a small hospital such as Glengarry Memorial often have to exercise more judgment and assume more responsibility than do their counterparts in large hospitals, since there is often no doctor on site. But doctors are no more likely than urban doctors to accord nurses respect for that judgment and are even less likely to allow nurses to take responsibility for care when a doctor is present at the hospital. According to one nurse, "They don't treat you as profes-

i2O A Small Town in Modern Times

sionals; you are supposed to say 'yes sir, no sir'." Another nurse comments in more detail. There's an ambivalence with them. They want you to be a responsible nurse when they are at home, but when they are in the hospital then you have to become the subservient little dunce that follows them around. They would not even let you change a dressing. The nurses don't syringe the patients' ears; the doctors always do that. The only time we ever start an I.V. [intravenous unit] is when the doctor is at home and then we have to start it because they don't want to come in. There is a lot of stress - I suppose after a while it gets to me. You never know when the doctor is going to come in and scream at you. In some larger hospitals, the doctors actually share their feelings with you and treat you as a human being. They work with you and expect you to become involved. They expect a lot more from you than they do in a small community.

The feeling that many nurses have of being de-valued by doctors is paralleled by resentment of the way management treats them. Hiring and promotion are thought to be heavily influenced by favouratism. "If you follow the line and go along, you get along fairly well; if you don't, you are on the other side of the fence." Before unionization, salary differentials were such as to reinforce the sense of favouritism in the treatment of nursing staff. Overall wage levels at the time were also lower than in Cornwall or in larger cities, as much as $1.50 per hour lower. Wages since then have improved, but the administration has switched much of the nursing work from full time registered nurses to part timers (to whom fringe benefits do not have to be paid) and to less thoroughly trained (and lower paid) RNAS. The burden on nurses has increased over the years, not only as a result of spending constraints, but also because of the number of elderly patients. Glengarry County has about 50% more people over the age of 65 than the provincial average, resulting in a heavy demand for "chronic care" hospital beds, particularly because nursing homes are not interested in taking on patients whose costly upkeep will reduce profits. According to one nurse at the hospital, You need more help with geriatrics. Younger patients can look after themselves a lot. An older patient may have to be changed four or five times in a day shift. That's a lot of work, and heavy work. Cutbacks don't take account of that. They just count bodies; don't take account of the fact that some bodies can't look after themselves. I know of one nurse who's worked

121 The World of Wage Labour here eight years, and never complained -1 heard her complain about having to weigh all the patients, most of them old, some of them unable to stand on their own. People on staff are getting sick - can't cope - they're getting bodily and mentally sick. If they can't do a good job, it gets to them.

The smallness of the hospital and the high proportion of chronic cases mean not only weightier burdens on the nursing staff, but less skilful and interesting work. The work associated with chronic patients is almost always routine, and in any event the most serious active cases go to Cornwall or Ottawa. Many nurses who crave more challenging work cannot easily shift to another job, because of the distance to other hospitals and the difficulties entailed in uprooting husbands and children. Despite the difficulties of protesting in a small town, nurses have been able to register some discontent at pay levels, working conditions, and management practices. The nurses were the first hospital employees to unionize, in 1975, followed by non-medical staff. In both cases, getting the number of votes required to certify was easy, despite the ill-disguised hostility of the hospital management and a belief on the part of the nurses leading the drive that their very jobs were at risk. One nurse thought the risk worth taking. Since unionization, the nurses know now they have a right to question, without having to worry about getting fired. That has made a whole new independent type of person. There's been so much change in the kids that came in - new graduates. Now you see them up there active in the union and questioning. You see them taking charge of situations. It strengthened them.

Fear about job security is still thought to exist among a number of employees, and management still thought capable of "tricks" to get rid of people, despite union protections. Those who actually live in the area and have few alternative job prospects are especially vulnerable. As a result, there are differences of opinion among employees about how far to press management, and staff who live in town are particularly hesitant about confrontation. Even more than among manufacturing workers, there exists an antipathy to the whole notion of striking, and this weakens the bargaining power of the unions considerably. In a work setting thought by most Alexandrians to be close to ideal, in a hospital held up as a symbol of civic pride, those who do the bulk of the work face dilemmas and fears not categorically different from those faced on the shop floors of town industries. Like the manufacturing workers, nurses have

122 A Small Town in Modern Times

shown a willingness to organize in protection of their rights, but their capacity for protest has serious limits, doubly so because of the smallness of the community and the absence of work alternatives. UNDERPRIVILEGE IN ALEXANDRIA

This exploration of labour in Alexandria has suggested that although the character of work is not much different than it is in large urban areas, it is paid at lower levels. The town's success in attracting manufacturing is in fact partly based on low wages. Despite similarities in productivity between the local area and the Ontario average (controlling for firm size), government statistics show a significant wage gap between Alexandria and the province as a whole. In 1984, wages for the town's production workers averaged $7.71, fully 30% below the Ontario level (see Table 2.3).l8 The relative increase in male manufacturing work in Alexandria and the higher rates of pay for men produced an overall narrowing of the wage gap with the province over the previous 20 years, but much less narrowing of gap in men's wages or women's wages on their own. To be sure, the cost of living in a small town is lower than in a large city, but not much lower than the provincial average. Alexandria's housing costs, overall, are about 28% lower than the provincial average, but some other goods and services are more expensive. The relative disadvantage of Alexandria is also evident in average income figures, displayed in Table 3.1. In 1985, the median family income in town was 71% of the provincial median. Only 22% of the town's families earned more than $40,000, compared with 45% of Ontario families. The 1986 census showed that 20% of the town's families and 45% of its "unattached individuals" were low income, compared with the provincial figures, respectively, of 11% and 33%. Most Alexandrians, and in particular the town's most influential residents, are reluctant to admit that much poverty is in their midst. In the words of one acute observer of town affairs, You can go around town and you can see houses being lived in that should not be lived in. There's a certain dignity there that people lose. And then you have to go through certain sacrifices in order to obtain help, and lose further dignity because you have to beg. Society should never let their members get that low. There is probably a quarter of Alexandria's work force earning minimum wage. You are responsible for it, you can't get away from it. If you allow people in our society to be paid what is really sub-minimal, they are going

123 The World of Wage Labour Table 3.1 Total Family Income, 1985 Alexandria

Ontario

36.33 21.99 18.8 8.1 13.88

20.66 16.33 18.6 16.00 28.66

$26,249 30,474

$36,978 41,692

20.55 44.7

11.0 33.33

50.1

49.22

$479 366

$483 538

INCOME RANGES (%)

247; bilinguals, 182, 189-91, 261 Bourassa, Guy, 246 Boutin, Jacques, 277 Brittanic Converters, 44 Brown Show, 15, 17, 46, 52, 57, 97, 103, 106, 107 Brym, Robert, 223-4 Cancer Society, 150 Carnation Milk Company, 33, 46, 47, 48, 50, 52, 53, 57, 60, 69, 75, 78, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90-1, 92, 96, 107, 142, 257-8 Catholic Church, 144, 147, 152, 155, 157 Catholic Women's League, 152 Cercle des fermieres, 179 Chamber of Commerce, 19, 71, 156, 278-80, 297 Charlottenburgh (township of), 6, 34, 197, 262, 270 Chenier, Lucien, 277 Cholette, Guy and Rolland, 277. See also Alexandria Moulding Class relations, 6, 23-5, 29, 37-8, 72-4, 76-8, 108, 122-7, 13^/ 225~6, 288-9

Cleroux, Sylvio, 252, 277 Community: autonomy of, 117 (see also Politics, regional dependence of); fragmentation of, 5, 127, 157, 179, 189, 205, 287-301; power, 283-6 (see also Politics); pride, 117, 171; self-image of, 19-23, 70, 73, 129, 145, 171, 231, 253, 299; sense of, 20, 21, 293; solidarity of, 6, 153, 167, 191, 207, 213, 228, 300; tolerance in, 1457, 222 (see also Values) Conflict, 6, 22, 23, 27, 29, 172, 196, 205, 214, 22131, 232, 290-2. See also Labour, activism and Politics, activism Connor, Ralph, 3, 180 Consoltex, 15, 46, 52, 57, 60, 75, 78, 81, 83, 84, 85, 91, 92, 257-8, 260 Cornwall, 3, 16, 120, 121, 165, 199, 200, 202, 206, 220, 226, 228, 234, 243, 259 Dahl, Robert, 283 Daughters of Isabella, 149, 152 Day care, 11, 162-7, 247' 278, 283

334 Index 99, 100-1, 105-6; piecework, 100, 101-2, 103-7 Gauthier, Rene, 210, 216, 277 Economic dependence. Gaventa, John, 29, 283 See Regional disparities Gender relations, 6, 25-6, Education, 4, 8, 11, 16, 79, 82, 95, 96-7, 115, 17, 27, 68, 76-7, 190, 128, 130-70, 288-90, 196-221, 225, 229-31 297. See also Family Environmental issues, Glen Dress, 47, 48, 51, 97 255-61 Glen Robertson, 9, 199, 273 Family, 8, 9, 16, 17-18, 22, 25, 76-8, 97-8, 100- Glengarry Association for Community Living. See 1, 112, 130-5, 138-42, Glengarry Association 145, 162-3, 167-70, 196, for the Mentally Re289, 291-2. See also tarded Gender relations Glengarry Association for Family Compact, 37 the Mentally Retarded, Farley Windows, 57, 75 10, 150-1, 169, 178-9, Farming. See Agriculture 234, 273-5, 277, 282 Federation des femmes Glengarry District High chretiennes, 152, 179 School, 199, 207-21, Flax, Harry, 48, 51 229, 233 Fraser, Colonal AlexGlengarry Glass, 53 ander, 244 Glengarry Historical SociFraser, Jacqueline, 15-16, ety, 189, 234 138-9, 153-4, 162, Glengarry Inter-Agency, 193-4 165, 166, 169, 282, 298 Free Trade, 33, 57, 59 Glengarry Memorial HosFrench Canadians: pital, 15, 118-22, 155, culture of, 11, 179-80, 253; hospital auxiliary, 192-3, 203, 225, 233, 10, 150, 151, 178-9 298; education of, 9, 11, Glengarry News, 23, 24, 27, 68, 193-4, 196-221, 116, 152, 153, 165, 188, 225, 227, 298; identity 206, 207, 209-12, 216, of, 11, 157, 169, 173, 234, 253-5, 257-8, 260, 191, 233; integration of, 269, 270, 275, 277, 279173-5, 179-96, 201; mi80, 294-5 gration of, 3, 172-4, 183, 197; rights of, 172, Glengarry Transport, 8, 33, 46, 47, 48, 52, 56, 184-5, J88, 192, 203, 57, 60, 75, 83, 86, 96, 204, 232, 235, 298. See 153, 186 also Language group reGraham Creamery, 44 lations Graham, Robert J., 239, French Language Advi245 sory Committee, 210, Green Valley, 7, 11, 98, 211, 213, 215 198, 273 Garment industry, 33, 45, Group homes, 272-5 46, 47, 48-51, 53-6, 65- Guarantee Glove and Sports Garments, 45, 6, 95-111; home sewing, 46, 48, 54-6, 66, 48, 49' 51 Depratto, Mike, 276 Depression, 14, 33, 41, 44, 241

Harmony Glen School, 10, 166 Health: care, 118-22, 2523; workplace safety, 84-5 Home sewing. See Garment industry Homosexuality, 145-8 Hope, Wally, 182-3, 276 Housing, 124, 271-5 Hughes, Everett, 180 Humphries, James, 276 IGA, 9, 111, 116-17 Income, 4, 122, 125-6, 136-8 Individualism, 249, 294 Jette, Raymond, 267-8 Johnson, Sir John, 34, 36 Joly, Jacques, 277 Joseph-Augstein Company. See Sacony's Knights of Columbus, 149, 152 Labour, 4-5, 72-129; activism, 50-1, 70, 92-4, 107-9, n6, 121, 129, 158-9, 249; deskilling of, 72, 75, 80-1, 128; mother tongue, 176; primary market, 74, 7595; professional, 11722; process, 72-3, 7980, 83-5, 89-90, 99, 1O1-2, 104-5, 11°' 112-

14; relations, 73, 86-95, 107, 111, 121, 159-62; secondary market, 74, 95-111; training of, 77, 81, 98-9; unions, 28, 50-1, 54, 55, 65, 83, 904, 106-9, n6-i7, 119, 121, 249, 285, 293, 294, 297; white collar, 11122, 223 Laflamme, Pierrette, 910, 140-2, 150-2, 157, 168, 169, 178-9, 189, 199

335

Index

Macdonald, John SandLalonde, Bruno, 124, 183 field, 7, 33, 38-40 Lalonde, Marc, 9, 277, Macdonnell, Bishop Alex278, 279 ander, 7, 32, 34, 36-8, Lancaster: township of, 6, 172, 250, 276, 296 269; village of, 7 Macdonnell, Duncan, 277 Land-use planning, 248McDougall, Archie, 205 9, 261-71 McEwan, Jim, 277 Language group relations, 6, 9, 11, 22, 26-7, MacGillivray, Royce, 44, 197, 232, 296 67-8, 152, 171-235, 247, 290, 298. See also French Mclntosh, John, 41-3, 276 Mackenzie, William Lyon, Canadians 38, 70, 296 Lanthier, Georges. See McLennan, R.R., 42, 245 Lanthier's bakery McPherson, D.M., 250 Lanthier's bakery, 7, 12, 46, 52, 53, 56, 57, 75-85 Main Street (Alexandria), 6, 9-19, 44, 111-17, Laurin, J.A., 245 227, 243, 276, 279, 291 Lavigueur, Lucy, 17-18, Male identity, 77, 79, 96-8, 101-4, 139 139-40, 142-4 Lawson, Lome, 277 Marcoux, Aime, 164, 182, Lefebvre, Gerard. See 207, 277 Glengarry Transport Massie, Bruno, 182-3, Lefebvre, Gilles, 277 239, 277 Leger, Rosaire, 210 Maxville, 153, 193, 299 Legion, Royal Canadian, Mayes, Sheila, 151, 273 149 Migration, 3, 15, 21-2, Lemieux, Maurice, 217 32-5, 41, 96, 126 Leroux, Julie, 11, 163, 165-6, 169, 192-3, 195- Montreal, 3, 32, 40, 52, 53, 60, 63, 64, 68, 74, 6, 209, 214-15, 297, 300 99, 109, 156, 246, 290 Lions Club, 20, 118, 126, 149-50, 151, 276, 277-8, Munro, Hugh, 41-3, 245, 276 299 Munro & Mclntosh CarLoyalists, 3, 32-6, 183, riage Works, 33, 41-3, 250 48,72 Lucky Legs, 53, 54, 97 Lukes, Stephen, 283 M & M Carriage Works. See Munro & Mclntosh Carriage Works McCormick, Cameron, 182, 207 MacDonald, Angus Hoey, 300 Macdonald, Donald Alexander, 33, 40-1 MacDonald, Ewan, 277 McDonald, Gerry, 13-15, 45, 238-40 MacDonald, John, 277

Nadeau, Jean-Claude, 277 Needle trades. See Garment industry Ontario. See Politics, Ontario government Periard, Raymond, 245 Piece-work. See Garment Industry Planning. See Land use Point, Le, 163, 165, 217, 253, 277, 298 Poirier, Paul, 277

Policing, 252 Politics, 236-86; activism, 27, 28, 29, 237, 250, 285-6, 293; Alexandria town council, 28, 66, 148, 164, 194, 238-86, 294; apathy in, 27-30, 32, 238, 250, 285; business and, 42, 236, 240, 244-9; Ontario government, 24, 117, 147, 157, 164-5, 186, 230, 241-4, 251, 259-60, 263-5; participation in, 35-8, 42, 244-51, 281; regional dependence of, 5, 24, 28, 237-8, 240-4, 281, 284-5, 292-3 Population, characteristics of, 4-5, 123, 132, 1367' 174-7 Poverty, 72, 122-5, 13&> 163, 271, 289 Priest's Mill Restaurant, 13, 111, 126 Quebec, 32, 53-4, 66-8, 75, 187, 224, 228 Quesnel, Denis, 7-8, 7585, 87-8, 93-4, 143 Railways, 7, 18, 32, 33, 39-41, 69, 237 Raisin River Conservation Authority, 257-9 Ranger, Marcel, 277 Red Cross, 150 Regal Knitting, 17, 18, 57, 67, 96, 98, 99, 103 Regional disparities, 5-6, 2 3-4' 28, 58, 59-69, 128, 237-8, 240, 299 Reserve army of labour, 63, 73, 128 Richelieu Club, 20, 126, 149-50, 276, 277, 298 Rosita Shoe Company. See Alexandria Footwear Ross, Ewan, xvii, 44, 197, 232, 296

336 Index h oth, bob 253-4, 295-6 Rouleau, Elda, 199 Rouleau, Romeo, 239, 245 Roy, Mel, 277 Rubin, Lillian, 76 Ryerson, Egerton, 197 Sacony's, 33, 46, 48-51, 65, 70, 90, 96, 294 St Finnan's Church, 12, 152 St Joseph's School, 10, 166, 199, 206 St Pierre, Albert, 277 St Raphael's, 7, 34, 37 Sauve, Georgette, 210 Schell, Jacob, 41-3, 245, 276 Scots, 3, 21, 22, 3 34-5, 171,

172,

174,

180-4,

187,

188,

189,

198,

232,

3OO

Sports Palace, 15, 153, 277

Square "C." See Consoltex Stotland Dress Company, 47 Strikes. See Labour, activism Sultan, Sam, 277 Tarran Furs, 45 Technological change, 723, 81-2, 83, 114. See also Labour, deskilling of Touchette, Jean-Paul, 15, 182-3, 238, 244, 266, 270, 277, 278 Training, 77, 81, 98-9 Trois P'tits Points, 11, 163, 189, 192 Trudeau, Pierre, 185, 187

2 227,

Shift work, 80, 82, 133 Simcoe, Governor John, 36 Simon, George, 48, 49, 245 Single parents, 138 Social Class. See Class relations South Lancaster, 6

Unemployment, 8, 44, 51-2, 56, 132, 135, 139 Unions, unionization. See Labour, unions United Church, 147, 152 Vaillancourt, Denis, 216, 217 Vaillancourt, Germaine, 211

Values, dominant, 14, 1923, 29, 43, 71, 86, 131, 169, 171, 248-9, 293-4 Varma, A.J., 277 Volunteer activity, 19, 20, 118, 127, 149-52, 153, 176, 273 Welfare. See Poverty Willis, Dr H.L., 216 Women, 130-70; affirmative action, 159-62, 297; and class, 17, 98, 130, 134, 136-9, 154; and household management, 131-42, 154; and income/wages, 122, 131, 137, 168; and politics, 247; and protest, 28, 155-7, 169-70, 2978; and sports, 153-4; and unions, 108-9, 158-9; and work, 16, 17-18, 25-6, 45, 48, 58, 70, 78-9, 95-111, 115, 118-22, 128, 131-6, 144, 159-62, 297. See also Family, Day care Woodings-Railcar, 53, 57, 67