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ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

FROM - TO SOCIETY-MAKING Company in Canada LUCIE K. MORISSET is a professor and holder of > Lucie K. Morisset 1 the Canada Research Chair on Urban Heritage of the School of Management, Université du Québec à Montréal (ESG-UQAM). A historian of architecture by training, she is interested in the ideas and objects of , notably his article focuses on company towns: in company towns. For several years now, her Ttowns that were built by companies research has focused on the morphogenesis and to serve the industry—usually by one company for one industry. While these the semiogenesis of the built landscape and on might not mean much to the children of the relations between identity and culture as deindustrialization—a situation which in manifested throughout the practices of heritage itself is a problem when we consider herit- and the production of the heritage discourse, age, as we will see—they do carry a whole including action-research on heritage development myth for scholars and practitioners for and heritage empowerment in partnership with whom “company towns” are synonymous local communities. Lucie K. Morisset is Fellow of with control, exploitation, and even fatal- the Royal Society of Canada. ity, all of which are well expressed in the title of Hardy Green’s book: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy.2 As a matter of fact, at least in the most common literature, the “company town” brings to mind dis- astrous portraits provided by decades of studies regarding workers’ struggles or class distinctions. Lexicography also uses the term “paternalism” as a figure of control, that of the “company” over the people in the “company town.”

While this state of literature and the epistemology beyond it could justify an article by itself, as well as the domination of the paternalism paradigm over the his- toriography and popular interpretation of company towns, one might note that company towns are also towns. From that side of the lens, they do appear most of the time as “home towns,” inhabited by proud folks who call themselves “Arvidians,” and others “Flin Floners”: even when the plant no longer exists or the name of the town has changed, these inhabitants still feel nostalgic for their company town. Contrary to schol- ars, they find there a source of pride, of strong belonging, of fond memories. This is what Larry conveyed to me, in front FIG. 1. LARRY’S , FORT MCMURRAY. | LUCIE K. MORISSET.

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FIG. 2. VIEW OF POWELL RIVER IN THE 1910S. | POWELL RIVER MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES. FIG. 3. VIEW OF ARVIDA IN THE 1940S. | RIO TINTO.

of the house in Fort McMurray (Alberta) and more of their heritage, Canadian isolated Powell River, in British Columbia; where he now lives: “our industry, he said, company towns are generally ignored in it was home to the first Western Canadian our industry may have polluted. But we scientific studies that address company paper-manufacturing facility and the site don’t have blood on our hands. You must towns or workers’ villages. It is telling of the world’s largest newsprint mill in remember that this is not backcountry that the work edited by John Garner, The the 1960s, whose started in savagery; it’s civilization. My lawn, our Company Town,5 explores the four cor- 1908 (fig. 2). And, more than 5000 kilo- house: it’s Canadian modernity.”3 (fig. 1) ners of the planet, including America, and metres to the east, the other is Arvida, As a matter of fact, while recent research yet includes no Canadian company towns. a creation of the Aluminum Company of shows that pride and belonging tend to In fact, everything seems to indicate that Canada on which I have previously pub- be quite common amongst company the traditional paradigms of studies that lished and which hosted, for a long time, town inhabitants around the world, it have dealt with Canadian company towns what was known as the world’s largest seems even more the case in Canada, for are inadequate for their understanding, aluminum plant. At the time the town reasons on which I will briefly get back. especially as a legacy. In this synthesis, I was built, in 1926, it had the reputation These company towns have marked the will thus try to point to analysis param- of being so isolated that it was said to territorial conquest, the history, and the eters that allow an approach to these be found “450 miles north of Boston” imaginary figures of Canada. company towns which goes above and (fig. 3). But I will also evoke other com- beyond the working-class living condi- pany towns elsewhere in Canada, even This work on Canadian company towns4 tions that often frame questions concern- though it would be impossible to go has been undertaken in an attempt to ing workers’ housing. I will concentrate through the two hundred and fifty or create an overall picture of these planned on the morphogenesis and semiogenesis so that I have identified. Other towns I single-industry settlements, and to under- of company towns by examining figures will use as examples are: Devon and Fort stand their specificities, as well as their and implementation procedures, as well McMurray (Alberta); Cannery Village, heritage. Although they number in the as representations of their urban forms, Clayburn, Fraser Mills, Ioco, Kemano, and hundreds, very little is known about their housing, and their architecture. Edward (British Columbia); Flin Flon them, much less than on some British (Manitoba); Marysville (New Brunswick); industrial villages, for example, or work- I will support this discussion by pro- Corner Brook, Gander, and Grand Falls ers’ housing in France. While the history of viding two main examples, located at (Newfoundland); Iroquois Falls and and town planning—especially the opposite ends of Canada but shar- Kapuskasing6 (Ontario); Glace Bay (Nova that of the nineteenth and twentieth cen- ing many characteristics, among which Scotia); Baie-Comeau, Bourlamaque, turies—is still a young field of research, are their original remoteness and the Gagnon, Grand-Mère, Port-Alfred, and even though a great number of span of the industry development that Shawinigan, Témiscaming, and Val-Jalbert local initiatives aim at preserving more they nonetheless supported. One is the (Québec); Uranium (Saskatchewan).

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WHAT IS A COMPANY TOWN (IN CANADA)?

The “company towns” in Canada are, first and foremost, planned, single-industry communities, where one company has had housing built for its workers, gen- erally by way of an urban project, and has set up various facilities. This generic definition has led these company towns to be described as “planned industrial cit- ies” and, more often, “single-enterprise communities.” Company towns in Canada are also often frontier towns,7 those that marked the growth of America: “resource towns” that pushed back even farther the boundaries of the inhabited terri- tory given the search for wood, ore, or hydroelectricity.

All these factors, and the need to attract workers to regions distant from urban centres, may appear to be a phenomenon FIG. 4. LOCATION OF 217 EXISTING (IN WHOLE OR TRACES) COMPANY TOWNS IN CANADA (THE NAMES DO NOT ALL SHOW ON THE MAP). | 2017 GOOGLE IMAGERY/NASA; LUCIE K. MORISSET. common to recent countries, Nordic or Southern, where some largely inhabited regions were just left out because of Canadian nation itself. Canada is a coun- and Tony Garnier’s Cité their harsh climate or living conditions. try whose history is grounded in and industrielle more than the mining villages But there are strong arguments that more repeatedly marked by company towns in Nord-Pas-de-Calais. than in others parts of the world, com- (fig. 4). pany towns have been critical in build- Whether they are nicknamed “model ing modern Canada, to the point where As previously evoked, these do have a towns of the North” or other variations some people do not hesitate to claim that specific characteristic that explains some of the “model city of the wilderness,” com- they have represented Canadian culture of their components and justifies their pany towns are fundamentally a product in its purest form.8 Indeed, this may be contribution to any study of workers’ of their remote locations, this remoteness attributed to the economic dynamics of housing in the world: they are indeed being such that everything had to be cre- development, but also to their chronol- towns, that is, relatively integrated and ated (from building lots to churches) in ogy, in the second half of the nineteenth autarchic establishments, with not only an order for the industry (and its workers) to century and the twentieth century, that industry and housing grouped together survive in such a context. In various cases, is, later than many European industrial more or less densely, but also with busi- particularly in the provinces established settlements and earlier than those found, nesses and various institutions. They after 1867 from vast territories historically for example, in Australia. Except for a have been placed under the control of a allotted to the fur trade and bought back half-dozen Canadian company towns specific administration, such as a munici- by Canada, the company town, a result of that appeared between 1855 and 1866, pal council, contrary to company towns land surveying promoted by the govern- they were built after the British North totally owned and managed by compan- ment, served as an urban alternative to America Act gave birth to modern Canada ies as can be found in the United States, the slow and precarious agrarian coloniza- (1867), and up until 1981; they constitute and differently from industrial hous- tion. Even in British Columbia, a province a corpus—a marker for the flowering of ing found in older European settlements. that joined Confederation in 1870, Powell this nation—at least as coherent as the In other words, they resemble architect River was built on lands granted in 1902 by

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FIG. 5. MONUMENT COMMEMORATING THE SETTLEMENT OF MAILLARDVILLE. | LUCIE K. MORISSET. FIG. 6. PICTURESQUE VIEW IN POWELL RIVER. | LUCIE K. MORISSET.

FIG. 7. PICTURESQUE VIEW IN ARVIDA. | LUCIE K. MORISSET. FIG. 8. BOURNVILLE (UK) AS BRAND IMAGE FOR CADBURY. | LEEMAGE.

the provincial government, which looked was such that the need for factory workers that “creating a town” also meant “cre- favourably on the development of the could be met by local labour, which did ating a society.” In a few rare cases, as pulp and paper industry on this difficult- not stop the company, in spite of it all, in Maillardville (British Columbia, 1889), to-access, sparsely-populated land. As the from founding nothing less than a town the company transferred parcels of land nature of work changed, the industry did, for 25,000 to 35,0000 inhabitants. to workers, where they had to build their indeed, offer a promise of densification own or have them built by some and stabilization when it came to land Whether functional or symbolic, this deter- promoter (fig. 5); but it was more common settlement, leading to the creation of mined thrust toward urbanity placed the for the new town to be made up of homes urban spaces under increasingly diverse company responsible for its creation at the that were as carefully planned and built circumstances. Hence, in Arvida, the com- centre of the fate of the company town: in the largest possible number of models, pany bought 2400 hectares of land needed it is this impetus, justifying the name since it was important to create a feeling of for the construction of the town from a “company town” (centred around the differentiation—and thus of belonging— few dozen farmers who had settled there company) rather than workers’ housing in order to ensure that workers would stay, many years earlier. The engineers who (centred around a category of workers), as inhabitants. The picturesque nature of took stock of the general situation claimed that clearly gave new life to eighteenth- the streets of Powell River, where 28 mod- that the density of the regional population century industrial utopia in Canada, given els are alternately distributed among some

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400 houses, giving each house a unique- ness and producing a desire for appropria- tion (fig. 6), also underscores, as opposed to the monotonous alignment attributed to company towns by their detractors, the image of historicity of a town established in an organic manner, over time, where inhabitants could relate to being part of an identity built through their own history. In Arvida, where the company supervised and funded not only the construction of churches and schools but also the ser- vices of clerics and teachers, there are more than 2000 houses built according to 126 different models (fig. 7). Looking to foster “a sense of ownership,” its build- ers boasted that “no house resembled its FIG. 9. ARVIDA DEPICTED AS A HOME TOWN IN A PICTURE PUBLISHED BY THE COMPANY IN THE 1920S. | RIO TINTO. neighbour’s.” In fact, documents show that the president of Arvida’s parent com- pany, as it has been written, “spared no effort to make it a desirable place to live.”9 The urban nature and conviviality of the company town, furthermore, rapidly col- onized, in the style of Bournville, England, the brand image of the company (in this case Cadbury) (fig. 8). Famous photog- raphers have provided literally dozens of images, all magnificent, of Arvida’s and Powell River’s workers (fig. 9); this phenomenon, which could be traced to

Jean-Baptiste Godin and his Familistère in FIG. 10. PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY E.I. BISHOP IN GRAND FALLS AROUND 1910. | GRAND FALLS – WINDSOR HERITAGE SOCIETY. France, as it aimed to parallel the modern- ity of the workers’ society and their quality of life with the modernity of the company making it possible to assess Canadian and defining the American suburbs of product and the quality of life it would company towns’ contribution to industrial the thirty-year post-World War II boom bring to modern homes, seems to have heritage and, moreover, to open distinct period. 4) Furthermore, they more cer- been most common in Canada, as we can fields of investigations. 1) Canadian com- tainly revisit the paradigm of the town also discover in Grand Falls with the work pany towns are defined by their modern- as a transposition of a social hierarchy, of photographers E.I. Bishop and Albert ity. 2) Beyond its representations, which which they have rather contributed to Hillier, hired by the Anglo-Newfoundland are also typical, this modernity is a result transform, if not abolish; that comes Development Company to produce images of international networks of ideas that from utopia rather than from paternal- that would carry the company town at landed and developed in Canada as “town ism, and if something does define most least as far as it could sell its products, or planning” became a full practice, with its Canadian company towns, it is precisely its shares (fig. 10). own lexicon and references. 3) Company that constant relation to a vision of a bet- towns in Canada also prefigure single- ter society through the betterment of the From the double impetus to create a town family homes and monofunctional sub- individuals, much more than the control and to create a society, we can today draw urban landscapes as embodied by the of paternalistic figures that permeates the four key interrelated interpretations, concept of “inhabiting” historiography10.

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ULTRA-MODERN TOWNS mythology explaining in popular terms War I—a period that coincides with most the notion of urban planning itself, company-town building in Canada—grew Ultra-modern towns welcomed the first which, although seminal in their defin- global, company towns were anchored to supermarket featuring the most avant- ition, can be difficult to grasp as ingredi- worldwide networks of ideas that their garde of banners; they were at the heart ents of identity: residents of Gander for executives and engineers (in still a small of the nation’s war effort; cars were just example patiently explain that the town number and aware of each other’s busi- as prominent there as in big and plan takes the form of a goose (a gander ness) carried from one place to another. they did have, in fact, garages as would being a male goose), and as proof point Simultaneously, while this transmission of be found in major cities at a much later out some form that they more or less see a modernity that would only appear later date; residents had the first tuition-free in the street pattern; Arvidians for their and progressively elsewhere left a strong high school and a modern hospital at part, will say that the city takes the shape imprint in the narratives of modernity their disposal; both Powell River and of an “A” for “Arvida,” that was meant to and the memories of company towns Arvida boasted that they were home be written on the ground. and their inhabitants, it also called for to Canada’s very first movie theatre! the emergence of an expertise grounded Actually, they always identify with the The combination of opportunity and in a global and international network, “first this” or the “first that”: the first necessity that engendered company to which, from one company town to town planned in Canada, the first gar- towns also brought to their remote another company town, Canada became den city of Canada, the first paved road backwoods locations such amenities as a fully-enabled contributor. Whereas in America, the first movie theatre in running water, electricity, and central thousands of Canadian families were the country, the first garden contest in heating (which the oldest of crammed into one-or two-room dwellings the province, the best hockey team, the the towns and countryside were lack- in urban centres, in a context of unbridled finest example of a nineteenth-century ing), along with a full range of facilities, urbanization that had become Canada’s industrial town (as did Marysville, New sanitary and otherwise, altogether and most serious social problem, the flurry Brunswick, built starting in 1862) (fig. 11), (almost) instantly; incidentally, many of company town construction served to or the first government-planned resource Canadian company towns share some channel the hopes and knowledge of a town in Ontario (as Kapuskasing, 1921) sort of narrative on their high-tech, new generation of town planners. Out (fig. 12). rapid, and efficient birth and growth, as of 243 company towns, around 100 were the “city built in 135 days” (in the case of built from 1904 to 1934, that is, a total Modernity takes centre stage in represen- Arvida). While the industry got better- of ten new towns per year. This certainly tations of Canadian company towns, to equipped with cutting-edge infrastruc- created an intellectual ferment and a the extent that it has become a recogniz- tures, company towns conceived and built practical framework favourable to put- able element of discourse. The language according to the tenets of revolutionary ting new know-how to good use. of residents is also packed with terms urban know-how. In a nation whose borrowed from the specialized terminol- prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie GLOBAL NETWORKS AND ogy of their planning, which also seems King (1921-1926), published, just before A NEW PRACTICE MADE to have become part of their imaginary being elected, a work entitled Industry POSSIBLE: THE BIRTH OF A and even their identity. Today’s mainly and Humanity: A Study in the Principles “SOPHISTICATED MANNER” Francophone Arvidians call sidewalks Underlying Industrial Reconstruction, it “gutters” (trottoirs in standard French), is possible that the timely influence of We can follow trajectories of expertise in reference to the street gutters drawn the British Town Planning Act (1909)11 and knowledge as that of a pre-eminent and identified on English-language plans. resulted in favouring, in the figure of the Garden City Association As for the settlement of Powell River, it of company towns, a greater refinement in the United Kingdom, Thomas Adams is commonly known as the “townsite” than was displayed by their American [1871-1940], who founded the Town (as some others throughout the coun- counterparts.12 Company towns were Planning Institute of Canada in 1919 try), for it was so designated in company also in a certain manner synchronized and, five years later the Journal of the documents referring to its development. with their company, sometimes more Town Planning Institute of Canada, where Canadian company towns, or at least than with their neighbourhood. As incidentally the project of Arvida was some of them, also have in common a some companies, especially after World announced in 1925 as the “opportunity

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FIG. 11. HOUSING UNITS IN MARYSVILLE. | LUC NOPPEN. FIG. 12. AERIAL VIEW OF KAPUSKASING IN 1945, TAKEN AND ANNOTATED BY ARCHITECT RODOLPHE LAJOIE AS PART OF A SURVEY OF HOUSING IN CANADIAN INDUSTRIAL SETTLEMENTS. | RIO TINTO.

to create . . . the first garden city of Garden City (England, 1901). Of course, 14, 15). Likewise, it is much more than Canada,” a project, as was written, that one could always identify this or that a dated stylistic trend, a global network was making “the heart of every town scheme of the “city beautiful” classicism phenomenon and its landing made pos- planner leap.”13 So would the Canadian (or its monumentality) or associate the sible in Canada that explain how a quad- expertise in town planning grow through greenbelts and other picturesque uses of ruplex from Massena (NY) published in transmission from site to site and from vegetation with the (still very undefined) 1907 in a town planning journal could professional to professional. One town “garden city.” But what could nowadays be recognized in 1914, hundreds of kilo- planner could come, or bring ideas from be understood as stylistic references, metres to the South, in Badin (fig. 16), Norway, at the company’s request, and as in the “first garden city of Canada,” and then in 1925 in Corner Brook (fig. 17), the succeeding town planner could inte- remained much less widespread than thousands of kilometres to the North, grate these ideas and emancipate them the language used in manuals and spe- or how the duplexes of Corner Brook, in the Canadian context, thus becoming cialized treatises written in ever-greater Newfoundland (fig. 18), can be traced a specialist in company town planning, numbers in North America in the after- back to Val-Jalbert, Quebec (fig. 19), and as Ernest Isbel Barott for example, who, math of the First World War. The resur- to Glace Bay, Nova Scotia (fig. 20), where as it is less known, dedicated an import- gence of the architectural formulas of the they are called “gothic houses.” ant part of his career to company towns, English Domestic Revival, made popular thanks to the constant needs and the net- by Raymond Unwin and transmitted using In strict terms of urban planning, this works of enterprises asking for his work. the term “garden city,” thus serves more phenomenon can be contemplated, for as a reminder of the global networks of example, in the circulating idea of sep- In this context and given the chronol- ideas and models of a profession taking arating pedestrian and car traffic while ogy, references to the “garden city” or its distance from style exercises than as an assimilating the inhabited lots as a global the “city beautiful,” which generally illustration of a formal context that had . This idea is explicitly described in appear in studies of planned industrial dissipated before the 1920s. The skilled Tony Garnier’s Cité Industrielle, published estates, seem inadequate to describe the employees’ homes in Powell River cer- in France in 1917, where we can read that: quests and results of this rapidly grow- tainly bring to mind those of Port-Alfred ing town-planning profession, in its way (Quebec, 1916), but also, in the same vein, [T]he built area must always be less than much closer to Riverside (Illinois, Vaux those of Notodden (Norway, 1906) and half the total surface area, the rest of the lot and Olmsted, 1869) than Letchworth of Témiscaming (Quebec, 1919) (figs. 13, becoming a public garden for pedestrians;

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FIG. 13. “MANAGER’S ROW” IN POWELL RIVER. | LUCIE K. MORISSET. FIG. 14. HOUSES FOR MANAGERS AND EXECUTIVES IN PORT-ALFRED. | PRIVATE COLLECTION.

FIG. 15. HOUSES IN TÉMISCAMING. | MCCORD MUSEUM. FIG. 16. CARD INDEX IN THE COMPANY’S FILES FOR THE QUADRAPLEX IN BADIN (NC). | BADIN HISTORY MUSEUM.

FIG. 17. QUADRUPLEX IN CORNER BROOK. | MARIANNE CHARLAND. FIG. 18. DUPLEX IN CORNER BROOK. | MARIANNE CHARLAND.

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FIG. 19. DUPLEX IN VAL-JALBERT. | LUC NOPPEN. FIG. 20. DUPLEXES IN GLACE BAY. | MARIANNE CHARLAND.

FIG. 21. PEDESTRIAN PATHWAYS BETWEEN LOTS IN KITIMAT. | LUCIE K. MORISSET. FIG. 22. ANONYMOUS ARTIST, RENDERING OF KITIMAT’S TOWN PLAN, 1950S. | KITIMAT MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES.

that is, each building must leave on the of the main car lanes.15 But in the history as we will see, became quite specific in unbuilt part of its lot an unimpeded pas- of Canadian company towns, it should Canadian company towns. sage from the street to the building situ- also be noted that these can be found ated at the back. This arrangement allows in Gander, Nova Scotia, and in Kitimat, The documents from that period serve circulation through town in any directions British Columbia (fig. 21), designed in as a particular reminder of the growing independent of the streets which one no 1954 by town planner Clarence Stein (who Canadian and American expertise in town longer needs follow; the land of the town as had previously, as is well known, become planning per se, besides initial influence a whole is like a large park, with no enclosing famous with Radburn, New Jersey, and its of the British: they include contour plans, walls to limit the ground14. traffic separation system) (fig. 22). In any neighbourhood centres, park systems, case, the resulting “free standing” figure and rapid transit, for example, In a previous issue of Architecture Canada, of houses in a park does seem to charac- as discussed by Frederick Law Olmsted, I have brought up a few hypotheses to terize many company towns in Canada, John Nolen, Morris Knowles, Alexander explain how this came to Badin in North where fences were forbidden, at least Walker, and other specialists. This is Carolina, where can be observed, in the for a time, even between private pro- how the reference universe of Canadian built town or the very large lots that perties and to the exact contrary of their company towns became increasingly less enable this, these pedestrian passages American counterparts. This probably also British and more Pan-American, and then, going through the lots, independently has something to do with tenure, which, eventually, more Canadian. Obviously,

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FIG. 23. PLAN FOR CORNER BROOK BY THOMAS ADAMS. | NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR PROVINCIAL FIG. 24. BUILDING BUILT IN 1916 IN THE TOWN CENTRE OF POWELL RIVER. | ARCHIVES, BOWATER NEWFOUNDLAND LIMITED FONDS. LUCIE K. MORISSET.

before national expertise could be deve- centres) led to the rapid integration and from town to town, the lexical elements loped in Canada, starting in the 1930s, development of sophisticated urban forms making it possible to describe this incre- many town planners, company town spe- and layouts; what in Powell River became mental modernity are in fact more and cialists like previously mentioned Ernest only a slight concession (involving the grid more varied, as reflected by changes in Isabel Barott, or enterprise architects like pattern) to topography, in Arvida resulted town planning during the twentieth cen- Harold Lea Fetherstonhaugh, could be in a complex web of streets, alleys, bou- tury, with Canadian company towns beco- found in the United States, given the subs- levards, , and lots streamlined by ming the receptacles of choice in these tantial amount of capital at stake. While the contours of the land and alternating developing times. While this progressive the architect for a large number of the public, private, commercial, and residential “canadianization” of a global expertise Powell River houses, John McIntyre plied services. And that plan for Arvida could has been associated by scholars to the his trade in Scotland before coming to be compared to the American works of “fate of the City Beautiful in Canada,”16 British Columbia; George Ingemann, cre- Brainerd, or the Brainerd-Tandem team in it is nonetheless from another point of dited with the town plan, was also from Maria Elena, designed the same year for view that can be explained why the still Minnesota, like the town’s parent com- the Guggenheim Brothers. very unknown Welwyn, in England, was pany. As for the planners of Arvida, the designed in the 1920s by a Canadian plan- architect Harry B. Brainerd and the original In this “sophisticating manner” which ner, Louis de Soissons. Canada became Danish engineer Hjalmar E. Skougor, they can be explained both internally, by a sort of capacitator of town planning, were both based in New York. Like the the Canadian expertise, and externally, thanks precisely to company towns, which hundreds of sheets of plans for lampposts, by the global networks, we can follow enabled Canadian planners to contri- gardens, sidewalks, aqueducts, etc. pres- the transformations of the planning bute back to the world in which their erved in the archives of company towns, from Powell River, British Columbia, knowledge was born and grown. their multidisciplinary contributions, which in 1908 to the urban plans of Iroquois often also reflect those of dozens of other Falls (1912) and Kapuskasing (1921), in SUBURBAN HOUSING professionals, are a reminder that the com- Ontario. The plans for Corner Brook WITH AN IDENTITY pany town is much more than just a group (1923-1925), Newfoundland, by Thomas of houses. The fact of building everything Adams, attest to similar research (fig. 23), If there is one type of housing that from the ground up (as opposed to what as do the plans of Fort McMurray (1962), the Canadian company town engende- happened in complexes inserted into older Alberta, and those of Uranium City red from the outset, it is the suburban set-ups or in suburbs annexed to existing (1952), Saskatchewan. Added together single-family home. Except in situations

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FIG. 25. HOUSES DIVIDED IN TWO SINGLE- BY THE BUILDER FIG. 26. CARD INDEX IN THE COMPANY’S FILES FOR THE A1 TYPE HOUSE IN ARVIDA: IN POWELL RIVER. | LUCIE K. MORISSET. THE ORIGINAL PLANS SHOW THAT THE DIVISION WALL BETWEEN THE KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A BEAM TO MAKE WAY FOR A “FAMILY ROOM.” | SAGUENAY. of extreme climates, like those that Freed from pre-existing local habits and as though an attempt was being made, inspired—however belatedly—the so- other precedents, this type of housing despite its modernity, to enlist the com- called Fermont Wall (Quebec, 1972), the does not illustrate the slow progression pany town in a historicity in whose lineage desire to attract, maintain, and stabil- from one typology to another, as would be the industry, symbolized by aluminum in ize the workforce by targeting families, the case in “standard” cities and suburbs. the case of Arvida (fig. 27) and by brick rather than single workers, favoured the This radical appearance of modernity dis- in the case of Clayburn, British Columbia choice of this Anglo-Saxon type of hous- seminated in Canada a type of housing (1905) (fig. 28), represented the culmina- ing: a home on a plot of land in a mono- that would not come into general use until tion. In Bourlamaque, Quebec (1934), for functional , like the homes after the Second World War in speculative example, the houses were adorned with found in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre large-scale housing developments such as logs to reflect the forestry history of the City, and therefore much less like the the Levittowns. It is rather in the opposite host region of this mining town (fig. 29). housing found in Tomáš Bata’s Zlín (Czech manner, by meeting more archaic needs Republic). In Powell River, the only apart- and for more archaic purposes, that, in The hotels built by the companies to ment building was erected downtown in Powell River and Arvida, the modern home accommodate various employees and 1916 (fig. 24), close to businesses and was adapted for roomers, tenants brought visitors, heirs of the architectural eccen- the plant; in Arvida, the only model of in by a family who reserved a room for tricities of their reference typology, fur- an apartment building was consigned to them. The builder went so far as to sub- thermore display an impressive range of oblivion after one such structure was built divide certain Powell River homes into regional-style architecture; those of Powell in 1927, even though this was meant to be two apartments, one on top of the other River and Arvida can be included here, as the most luxurious housing in town. The (fig. 25). In addition, in one hundred or so can the hotels of Grand-Mère, Quebec not-so-good state of preservation of this houses in Arvida given a certain inclination (1888), Iroquois Falls (1916) (fig. 30) and building, very unusual for Arvida, testi- toward the vernacular characterizing the Kapuskasing (1928), both in Ontario, and fies to its low degree of appropriation in company town, the dining room and kit- Baie-Comeau, Quebec (1937) (fig. 31), to its urban environment. In fact, it was not chen formed a single family room, as could give just a few other examples. until the end of the Second World War be found in the oldest houses in French that rapid population growth occurred, Canada (fig. 26). Starting in the 1920s, To create both this historicity, made of and given specific zoning, that this type this thrust toward the vernacular can picturesque, of non-standardized forms of housing was built in a particular sector increasingly be found also in the aesthe- and various references to tradition, and to of the town. tics of the houses, even the entire town, do this even more in landscapes made of

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FIG. 27. ALUMINUM CLADDED HOUSE TYPE M13 IN ARVIDA. | MARIANNE CHARLAND. FIG. 28. BRICK HOUSES IN CLAYBURN. | LUCIE K. MORISSET.

FIG. 29. LOG HOUSES IN BOURLAMAQUE. | TOURISME VAL D’OR. FIG. 30. IROQUOIS HOTEL IN IROQUOIS FALLS; PICTURE TAKEN BY RODOLPHE LAJOIE IN 1945. | RIO TINTO.

single-family homes, companies needed company towns endowed with a pictu- during the inter-war period in the built to reinvent ways of building, at a time resque figure and an identity-making and imagined landscapes of Canada. when ready-made houses and other kit project were made possible by such a The first government interventions in houses were making a very timid appea- system. It is the case in Arvida, also in the field of housing, and all those that rance in America. Devon, Alberta (1949) (fig. 32), to pro- followed, were directly influenced by this vide another example: the principle here phenomenon; thus, when the crown cor- The spread of the suburban-single-family is to pre-cut the home components on a poration Wartime Housing Limited built home landscape, with an identity as we given site, and once the components are whole neighbourhoods to house war- might say, was propelled by typically distributed according to the landscape effort workers, they naturally chose small American building conditions, in parti- variations of the models, to simply build single-family dwellings, which in addition cular timber-frame construction, which every house using “a hammer and nails.” have been exported in every corner of reduced costs and building time, at the Europe during the reconstruction fol- same time as it allowed a variety of archi- From a company town to another com- lowing World War II. And later—at the tectural shapes thanks to the permuta- pany town, the suburban single-family end of the 1940s and in the 1950s—when tion of ornamental components. Many home thus became firmly established the government of Canada undeniably

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FIG. 31. BAIE-COMEAU INN. | HOTEL MANOIR LE BAIE-COMEAU. FIG. 32. AERIAL VIEW OF DEVON IN THE 1940S. | PRIVATE COLLECTION. entered the field of housing and low- ethnic origins of Canadian company Nevertheless, the structural factors income family housing and took over town inhabitants, a phenomenon that that made them towns, rather than what had, until then, been the realm is furthermore partially responsible for urban extensions, and that motiva- of company towns, it did so by creating the disappearance, in their midst, of the ted their modernity, smoothed over and publishing catalogs of exclusively typical segregation found in them. All relatively quickly the historical factors single-family house models. These cata- over the Western world, company towns, that buttressed this segregation. The logs published by the Central Mortgage particularly the oldest ones, are in fact idealism of certain industry bosses is a and Housing Corporation, called “Small known for having propagated, within likely factor in this regard, as is the eth- Houses Models,” would, in turn, support the resident company and the industry nic diversity fuelled by the settling of the very Canadian figure of the “deve- in general, a class distinction imbued with Canada itself, where earlier settlement loper,” building developments plot by a labour hierarchy. In Quebec, during in the country rarely led to the status plot, financing each new house with the nineteenth century and the first half of “native,” favouring a group at the the sale of the one built before and, of of the twentieth century, the heads of expense of another. The racial segrega- course, varying the owner’s choice with companies most often came from the tion distinguishing “Black villages” from a wide range of models. Nothing resem- English-speaking minority, a phenome- “White villages” in the southern United bled these first suburbs that surrounded non that engendered a number of what States company towns, for example, or the older urban centres during the thirty were known as “Quartiers des Anglais” the “racial engineering” of Fordlandia, post-World War Two boom more than the (English Neighbourhoods), exclusive Brazil, did not come about in the same houses of the Canadian company town. areas in company towns: this can be said manner—nor over the same length of of the “Manager’s Row” or of “Balkan time—in Canadian company towns. THE EGALITARIAN COMPANY Village” in Powell River (fig. 33), which, TOWN: A GLIMPSE it is important to note, was temporary In Arvida, where, starting before the AT THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY housing meant to last only until the end Second World War, individuals of forty or UTOPIA LEXICON of the town construction phase. It was so different nationalities could be found, replaced in 1929 with an area built for in 1926 some twenty houses were reser- Paradoxically, the Canadian company workers waiting for a larger house in ved by the company for engineers and town also prefigures the social homoge- the town itself, as well as for workers of members of management stationed there neity characteristic of American suburbs, European origin; it would seem, accor- on a temporary basis. The other Arvidians, or at least the homogeneity of a middle ding to certain oral sources, that several that is, Americans and French-Canadians, class with the same means and same qualified employees moved more easily Poles and Italians, for example, grouped possessions. A notable exception must from this adjacent neighbourhood to themselves freely based on their religious be made here for the diversity of the townsite17 homes. practices, either near the Roman Catholic

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FIG. 33. BALKAN VILLAGE IN POWELL RIVER. | POWELL RIVER MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES. FIG. 34. ALCAN HOUSING PLAN OF 1955. | KITIMAT MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES.

church or around the Protestant church. housing conditions for all their workers; property. Several of them, for instance in None of the houses that they lived in, this was true in Arvida regarding the job Powell River, did so in the mid-1950s, gene- located on any of the town’s streets, of pot-man, a worker with a socially rei- rally by implementing innovative financial provided any external clues as to their fied position who in addition was treated conditions. While creating Kitimat, British social status. There was no “Quartier des as some kind of magician builder whose Columbia (1955), the company devised a Anglais” in Arvida. art was transmitted from generation to double mortgage system, having recourse generation within a given family. in part to a government program enabling It must be said that changes within the workers to acquire company-built homes industry itself blurred levels of hierar- To these ingredients that served to level (fig. 34); in Flin Flon, Manitoba (1929), the chy: the resource town was often loca- Canadian company town social struc- company systematically sold off its housing ted hundreds of kilometres away from the tures, must be added a non-negligible stock and, after World War Two, it even company’s headquarters, especially from element of the urban economy, directly built a set of houses and sold them to vete- those of the multinationals, whose execu- linked with the utopian quest pursued rans at cost price.18 In Arvida, as of 1926, tives did not live in the company town. As by the industry bosses, which translated the company established a “credit-lease” for everyone else in the company, the dis- into so many of these towns being called system designed to enable Arvidians to tinction between the value of a qualified “model something,” and including even an purchase their homes by staggering the employee and that of a worker became example of a union-built town, Port Union required payments, based on the cost progressively less clear, especially since (Newfoundland). Such a desire to create a price, according to the owner’s capacity the company town also housed barbers, society led companies to prefer long-term to pay. It must be mentioned that the com- gardeners, bankers, firefighters, and tenures for the houses they offered to their pany had previously and unsuccessfully other merchants with no employment workers. As such, the typical Canadian tested fixed-term mortgages in the com- ties to the company. The high degree of company discarded the guiding principle pany town of Alcoa, in the United States. specialization needed for certain wor- of paternalist design, that is, rental hou- kers’ jobs and the resulting costs of this sing held by the “boss,” and instead sold These “homeowner towns,” like future work were also among the factors inciting houses, and that, incidentally, well before American suburbs, significantly modified companies to provide better living and government programs facilitated access to the company’s range of action; at least

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FIG. 35. PLAN FOR ARVIDA, 1926. | SAGUENAY. FIG. 36. HOUSE LABELED AS “PROTECTED HERITAGE SITE” IN ABANDONED IOCO, IN 2015. | LUCIE K. MORISSET.

in certain cases, they became levers for THE END—OR THE BEGINNING— conception that still dominates the his- a diversification of capitalization. Some OF AN ERA? tory of Western world heritage. They of them became precursors of suburbs also offer a palpable experience on to the extent that they ushered in the If understanding tenure enables a bet- the ground made possible by the spe- principles of speculative subdivisions that ter grasp of certain characteristics of cial features that are reflected through subsequently became the rule, weighing, Canada’s company towns, doing so, in their quest for belonging and identity. It however, the gain from property sales the current context of deindustrializa- may be worth underlining at this point against the social stability created and tion, also provides insights into their des- that Canada’s company towns came into the value of the entire territory invested tinies. For example, Ioco, British Columbia existence around the same time as these by the company town, all guarantees of (1922), once a pleasant town in which to conceptions of heritage appeared. To future industrial activity. live, became a desirable speculative pro- the extent that these company towns ject after it was bought out by developers now seem predestined to change, will In so doing, and this is one major contri- (fig. 36). This example raises the question the destiny of some contribute to what bution of Canadian company towns to the of heritage and its transmission, an issue others effectively will become? twentieth century, they resolutely over- that is caught between the welfare of turned the traditional representation of workers of bygone days and a collective Certain towns that remained company the town as a configuration of power. legacy of social utopia. property were destroyed after the clo- To realize this, one only needs to com- sing of the plant, and they joined the pare the chromolithography of Arvida’s As some other resource company towns somewhat swollen ranks of America’s town plan (fig. 35), published in the 1920s in the world (from Brazil and Chile to “ghost towns”: some of the better-known and composed of thousands of similar- Australia), but contrary to industrial vil- examples include Gagnon, Quebec (1960), looking residential lots, with any town lages and enclaves built or amalgamated and Kemano, British Columbia (1954). image published between the fifteenth in larger cities, Canada’s company towns Some were slowly appropriated to various and the nineteenth century, dominated have a noteworthy advantage when it degrees by inhabitants often left with by castles, churches, or other singular comes to heritage designation: as finished a house but no work, and who did not figures of power. wholes, they easily fit into the monument always have the possibility or the desire to

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FIG. 37. “HALF DUPLEX” AFTER DEMOLITION OF ITS OTHER HALF IN GLACE BAY. | FIG. 38. CAPE BRETON MINER’S MUSEUM. | MARIANNE CHARLAND. MARIANNE CHARLAND.

belong to the former town and to conti- inhabitants no longer share a common In this context, the proactive urbanity of nue history. It has been especially the case past or destiny. Towns that lose their Canadian company towns, which is at the in mining communities decimated by suc- main industry in today’s world can teach forefront of the nostalgic discourse of the cessive economic crises (abandonment or us a great deal about urban . workers/residents of these towns—with demolition seems to be a characteristic It is impossible to expect the town to be the notable exception, as I mentioned of some mining companies’ relationship reinvented without also reinventing its previously, of some mining settlements— with the territory), as in Glace Bay, Nova society. Given that the financial and social may inspire a broadening of heritage Scotia, where many “half duplexes” stan- success of Canadian company towns has practices. The memories are shaped by a ding with their other half lost to some been made possible by property owner- sense of belonging and pride, which, it unwilling or gone former dweller can be ship and valuation mechanisms, it is must be noted, sheds light on a depiction seen (fig. 37). Some company towns, des- conceivable that former resource towns of company towns that is quite different pite being stripped of the old industrial could, thanks to their real estate, become from the miserable rendering put forward structures that explained their existence, their own source of revenue. They could by some authors. But this does not mean such as Clayburn, British Columbia (1905), also become a collective embodiment of that traditional patrimonial visions are became upscale little villages after they a sense of heritage. Could this be a sus- adapted to the task of preserving and were carefully restored, but with few tainable solution? transmitting this heritage, even though memories of their industrial past. Others they do seem adapted to encompass at were restored to serve their own histori- Some initiatives coming from outside of least their “monumental” urban form. cal interpretation; this is the case in Val- the heritage field per se have targeted Jalbert, Quebec (1901), Cannery Village, a sustainable effect on both the society Some Canadian company towns are in British Columbia (1889), or Port Edward, and its built environment. In Glace Bay, fact “protected” under various histo- also in British Columbia (1888), which a former miner’s home was bought by rical monument statuses: Marysville, indeed testify to the local attachment to a university professor and renovated in Powell River, and Arvida by the Federal these kinds of settlements. Some have partnership with Habitat for Humanity, government; Val-Jalbert by the provin- even been partly reconstructed after in accordance with sustainable develop- cial government; and Arvida, to state it having been lost, to interpret ways of ment principles, to house a low-income again, by the . But examples living, for instance at the Cape Breton family. And although this example might such as Ioco, British Columbian, remind Miners Museum, in Glace Bay (fig. 38). show to some that sustainable deve- us that heritage designations do not lopment is not always compatible with serve much purpose in, and of them- In all these cases, the towns have expe- heritage as others traditionally see it, the selves. The commemorative practice that rienced major structural changes, even house was subsequently designated by consists in putting a plaque on a building when a plant is still in operation. Their the municipality. seems poorly adapted to the nature of

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company towns. Indeed, the plants and an institutional monument and more as a of goods. Such use of memory does in fact machines that entered the corpus of community reality. To this end, one could, introduce a shift in the way people relate industrial heritage in this commemora- for example, convert the company town to heritage, making them producers of tive manner were able to accommodate utopia into an urban heritage utopia by heritage instead of just end-users. the univocal and high-minded principle emphasizing the principles of participa- of classification ordered by the State as tion and common drive that were the This new role, supported by company a safeguarding measure. However, it is essence of company towns. Instead of towns as bearers of an “urban heritage nearly impossible for whole areas that being industry producers, the residents of utopia,” of course presupposes that heri- include hundreds of private properties, company towns could collectively become tage institutions would give residents this parks, schools, and other businesses to heritage creators. type of preferential role when it comes benefit in any way from institutional to being repositories of the town’s nar- recognition along those lines; additio- A lot of material exists that we already ratives and values. In this manner, could nally, it does become difficult to think know of or are just discovering: as the company towns—Canadian ones at the in that manner of whole areas that hundreds of photographs taken by very least—teach us how to live in the include hundreds of private properties, renowned artists who portrayed their twenty-first century? In any case, we must parks, schools, and other businesses; growth, company towns leave to history now renew our knowledge once again for it is practically unrealistic to wish that thousands of magnificent planning docu- the sake of their future. such institutional recognition will pro- ments that are just waiting to tell some tect the society that makes these living story and the pride of the companies and NOTES structures ongoing memories, and totally the communities who left them. Powell unfeasible to hope that they will sustain River, Arvida, and Grand Falls are just 1. This production of this article was aided by the financial support of the Social Sciences the preservation of the core relationship a few of them. Some other material is and Humanities Research Council of Canada. between the company town and the still less exploited, although it probably Many people were seminal in the research social utopia it used to foster. In that line should be, especially since it can nurture that lead to this article. Amongst them, of thought, we can observe that major the patrimonial shift in society-making Marianne Charland, Samuel Mathieu, Mario Parent, and Jessica Mace, young scholars reinvestments in a heritage site as Val- and heritage-making that company towns at the Canada Research Chair in Urban Jalbert barely seem to maintain its neces- seem to be waiting for. It is the case of Heritage; and Luc Noppen, Director of sary income, which is now, in this case, the memories previously mentioned, be Partnerships at the Canada Research Chair supplemented by a new exploitation of they of the hard work in mines or of in Urban Heritage; Teedie Kagume and Bert Finnamore, from the Powell River Historical the falls with a power plant designed as the beloved hometowns: projects have Museum and Archives; Linda Nailer and Ann a real monument. Val-Jalbert and other indeed appeared here and there to collect Nelson, from the Townsite Heritage Society company towns are also victims of the these. A growing number are also using of Powell River; Louise Avery, from the disappearance of common historical them in innovative manners, for example Kitimat Museum and Archives; Ilke Ibrahim, from the Glace Bay Heritage Museum; Mary references in this “Age of discontinuity”: the initiatives launched by the Sir William Pat Mombourquette, from the Cape Breton less and less potential visitors have the Ford Coaker Historical Foundation in Port Miners Museum; Adriana MacLean and Anne slightest idea of what these machines Union, Newfoundland and Labrador, as Porquet, from the New Waterford and District are, what these buildings are, and whom seen with Habitat for Humanity in Glace Historical Society; Courtney MacIsaac, from the St. Patrick’s Church Museum of Sydney; or what they were intended for. Bay, and as promoted by the Townsite Theresa Gillis, from the Dominion Heritage Heritage Society of Powell River, where Committee; Cathy MacIntyre, from Cape These considerations highlight the impor- old windows, doors, and other architec- Breton Regional Municipality; Marie-Hélène tance to preserve the memories, but also tural elements were salvaged for use by Parenteau, from Cabot Links; Jane Arnold and Anna MacNeil, from the Beaton Institute; to rethink a heritage such as company residents in their home renovations, or Eleanor L. Anderson, from Cape Breton towns in tomorrow’s society. In that as in an elderly home in Arvida, where University; George French, from the Corner line of thought, company towns, and the recollection of memories and thus Brook Museum and Archives; Gail Goudie, Canadian ones in particular, invite us the connection to history support a narra- Office Administrator, Baie Verte Peninsula Economic Development Association; Margaret to reflect together on what it means to tive on the value of the elderly, based on Collins, from The Way We Were Museum; Gary “create a city” and to “create a society,” information that can be share instead of Noftle and Renée Harris, from the James in order to see heritage less in terms of the outdated paradigm of the production Hornell Boys and Girls Club; Hilda Bennett

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and Jeff Saunders, from the Department of 8. Tepperman, Lorne, 1971, “Introduction,” in Engineering, Town of Grand Falls–Windsor; Rex Lucas, Minetown, Milltown, Railtown: Life Audrey Burke, from the Grand Falls–Windsor in Canadian Communities of Single Industry, Heritage Centre; Greg Seaward, from the Town Don Mills, Oxford University Press, 2008, of Gander; Sandra Seaward, from the North p. xii-xvi. Atlantic Aviation Museum; Edith Samson, 9. See Morisset, Lucie K., 2014, “Housing for from the Sir William Ford Coaker Historical the Magic Metal City: The Genesis of an Ideal Foundation; Gail Doody, from the Port Union Home,” Architecture Canada, vol. 39, no. 1, Museum; Teresita E. McCarthy, from the Bell p. 3-34. Island’s Museum; Heather Wareham, from the Maritime History Archives; Melanie Tucker, 10. This could probably be related to the period Edith Cuerrier, and Emily Gushue, from the of their construction, which entails companies Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and and modes of production different from those Labrador; Robert Fortier, formerly from that characterized nineteenth-century pater- the Canadian Centre for Architecture and nalism per se. Curator of the exhibition Power and Planning: 11. Van Nus, Walter, 1975, “The Fate of City Industrial Towns in Québec, 1890-1950. Beautiful Thought in Canada, 1893-1930,” A previous version of this article was presented Communications historiques, vol. 10, no. 1, in French at the International Committee for p. 191-210. the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage 12. John W. Reps (1992, The Making of Urban (TICCIH) Conference, Lille (France), in 2015. America: A History of Planning in the United 2. Green, Hardy, 2010, Company Town: The States, New York, Princeton University Press) Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped writes that “town planning by American the American Economy, New York, Basic industry generally failed to produce com- Books. munities significantly different or better . . . Company towns in this country added little to 3. My translation, interview conducted in May our knowledge of how communities should be 2013. planned.” 4. My observations here result from extensive 13. “A Garden City for Canada–Perhaps,” The research undertaken in the last few years (the Journal of the Town Planning Institute of work in question is entitled “Identity on the Canada, vol. IV, no. 4, 1925, p. 4. Land: Company Towns in Canada”), thanks to funding provided by the Social Sciences and 14. Quoted in Riccardo Mariani’s edition of Une Humanities Research Council of Canada. Cité Industrielle [Ellis, translator], 1990, New York, Rizzoli International Publications, n.p. 5. Garner, John S. (ed.), 1992, The Company Town. Architecture and Society in the Early 15. Morisset, Lucie K., 2011, “Non-fiction Industrial Age, New York and Oxford, Oxford Utopia. Arvida, Cité Industrielle Made Real,” University Press. Architecture Canada, vol. 36, no. 1, p. 3-38.

6. A bit different from company towns per se, 16. See Van Nus, op. cit. as Kapuskasing results from successive settle- 17. Southern, Karen, 2013, House Histories and ments, one of them being that of the Spruce Heritage: A Visual History of the Historic Falls Ltd. in the 1920s. Powell River Company Townsite, Powell River, 7. Innis, Harold, 1936, “Settlement and the The Townsite Heritage Society of Powell River. Mining Frontier,” in Arthur R.M. Mower 18. Robson, Robert Stewart, 1980, Flin Flon: A (ed.), Settlement and the Forest Frontier Single-enterprise Community, Master’s the- in Eastern Canada, Toronto, Macmillan sis, Faculty of Arts – History, University of of Canada; Robinson, Ira M., 1962, New Manitoba. Industrial Towns on Canada’s Resource Frontier, , University of Chicago Press; Stelter, Gilbert A.,1975, “The Urban Frontier in Canadian History,” in A.R. McCormack and Ian MacPherson (eds.), Cities in the West, Ottawa, Museum of Man, p. 270-286.

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