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PAGE 2 WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2018 C HRONICLE - TELEGRAPH Hidden English History in the Saguenay, Part 6: Arvida RUBY PR ATKA publique” sign. “But that will school yearbook with German parents, were brought in to RUBY @QCTONLINE .COM never happen now.” and Southern European names work at the plant in the 1930s n front of the modernist Today, in Saguenay as mixed in with the MacDonalds and ‘40s. Much of the work pre-amalgamation City a whole, people who speak and Tremblays. Monahan says was, in Loucks’ words, “almost IHall of Arvida, in the English as a first language she and her brother Tom grew slave labour … in -40-degree Saguenay, the memorial to the represent just under one per up bilingual. “The ski team weather, some of the guys town’s fallen Royal Canadian cent of the population. The was in French and the sailing would come home and sit in Air Force members takes the single English-language public team was in English,” Tom the living room and cry; others form of a large aluminum school, Riverside Regional Monahan recalls. left after three weeks. wheel. The vast Rio Tinto- School in Jonquière (created The town of Arvida is now “[The company] real- Alcan smelter complex still from the 2016 merger of the a provincial heritage site, ized that you had to keep leaves its ponderous handprint remaining elementary and and Loucks and the Quebec the workers happy to make on the town of 12,000 people, high schools) has under 450 Anglophone Heritage Network, money,” says Loucks. For today merged with the City of students across 11 grades, among others, have advocated those families that stayed, Saguenay. bused in from around the for it to be named a UNESCO a burgeoning community A few steps away from the region. A recent conference World Heritage Site. It was catered to the workers once city hall stands the public held to discuss the past and founded in 1927 by the Ameri- their shift ended: a bilingual Photo by Ruby Pratka library, with its reading future of Arvida’s anglophone can industrialist Arthur Vining newspaper and a vibrant Arvida native Terry Loucks, beside an exhibit on Alcan rooms all named for people community drew about a Davis, president of Alcan (then network of English-language employees in front of Arvida’s pre-amalgamation City instrumental in the founding dozen people, many of them Alcoa). Its carefully planned and bilingual sports activities Hall, describes working conditions for rank-and-file Alcan of Arvida, a planned “company from out of town. layout earned it the name and social clubs were created employees. town” for thousands of Alcan But, as Loucks and his “Washington of the North” to accommodate them. Loucks ees brought in from outside, kind of gravitated elsewhere employees and their families friends explain, it wasn’t and smokestacks towered recalled that the company Monahan explains. Many after that. There’s not really flown or driven in from further always that way. “The Eng- over houses built for working would fly in a Santa Claus “to English-speaking families anybody I know here now, but afield. lish-speaking families were families – “in my time, before give out candy to every little returned to their hometowns, when I come back up, there are “It should say ‘Public between five and 15 per cent all the anti-pollution efforts, kid in Arvida.” were transferred to Alcan a lot of happy memories. When Library,’” says Arvida native of the population, and [in the sky looked like a bomb In the mid-1940s, the operations in other provinces people ask where I’m from, I Terry Loucks, the son of two Arvida], they were all Alcan had gone off,” says Loucks, company began gradually or left to seek other work. always say the Saguenay, and Alcan employees who was born families,” says Joan Monahan. who now lives in the Eastern dialing back its out-of-area “Also, we all had to go away then people say, ‘What?! You’re on the second floor of what is “I didn’t think of it as small- Townships. recruitment efforts, hiring to college or university,” English!’” now the library when it was an town life at all, because it was Thousands of workers from locally based, French-speak- recalls Monahan, who is now a apartment complex, gesturing so cosmopolitan and diverse,” English Canada and abroad, ing employees and laying off lawyer in Ottawa. “Then we all to the large “Bibliothèque she says, showing off a high like Loucks’ Ontario-born or transferring out employ-.

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