industrial heritage conservation as resistance ... · this case, an industrial heritage site and...

Industrial Heritage Conservation as Resistance:

Environmental History and Post-Industrial Landscapes

Peter Kitay

INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE CONSERVATION AS RESISTANCE: ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY AND POST-INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPES

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CAPSTONE SEMINAR SERIES (Re)Negot iat ing Arti fac ts o f Canadian Narrat ives o f Ident i ty , Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2014.

Managing Editor

Dr. Anne Trépanier

Desktop publishing

Shermeen Nizami

Proofreading and final edit

Emma Gooch and Ryan Lux

Editorial Board

Dr. Daniel MacFarlane, Amanda Murphy, Sarah Spear, Ryan Lux, Greer, Jessica Helps, Martha Attridge Bufton, Paula Chinkiwsky, Sarah Baker, Heather Leroux, Victoria Ellis, Stephanie Elliot, Emma Gooch, Cassandra Joyce, Brittany Collier, Tiffany Douglas, Anne Trépanier.

Guest Editor

Dr. Daniel MacFarlane

Special thanks

Patrick Lyons and Andrew Barrett

Copyright Notice

© Peter Kitay, April 2014

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy, or transmission of this publication, or part thereof in excess of one paragraph (other than as a PDF file at the discretion of School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University) may be made without the written permission of the author. To quote this article refer to: ― Peter Kitay, Industrial Heritage Conservation as Resistance: Environmental History and Post-Industrial Landscapes, Capstone Seminar Series, (Re)Negotiating Artifacts of Canadian Narratives of Identity, Volume 4, number 1, Spring 2014, page number and date of accession to this website: http://capstoneseminarseries.wordpress.com

PETER KITAY


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ABSTRACT

This paper explores the relationship between Environmental History and industrial heritage conservation by examining the role of industrial heritage conservation in a rapidly urbanizing community in Aylmer, Quebec. This paper argues that, while the Deschênes Rapids site in Aylmer, Quebec shares qualities befitting a an "evolved cultural landscape", it is also of particular interest because the local community has positioned the heritage value of the site and surrounding landscape as justification against rampant urban growth in Aylmer, Quebec. Seen through the lens of Environmental History, the Deschênes Rapids site therefore not only exemplifies physical evolution of a hydrological post-industrial landscape; it is also evidence of changing perceptions and valuations of historical, industrial landscapes themselves. In this case, an industrial heritage site and the surrounding landscape is used strategically as means of resisting the pressures of urban growth which is characterized as a disruptive, undesirable and invasive process.

KEY WORDS

Environmental History; Industrial Heritage; Post-Industrial Landscape; Resistance


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"Modern man at the beginning of the twentieth century particularly enjoys the perception of the purely natural cycle of growth and decay… The reign of nature, including those destructive and disintegrative elements considered part of the constant renewal of life, is granted equal standing with the creative rule of man…the modern viewer of old monuments receives aesthetic satisfaction not from the stasis of preservation but from the continuous and unceasing cycle of change in nature".

Alois Riegel,

The Modern Cult of Monuments, Its Essence and Its Development, 1903.

"Every environmental story is a story about power."

Douglas R. Weiner

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Industrial heritage conservation is something of a curiosity. On one hand, the

study and conservation of industrial heritage sites evokes notions of creative urban

planning and re-adaptive land use. On the other hand, industrial heritage sites are also

often contaminated, hazardous places1 where raw materials were once extracted or

transformed, thereby raising questions about the memorialization of humanity’s

problematic relationship with the natural environment. While industrial heritage

conservation may render more textured social histories of the human experience, it

also exposes increasingly complex ways in which people understand and reclaim their

place in post-industrial landscapes. How might we reconcile these inherent tensions

in industrial heritage conservation?

This paper examines the role of ideas related to nature, cultural landscapes, and

deindustrialization in determining the value of industrial heritage sites. Drawing on

sources in an interdisciplinary framework, I argue that environmental history provides

a vital dimension for understanding the political and cultural dimensions of industrial

heritage conservation.2 In this light, the relationship between environmental history

and industrial heritage sites opens new opportunities for informing a “missing”

historical narrative of Canadian post-industrial landscapes. Although the focus is on

industrial heritage sites in hydrological landscapes in Quebec, the paper will

nevertheless also refer to academic research on other regions in Canada as well as

from within the international context.

1 Niall Kirkwood, editor, Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape, London and New York: Spon Press, 2001. See also Michael Falser, (Austria) Stagiaire 15.8.-15.10.2001 UNESCO World Heritage Centre Asia-Pacific Region Minja Yang “Is Industrial Heritage Underrepresented on the World Heritage List?”, http://whc.unesco.org/archive/ind-study01.pdf 2 For an overview of the scope of environmental history see Donald Worster, “Doing Environmental History”, in David Freeland Duke, ed., Canadian Environmental History: Essential Readings (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2006), 9. Worster identifies three main branches of environmental history, corresponding roughly to ideas of nature, human impacts on nature, and finally, nature itself as a holistic system.


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This paper has three sections. The first establishes a theoretical and historical

framework for understanding industrial heritage conservation as a cultural response to

deindustrialization in the late-modern period. The second section situates industrial

heritage conservation in the discourse on the value of nature in cultural landscapes. It

also refocuses the discussion on the Canadian context, particularly in hydrological

landscapes seen through the lens of environmental history. Finally, the third section

offers a brief analysis of the recent proposal to designate Deschênes Rapids located in

Aylmer, Quebec, as a heritage site according to provincial law. The aim of this

investigation is to determine the extent to which the proposal to designate the

Deschênes Rapids site in Aylmer, Quebec as a heritage site evidences the function of

industrial heritage conservation as a mechanism for resisting urbanization in the post-

industrial context.

Defining Industrial Heritage in a Post-industrial Landscape

According to the 2011 “Dublin Principles”, the industrial heritage includes

both structures and landscapes and “reflects the profound connection between the

cultural and natural environment…”3 as well as “complex social and cultural legacy

that shaped the life of communities…” Thus, industrial heritage conservation may be

understood according to two main narratives: first, it is the legacy of labour; second, it

is the story of the landscape. The origins of both narratives can also be traced back to

the concerns of industrial archeology, which emerged in Britain in the 1950s, and was

principally concerned with studying the remains of industrial structures dating to the

3 Joint ICOMOS – TICCIH Principles for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage Sites, Structures, Areas and Landscapes, «The Dublin Principles», Adopted by the 17th ICOMOS General Assembly on 28 November 2011. In the 2003 Nizhny Tagil Charter for the Industrial Heritage, TICCIH went further by saying: “…the Industrial Revolution was the beginning of a historical phenomenon that has affected an ever-greater part of the human population, as well as all the other forms of life on our planet…”

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industrial revolution of the 19th century. By the 1980s, the scope of industrial

archeology expanded to include ‘contextual archeology’ which consisted of larger

‘networks of associations’, such as class relationships, the experiences of labourers,

and the role of the landscape in determining industrial systems.4 The interaction

between human and natural systems has therefore long been an essential component

in the study of the industrial heritage.

In the contemporary context, academic discourse on industrial heritage

conservation includes a range of perspectives. For example, some heritage scholars

such as Edward K. Muller have emphasized the potential function of industrial

heritage sites as tourist destinations, interpretive historical sites, or recreational

spaces.5 Others, such as Michael Frisch and Eva Svensson, oppose this view,

explaining that that both labour unions and rural communities have resisted

celebrating the past as a concession to the finality of deindustrialization.6 Thus, while

in the eyes of some observers industrial heritage conservation presents opportunities

for economic renewal by memorializing the social history of labour, for others it is the

portent of unsettling social transformation in a post-industrial economy.

4 Marilyn Palmer and Peter Neaverson, Industrial Archeology: Principles and Practice (London and New York: 1998), pg. 16-19 5 Edward K. Muller, Industrial Preservation’s Legacy, Pennsylvania’s Legacies, 2006, 6: 2, pg. 37; Michelle Andreadakis Rudd and James A. Davis, “Industrial Heritage Tourism at the Bignham Canyon Copper Mine”, Journal of Travel Research 1998, 36:85; Tim Edensor, Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics, and Materiality, (New York: Berg Press, 2005) pg. 25; Patricia Fels, “Seattle’s Gas Works Park Makes National Register”, Society for Industrial Archeology Newsletter, 2013, 42:2, pg. 8; Neil Ravenscroft, “Editorial: The created environment of heritage as leisure, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 1999, 5:2, pp.68-74 6 Michael Frisch, “De-, Re-, and Post-Industrialization: Industrial Heritage as Contested Memorial Terrain”, Journal of Folklore Research, 1998, 35:3; Eva Svensson, “Consuming Nature – Producing Heritage: Aspects on Conservation, Economical Growth and Community Participation in a Forested, Sparsely Populated Area in Sweden”, 2009, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 15:6, pp.540-559


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The second narrative of industrial heritage involves the story of the landscapes

themselves, in which scholars have emphasized the role of industry in altering the

non-human environment. For example, Niall Kirkwood studied the recovery of

contaminated industrial landscapes7, while Robert Summerby-Murray has articulated a

critique of industrial heritage conservation in Atlantic Canada. According to

Summerby-Murray, local industrial heritage conservation has often involved the

misrepresentation and commodification of the industrial heritage by intentionally

ignoring environmental damage and social upheaval “in order that the image of

industry can provide community stability and the sense of a successful past…” As

Summerby-Murray explains,

…industrialisation was a ‘dirty, smelly, dangerous affair’, complicated by social, economic and political inequality and oppression, and hardly the stuff of a mythical utopian past. Yet, in numerous examples where the industrial past has been presented as heritage… industrial processes have been romanticised and sanitised to the point of becoming non-industrial...8

According to this view, the landscape itself is a central feature of the industrial

heritage, and implies a pronounced ethical and political dimension. In fact, the

industrial heritage might also be read as the critical memorialization of degradation by

symbolically articulating our dormant knowledge that industrial activity has deeply,

and at times negatively, altered the non-human environment. If the ruins of industrial

heritage sites are the signs of our relationship with the natural world, then perhaps

allowing these spaces to be reclaimed by non-human processes signify their deeper

meaning.

7 Niall Kirkwood, editor, Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape, (London and New York: Spon Press, 2001), pg.6. Kirkwood defines manufactured sites as landscapes altered by industrial activity. 8 Robert Summerby-Murray, “Interpreting Deindustrialized Landscapes of Atlantic Canada”, (2002) Canadian Geographer, 46:1, pg. 50.

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Similarly, in a recent study of abandoned herring factories in Iceland, Pora

Petursdottir suggested that both the tangible and intangible industrial heritage are best

appreciated by allowing material objects to decay on site. In her view, the tangible

remains of industrial heritage sites are not only reminders of the intangible heritage,

such as past forms of knowledge and experiences; they are also symbolic

manifestations of the passage of time whereby the past is drifting discernibly away

from a more recognizable present. 9 Industrial heritage conservation may therefore

also be understood as a cultural response to the dramatic and enduring changes to the

human condition onset by late modernity and widespread deindustrialization.10

Randall Mason explained this trend as “an effort to counteract the anomie of modern

consumer-driven life, a reaction to sprawl, or an outgrowth of the massive socio-

economic transformations falling under the rubric of globalization.”11 Thus, industrial

heritage landscapes imply a particular type of “age-value” because they evoke “natural

cycles of creation and decay” expressed in the vivid language of formerly

commonplace tools, structures, and systems.12

To sum up, although industrial heritage conservation is concerned with

memorializing the social histories of labour, industrial landscapes are also spaces

where we encounter evidence of the ways in which human technologies and processes

that have significantly modified the natural environment. Moreover, post-industrial

societies are not only defined by the economic shift away from human labour on

materials toward service economies based on work with other humans; 9 Pora Petursdottir, “Concrete matters: Ruins of modernity and the things called heritage”, Journal of Social Archaeology, 2013, 13:31. Clearly evoking the ideas of John Ruskin, Petursdottir’s discussion is nevertheless original in the subject of her discussion is an industrial heritage site. See also David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985) 10 Rodney Harrison, Critical Heritage Approaches, (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 76-77. 11 Randall Mason, 2006, “Theoretical and Practical Arguments for Values-Centred Preservation,”Cultural Resource Management: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship, 3.2, pg. 21 12 Alois Riegel, “The Modern Cult of Monuments, Its Essence and Its Development,” 1903, pg. 73.


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they also feature a cultural shift toward industrial heritage conservation as a

social rudder in a sea of uncertainty. As the familiar becomes increasingly unfamiliar,

industrial heritage conservation emerges as a cultural response to our estrangement

from the landscapes created by our industrial past.

Industrial Heritage in Canada: Conserving Culture or Nature?

If industrial heritage is about human interactions with nature, what precisely do

we mean by nature in the context of post-industrial landscapes? Heritage scholars and

environmental historians alike have explored the complexities in defining nature.

Perhaps most famously among environmental historians, William Cronon argued that

wilderness is a paradoxical cultural construction: if humanity is to have any place in

the world, it must be included in landscapes that are ‘natural.’13 Similarly, heritage

scholars such as Werner Krauss described how the fusion of human and natural

forces shaped coastal landscapes, while Bosse Sundin explained how archeological

finds in northern Sweden challenged the notion that nature is an untouched or

separate entity from human cultures. In Sundin’s words, in place of wilderness, “there

is landscape.”14

The meaning of nature has also been expressed in terms of its specific value.

According to David Lowenthal, nature’s value in a given landscape is largely utilitarian,

rather than intrinsic (whereby the non-human environment would be attributed value

13 William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness: or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”, in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, ed. William Cronon, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995) pp.69-90 14 Werner Krauss, “The natural and cultural landscape heritage of Northern Friesland”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2005, 11:1, 39-52; Bosse Sundin, “Nature as heritage: the Swedish case”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2005, 11:1. For an overview of the discourse on nature see Franklin Ginn and David Demeritt, “Nature: A Contested Concept”, in Key Concepts in Geography (2nd edition) edited by Clifford et al. (London: Sage Publications, 2009)

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beyond human uses alone).15 Other scholars, such as Ken Taylor and Jane Lennon,

maintain that although nature may be a cultural construction, its value is best

articulated through our evolving understandings of culture landscapes. In their view,

the relaxed distinctions between nature and culture held by the UNESCO World

Heritage Committee and the IUCN have encouraged greater opportunities for the

protection of traditional, indigenous, or rural environments from the pressures of

urban encroachment. Furthermore, according to Taylor and Lennon, “environmental

ethics have been central to the debate on natural values, in particular that of whether

nature has instrumental value or intrinsic value.” 16 Thus, since nature and culture are

indivisible human constructs, articulating nature’s value is comparable to attributing

particular value to the manifestations of human cultures, or for that matter, an

individual human life.

In a much earlier essay, environmental historian Donald Worster framed the

value of nature explicitly in terms of rights, explaining that “…nature will always be a

system of economic resources for man as well as other species. The right to use

nature, therefore, is not more an issue than the right of one human to need and use

many other persons for his existence.” In Worster’s view, since the domination of

people over one another is inextricably linked to the exploitation of natural resources,

the complete liberation of humanity should also endeavor toward the liberation of

nature. 17

15 David Lowenthal, “Natural and cultural heritage”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2005, 11:1, pp.81-92. See also Thymio Papayannis and Peter Howard, “Editorial: Nature as Heritage”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2007, 13:4-5, pg. 298-307. 16 Ken Taylor and Jane Lennon, “Cultural Landscapes: a bridge between culture and nature?” 2011, 17:6, 544 17 Donald Worster, “The Intrinsic Value of Nature”, Environmental Review, (1980) 4:1, 43-49


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Although critics of this perspective may dismiss it as a Marxist reading of

nature,18 Worster’s approach nevertheless suggests that industrial landscapes may be

understood as the combined result of political and technological responses to

challenges found in the non-human environment. Therefore, the utilitarian and

intrinsic values of nature do not refer to opposing concepts, but rather the degree to

which features of the natural landscape have been integrated into human systems.19

In the Canadian context, the notion that the intrinsic value of nature is a

question of rights holds particular significance for industrial heritage conservation in

hydrological landscapes. Industrial sites such as canals, mills, or hydroelectric

installations are composed of an infrastructure designed to harness the power of

moving water, and therefore act as barriers between the public and the river.

Moreover, as several environmental historians have shown, the massive scale of

industrial infrastructure in places such as the St. Lawrence River serves to conceal the

extent to which canals, dams, or hydroelectric installations have modified the

landscape.20 Although some urban industrial heritage sites such as the Lachine Canal

in Montreal have been redesigned for recreational use, these re-adapted public spaces

may at times conceal contamination or histories of social inequality. 21

In other cases, the future of aging industrial infrastructure in hydrological

landscapes is highly contested. For example, the proposal to dismantle and redevelop

18 Franklin Ginn and David Demeritt, “Nature: A Contested Concept”, in Key Concepts in Geography (2nd edition) edited by Clifford et al. (London: Sage Publications, 2009), 304. 19 Environmental history and heritage studies are sometimes sourced in the same scholarship, such as Roderick Nash’s Wilderness and the American Mind (1967). 20 Louis-Raphael Pelletier, "The Destruction of the Rural Hinterland: Industrialization of Landscapes in Beauharnois County." In Metropolitan Natures: Environmental Histories of Montreal, by Stephane Castonguay and Michele Dagenais, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), 245-264; Daniel MacFarlane, “‘A Completely Man-Made and Artificial Cataract’: TheTransnational Manipulation of Niagara Falls,” Environmental History 18 (October2013): 759–784. 21 Susan Ross, “How Appropriate is Our Technological Heritage?" Presentation at the Canadian Studies Heritage Conservation Programme Symposium March 16, 2013, (Ottawa: Carleton University)

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the Chaudière Falls Dam on the Ottawa River continues to take shape amidst of web

of competing interests and perspectives.22 Located between municipal, provincial, and

federal jurisdictions, the dam is also opposed by First Nations spokespersons as

territory un-ceded by treaty, thereby presenting an additional layer of cultural and

political complexity. In this case, with limited economic benefit and undetermined

heritage value, the removal of the dam might in fact enhance the value of the

surrounding landscape.23 Thus, deindustrialization may create opportunities for the

democratisation of the landscape by providing people with greater access previously

hidden shorelines.24

However, the democratisation of post-industrial hydrological landscapes may

not necessarily require the total removal of the physical remains of the industrial

heritage in all cases. Indeed, some industrial heritage sites may in fact facilitate public

access to the river, or even enhance our understanding of the site’s environmental

history. For example, the heritage value of La Pulperie de Chicoutimi has been

described in part for the technological integration of its mill structures with the non-

human features of the river,25 while the Montmorency Falls Heritage site near Quebec

City is classed as “evolved cultural landscape.”

22 CBC News, “Chaudière Island developer holds open house”, Posted: Dec 11, 2013 4:40 PM ET Last Updated: Dec 12, 2013 7:09 AM ET, Accessed February 27, 2014, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/chaudi%C3%A8re-island-developer-holds-open-house-1.2460414 23 Eric Lloyd Smith, “River Restoration Through Dam Removal Efforts, with a Particular Focus on the Ottawa River at Chaudière Island”, Discussion paper, 2007 24 Michèle Dagenais in Montréal et l’eau, (Montréal: Boréal, 2011), 217. See also Christopher Armstrong, Matthew Evenden, and H.V. Nelles, The River Returns: An Environmental History of the Bow (Montreal and Kingston: McGill Queens University Press, 2009) 25 Gisèle Piédalue, « Étude produite pour le Ministère de la Culture, des Communications et de la Condition féminine », (Mars 2009). See also “La Pulperie de Chicoutimi”, Répertoire du patrimoine du Québec, Ministère de la Culture des Communication et de la Condition Féminine, accessed November 19, 2013


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In this case, the site’s character defining elements explicitly include “natural

features, such as the hydrological and geomorphological systems and woods and

ecosystems”, which therefore contextualizes the human changes in the landscape as

part of longer and potentially more enduring processes in the non-human

environment.26 The heritage value of site therefore partly relates to the evolution of

the non-human elements following changes initiated by human design.27

As a final generalization, while in some cases, industrial sites may be a barrier

between people and the landscape, in other cases the conservation of industrial

heritage sites may augment, rather than detract from, our interaction with the non-

human environment. In this this context, abandoned industrial infrastructure ceases

to be a barrier and instead becomes a conduit for re-engaging people with the

landscape in the post-industrial context.

Industrial Heritage Conservation as Resistance: the Deschênes Rapids site

In 2012, two community-based groups, l’Association des residents de Deschênes and

l’Association du patrimoine d’Aylmer, commissioned a statement of significance in support

of their request to designate the Deschênes Rapids and surrounding area as a heritage

site. Consisting in several structures built mainly in the late 19th and early 20th

centuries following the development of hydroelectric power by the Hull Electric

Company in 1895, the site encompasses a rectangular area of some 1800 by 400

meters along the north bank of the Ottawa River in east end of the village of Aylmer, http://www.patrimoine-culturel.gouv.qc.ca/rpcq/detail.do?methode=consulter&id=92845&type=bien#.Upq7W8RUeSo 26 Standards and Guidelines of the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada, 2nd ed., Parks Canada, 2011, pg. 45. 27 Similarly, Donald Worster described this process as second nature, which also relates to the perspective of the longue durée. Donald Worster, “Doing Environmental History”, in David Freeland Duke, ed., Canadian Environmental History: Essential Readings (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2006), 9.

PETER KITAY


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Quebec. The site also includes the remains of 19th and early 20th century mills and

hydroelectric installations still visible from the recreational pathways maintained by

the National Capital Commission along the riverbank.28

Two dimensions of the statement of significance are particularly relevant to the

themes discussed in this paper: first, the character-defining elements included in the

description of the site itself; second the motives for the request. Although the

Deschênes Rapids statement of significance includes a conventional narrative of the

site’s industrial history, it also describes the site’s value in terms of the aesthetic,

archeological, and recreational uses of the landscape in both past and present

contexts. The statement of significance also explicitly names the wooded areas

adjacent to the existing built structures and along the river as part of the request to

designate the entire area as a cultural landscape. Thus, the site’s value appears to

correspond to the UNESCO definition of an “organically evolved landscape” with the

qualities of a “continuing landscape” comparable to the Montmorency Falls site.

Presumably, the historical uses of the Deschênes area for recreation also satisfy the

UNESCO definition of an evolved cultural landscape possessing an “active social role

in contemporary society closely associated with the traditional way of life, and in

which the evolutionary process is still in progress… [and] exhibits significant material

evidence of its evolution over time.”29 Furthermore, according to Quebec’s Loi sur le

patrimoine culturel, cultural landscapes include « tout territoire reconnu par une

collectivité pour ses caractéristiques paysagères remarquables résultants de

l’interaction de facteurs naturels et humains qui méritent d’être conservées. »

28 Guitard, Michelle « Quartier de Deschênes : ÉNONCÉ D’IMPORTANCE ET HISTORIQUE » (Octobre 2012) Préparé pour l’Association des résidents de Deschênes et l’Association du patrimoine d’Aylmer 29 UNESCO World Heritage Convention, Guidelines on the inscription of specific types of properties on the World Heritage List, Annex 3, (2008) pg. 86


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Therefore, with reference to both provincial law and the UNESCO definition of

“evolved cultural landscapes”, the Deschênes rapids statement of significance would

be further supported by a rich description of an environmental history of the changes

in the landscape related to human industry over time. This might solidly include the

undeveloped, wooded areas along the river as a feature of the site’s character-defining

elements.

Secondly, the motives for the request stem primarily from the threat of

urbanisation as the expansion of residential development in Aylmer continues to

change the character of neighborhoods and landscapes included in the recently

amalgamated city of Gatineau. Thus, the request to designate the Deschênes rapids

area as a heritage site may be read as a cultural response to the social and economic

stresses of localized urbanization. In this case, the conservation of an industrial

heritage site is a form of community-based resistance to external threat. Moreover,

this resistance is twofold: on the one hand, it is political insofar as the heritage

designation would exert pressure on municipal government to prevent the over-

development of new housing in the Deschênes area; on the other hand, resistance is

also cultural as it seeks to maintain people’s relationship with the river by protecting

public access to the ruins at the rapids themselves, as well as the surrounding wooded

areas. Thus, in this case, industrial heritage conservation is used as a mechanism for

asserting public rights to the river, the woods, and to recognition of the legacy of

labour associated with the tangible remains of the neighborhood centred on the

Deschênes rapids.

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*

Seen through the lens of environmental history, industrial heritage conservation

is a complex cultural response to the pressures of deindustrialization and urbanization

in the late-modern period. As a means of memorializing human interaction with the

non-human environment, industrial heritage conservation also provides new spaces in

which people may continue to interact with the landscape. To a considerable extent,

the Deschênes Rapids proposal may be understood as a mechanism to maintain

people’s rights to the river and to the tangible and intangible symbols of community

identity. Nevertheless, framed in terms of rights, industrial heritage conservation also

implies corresponding responsibilities. As the scope of environmental and social history

broadens under the definition of “evolved cultural landscapes”, a more inclusive and

layered vision of industrial heritage is required in order to better understand how the

landscape has been modified and described by a variety of communities, such as First

Nations peoples or non-industrialized economies.30 Further research in this area may

therefore serve to enhance the heritage value of industrial heritage sites such as

Deschênes Rapids for present and future generations alike.

30 Dolores Hayden, 1988, “Placemaking, Preservation and Urban History,” Journal of Architectural Education, 41.3, pp.45-51


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Dagenais, Michèle in Montréal et l’eau, (Montréal: Boréal, 2011)

Edensor, Tim Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics, and Materiality, (New York: Berg Press, 2005)

Falser, Michael “Is Industrial Heritage Underrepresented on the World Heritage List?”, UNESCO World Heritage Centre Asia-Pacific Region, 2001 http://whc.unesco.org/archive/ind-study01.pdf

Fels, Patricia “Seattle’s Gas Works Park Makes National Register”, Society for Industrial Archeology Newsletter, 2013, 42:2, pg. 8

Frisch, Michael “De-, Re-, and Post-Industrialization: Industrial Heritage as Contested Memorial Terrain”, Journal of Folklore Research, 1998, 35:3

Ginn, Franklin and David Demeritt, “Nature: A Contested Concept”, in Key Concepts in Geography (2nd edition) edited by Clifford et al. (London: Sage Publications, 2009)

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Harrison, Rodney Critical Heritage Approaches, (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 76-77.

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PETER KITAY


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Petursdottir, Pora “Concrete matters: Ruins of modernity and the things called heritage”, Journal of Social Archaeology, 2013, 13:31

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industrial heritage conservation as resistance ... · this case, an industrial heritage site and...

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