About 45 minutes drive from the eastern edges of Toronto but lying within the limits of the GTA, is Oshawa a city of 160,000 people. The mainstay of the town for 140 years has been the automobile industry giving it the title of the automotive capital of Canada. Although it has since diversified into an educational and sciences hub and now a bedroom community with Toronto’s expansion, General Motors has long been the elephant in the town.
It is jokingly referred to by Torontonians as the Redneck City since the residents were mostly white and lesser educated while Toronto is half non-white and sophisticatedly urban. Part of its reputation was due to younger people not needing to get a post-secondary education since they just followed in the footsteps of their generational family into high paying jobs in the GM plants and the parts companies that fed into it. The Union claims that for every job lost at GM, Oshawa loses 7 more. Moving lucrative auto-plant jobs in Ontario, famed for its manufacturing to south of the border, has been going on for more than 25 years. The shift has been in the direction to poor cities in the US and to Mexico. The Oshawa plant had been so far immune. The high productivity of its Canadian labour force together with the free health system that saved GM a ton of money were factors that kept Oshawa safe. No longer. GM has no choice but to position itself in an industry that that is moving to non-fuelled, cleaner and soon, totally self-driven cars. So finding no future in conventional cars any more, this morning they announced that the GM plants in Oshawa would close down completely in 2019. Though no one is completely surprised except perhaps the workers themselves who are understandably in denial since in many cases they stand to lose an entire family income, the announcement will send many in that town into moroseness. It was after all a company town for over a century and no one will be unaffected. But Oshawa is fortunate in many ways, avoiding the fate of similar towns in the US, Flint Michigan being the most stark, by diversifying into other sustaining businesses as I mentioned. Being near Toronto’s ravenous estate expansion appetite also helps. There are undoubtedly several construction, finance and trades people just waiting to cash in on the bonanza of huge lands that will be made vacant, reminiscent of the textile mills that moved from Parel in Bombay to non-existence, giving way to fortunes made by Politicians, Gangsters and Builders and to nicer homes where slums existed. So the city may agonize, the heart may skip a beat and happy memories of prosperous times may fill the hearts of some residents now without jobs, but the city will go on, from its past single strength to pillars of several more. Roland Toronto.
