Discontent

My hometown used to make things. Paper. Textiles. Chemicals. It was home to innovators. In 1884 Thomas Edison came to Cornwall, Ontario with bold ideas of electric illumination, and predictions of efficiency that his invention would bring to manufacturers and factory owners. From a steam-driven generator he strung lights throughout the weaving sheds of Canadian Coloured Cottons, hugging the St. Lawrence river. It was the first incandescent lighting system put into operation in Canada.

Cornwall later built a massive bridge to link its economy with that of the United States.

My hometown witnessed and participated in the building of dams to harness the power of the river. Entire villages were moved to make way for progress. Homes lifted and loaded onto trucks, and delivered to the tidy planned communities of Long Sault and Ingleside. Other villages, like Aultsville and Mille Roches, were inundated and simply disappeared. Deep channels were dug to ensure ships and goods could move smoothly from the Great Lakes to the open seas and the world beyond.

Ships still go by Cornwall. Few stop. Cornwall doesn’t make much anymore. The large factories are gone. Suppliers have largely packed up and moved on. Tracts of vacant land lie fallow in the city, waiting, desperately, for someone to come and invest. For decades now, government agencies at all levels have been posted in Cornwall with fistfuls of incentive dollars. They sit and wait like the fisherman at the end of McConnell Avenue. Neither get many bites.

Through most of my lifetime, the economy of Cornwall and the surrounding region was sick. The town smelled. It oozed unknown quantities of chemicals and toxins into the river and the groundwater. Its bars and taverns were filled with folks seeking reprieve from the dreariness around them.

Cornwall has, in recent years, managed to lure vast warehouses and distribution centres along the 401. Goods manufactured elsewhere now arrive in Cornwall, taken off one truck and put on another. A handful of call centres have repopulated darkened department stores.

Somehow Cornwall lost its way—its will to be. At the turn of the previous century Cornwall was a leader—bold, calculating, risk-taking and innovative in the industrial era.

But at some point Cornwall become content. Satisfied. Complacent. In an economic context, contentedness is death. There is always someone, some market, looking to eat your lunch.

It may not look like death it at first; it may not even feel that bad. But it is death as sure as the villages that now lie under the St. Lawrence River.

I worked one summer at the paper mill in Cornwall. Slung from swing inside a giant tank, entered by a porthole along its side, my task was use a jackhammer to chip away at the caustic material lining the tank wall. I still don’t know exactly what it was. I do know it was July. In a tank. In a paper suit and goggles. Skin tingling from the agitated chemical compounds filling my enclosed environment.

I was Utility Man # 2. Utility Man # 1 had been his job 44 years by then. It occurred to me that, with patience, I might one day become Utility Man # 1. My life’s path lay clearly before me— seductive and repellent simultaneously.

In 1977 the Chevrolet Monte Carlo was a wildly popular car among young men in my hometown. The paper millyard was lined with shiny variations of that specific make and model. Blue and red mostly.

It was all an illusion. Cornwall’s fate was already sealed. There had been little investment in this factory or others in the region. There was little innovation. There was no need. Management and labour were locked in ever more trenchant means of taking more from each other’s pocket. They didn’t realize their enemy wasn’t across the table but across the ocean. Until, of course, it was too late.

I don’t mourn the loss of factories and manufacturing in Cornwall. It saddens me to see how it has affected the lives of those I care for, who continue to live there. I don’t miss the sense of complacency and of entitlement.

My hometown was once a place of innovation—of ideas and resourcefulness. Of daring and risk-taking. The good news is, it can be that again.

Craig Desjardins, Conrad Guziewicz and others have proven what had only been an idea—a lofty aspiration.

They have demonstrated that innovation, creativity, risk-taking—and ensuing wealth-creation can happen outside of San Jose, Boston and Waterloo. Broadband access has flattened the world—so that it matters little where innovation happens. Guziewicz and Desjardins have shown that the key ingredients need only be establishing the right environment, stimulating young and creative minds, and ensuring they have access to capital, skills, and leadership.

Something very important is happening at the PEC Innovation Centre in Picton. Communities like my hometown ought to take a look.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca