“With Iron We Conquer”: Deindustrialization, Settler Colonialism, and the Last Train out of Schefferville, Quebec

Abstract

The Iron Ore Company of Canada announced the closure of its mine in Schefferville, Quebec, on 2 November 1982, throwing the town’s future in doubt. Its slow agony made headlines across Canada for weeks, months, and even years. This article considers how the politics of deindustrialization got bound up in the national project of the settler-colonial state and the political ambitions of politicians, given that the company was led by Brian Mulroney, who became Canada’s prime minister soon thereafter. Due to its perceived symbolic importance, a Quebec parliamentary commission of inquiry was named to inquire into the fate of the town, offering us the opportunity to consider the ways in which race and settler colonialism structured the process and how white residents and politicians as well as Indigenous leaders understood the significance of what was going on. The mine’s closure had devastating economic consequences for the Innu and Naskapi communities, as well as the white residents, but it also marked a recentring for Indigenous people displaced from the socio-economic and political periphery to the centre of what remained behind in deindustrialization’s aftermath.