Reforging Ontario

As an economist, I am trained to look at the changing economic landscape through a cold, calculating lens. But as someone who was born and raised in the industrial heartland of London, Ontario, I see the issue of manufacturing job loss as a personal one.

Londoners have always had a love-hate relationship with our factories. We loved being able to leave high school and get stable full-time jobs, with good pay and benefits. Those jobs, however, came at a cost. The work was often repetitive and soulless. I had more than one guidance counsellor admonish me for not trying harder in school, suggesting that “it would be a shame if a smart boy like you ended up working on an assembly line.” And those not working in a factory were not spared from the damage. I grew up across the street from Pottersburg Creek, made famous for high levels of toxic PCB pollution from a transformer factory. To...