| chapter 4

Gender, Labour, and Community in a Remote Mining Town

Jane Hammond

The quickest way to travel from the island of Newfoundland to Labrador City is by airplane. A small Provincial Airline plane does a twice-daily milk run from St. John’s to Labrador City, stopping in Deer Lake and Goose Bay before reaching its final destination. In early May 2011, as the plane approached western Labrador, I was struck by the scale and extent of over five decades of open-pit iron mining on the landscape. Mountains of red earth sat next to large craters sculpted by years of mass-mining for iron ore. Labrador City, originally built by the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC), made up the majority of the western Labrador’s population and continually underwent construction to keep up with expanding iron production, as contractors cut large sections of the surrounding wooded area to make room for more temporary housing. Less visible than these environmental changes, however, is the history of unequal gender relations that have accompanied the extraction of iron ore in western Labrador, as women struggled to enter the mining workforce and gain independence and opportunity in this male-dominated company town.

The study of women’s place in industrial towns, and more specifically mining communities, has blossomed since the 1980s as scholars moved from focused studies of gender in industry to a more all-encompassing approach to place, community, and industry. This shift in focus reflects changing historiographical understandings of gender and labour history. By the 1980s, scholars such as Angela John recognized that past historical accounts reflected inaccurate, stereotyped gender roles and ideologies.1 Several studies examined traditional gender divisions and explored the significance of women’s positions as housewives to the success of the town and industry. For example, Luxton and Fox used a Marxist approach to reinterpret the work of housewives, arguing that “women’s work in the home is one of the most important and necessary labour processes of industrial capitalist society.”2 Similarly, Vicky Seddon’s public history of the British coal miners’ strikes of the 1980s determined that most women became involved in the strike because they viewed it as an extension of their duties as housewives.3 By the late 1990s to 2000s, scholars transitioned in their approach from women’s studies to gender studies, and the focus moved to understanding relationships between men and women. Recognizing the complexity of gender and labour history, these studies used interdisciplinary, mixed-methods approaches.4

Drawing from these models, this study of Labrador City women’s history also used an interdisciplinary framework and multi-method techniques. The primary research for this chapter consists of twenty-five oral history interviews and group workshops conducted in May 2011.5 Oral history is used to reveal the hidden voices and complex divisions among working-class residents in the town, since these might not be readily apparent using other research methods. To obtain multiple points of view, interviewees included current or retired employees of the mine and residents of the community ranging in age from twenty-four to eighty-two. Following the interview process, interviews were carefully analyzed since “only slowly do underlying strands of a community’s culture reveal themselves, as interview after interview sounds the same themes.”6 From oral histories, historians can learn not just the facts, but also the experiences, feelings, and insights of the people being interviewed. The study was further supported with research into archival sources and published documents by IOC and the provincial government.

This research reveals that women’s entry into the mining workforce was halting in Labrador City. From the early 1970s to the 2000s, top-down forces, such as the influence of the company, along with bottom-up social pressure from other working-class residents made it difficult for women to enter wage labour comfortably or in large numbers. According to Karen Beckwith, change in traditional gender roles in an industrial community requires three major preconditions: women must have the desire to act, the opportunity to change their position, and the strength of group support.7 Certainly, in broad terms the advent of the 1970s provided a potential opportunity for women in Labrador City to make employment gains, as the second wave of feminism took hold, and women throughout North America began to enter wage employment. This was no less true in Newfoundland, where feminist groups throughout the province encouraged women to take a more active role in society, forming women’s unions with a common goal of “lobbying the governments to influence policies that regulate women’s lives.”8 One result was employment gains: the number of women working in the province’s paid labour force increased by 56.9 per cent between 1970 and 1980.9 In fact, according to interviewees in Rick Rennie’s studies, women of other mining towns in the province, notably Buchans and St. Lawrence, were active participants in the workforce.10 Despite these gains in the workplace and toward gender equality in the province and in North America at large, at Labrador City, IOC policies continued to structure and maintain an unequal division of labour at the Carol Lake Mine. Women struggled to obtain positions at the mine and, once they entered the mine workforce, faced social and occupational discrimination. Through a study of Labrador City from the 1970s to 2000s, this discussion will reveal that despite women’s ability to obtain positions in the mine, the social life and work culture of the company and town maintained gendered inequality until the 2000s. Labrador City’s gender history can be divided into three periods. After an initial period between the town’s founding in 1958 and 1975, when the company worked to build not only a stable town but also to create an ideal image of the community by encouraging traditional gender roles, women began to resist actively the imposition of unequal gender relations. From 1975 to 1989, women grew increasingly discontented, even as they tentatively entered the mine workforce, mainly in supporting positions. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, women’s activism, changing attitudes, and strong demands for labour led to greater gender equality. While this chapter focuses on the latter two stages, it is important to first give a brief history of the mine and town’s conception.

After the early success of the Iron Ore Company of Canada’s (IOC) mining project in Schefferville, Quebec, in 1958 the company began developing the Carol Lake Mine and accompanying mining town, Labrador City. As in many mining towns developed in the 1960s, the founding company invested a great deal of time and money into community development and transformed the region from a land shared with moose, bears, and other wild animals into a modern, suburban-style Canadian town.11 To maintain this atmosphere, the company controlled the type of people who could live in the community. By hiring only male employees and hand-picking “satisfactory” residents, IOC wielded power not only over the economy of the town, but also influenced the people’s way of life and their connection to place.12 As a result, the town was an environment where women often felt trapped and forced to depend upon their husbands for survival. It was this feeling of inequality that shaped women’s level of engagement in community life and their labour opportunities.13

In its hiring policies, the company sought to emulate the idealized social structure of the 1950s. Through the 1960s and even as late as the 1970s, IOC’s unofficial policy was to hire women only for office work because the mining industry was seen as a man’s world. As Nichole Churchill noted, “For a very long period of time, Labrador West was a male-dominated community . . . and you know breaking into the male workforce itself was a problem.”14 In giving priority to married men, it was clear that IOC was still enforcing the nuclear family lifestyle.15

By the 1970s, however, some changes made it possible for women to enter non-traditional occupations. The federal Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1969 recommended that more women be employed in Canadian companies. In response to this report and its corresponding need for employees, IOC began hiring a limited number of women in low-paying, untrained positions in the company. These positions were previously seen as masculine, and included labourers, janitors, office workers, and heavy equipment operators.16 Despite this initial action, it was not easy for women to enter these jobs. Elizabeth Andrews was one of those women who struggled to get an entry-level position: “I wrote all the tests, passed them and just waited to be hired. And you’re hearing all these people getting hired and you’re still. . . . Well what it was is you had to keep going back all the time.” Andrews finally broke into the mining industry workforce in August 1974 and was among the first group of women to get hired.

While the industry’s high salary was important, women did not endure the hardships associated with entering the mining industry simply to get extra money. There was more behind this action. A woman’s entrance into the mining industry in the 1970s was a political statement, whether or not this was her primary intention.17 The desire for equal rights and women’s independence was, quite possibly, stronger in the mining districts throughout Newfoundland and Labrador since, as expressed in histories of other towns, the women of the province were used to greater opportunities:18

I just didn’t get what the problem was. Back home [Stephenville], if there was fifteen women in the field, there was probably fifteen men. Nobody thought nothing less of it. It was just the normal thing to do.19

After many years of being trapped in their homes with nothing to do, or stuck in abusive relationships, some women in Labrador City saw work at the mine as an opportunity to achieve financial independence. However, they still lacked strength in numbers and the support of the town and company.

The economic downturn in the early 1980s highlighted women’s tenuous place in the mine’s workforce. Between 1978 and 1982, the mine went through a bust cycle, resulting in mass layoffs. Since the majority of IOC women workers held entry-level jobs, they were the first to go. The very few women who successfully avoided the layoffs were harshly criticized by some IOC men and their wives. Many in the community felt that it was unfair for women to take the few remaining positions when men needed the money to support their families.20 Clearly, some people in the town did not believe women were or should become breadwinners. As well, many still believed—as they had when women had first entered the mine—that this was not a serious long-term venture but simply an attempt by women to prove their ability to make extra money. At the end of the recession, IOC was quick to hire back many of the male workers who had been laid off during the bust cycle. However, women were less likely to be rehired by the company. Suddenly women found themselves in the same battles they had struggled through in the 1970s.21

Working Women and Gender Roles in the Community

It wasn’t long before the mine and town again saw prosperity. With this boom cycle came mass hiring, and despite IOC’s primary loyalty to men, the company once again needed women. Thus, by the mid-1980s a larger number of women began working in the mining industry. Women’s changing place in the workforce had implications for gender relations and social life in the town. Social divisions emerged between IOC-employed and non–IOC-employed women. Even when IOC women were accepted into housewives’ social groups or clubs in town, shift work made it practically impossible to become a member as they missed too many meetings. People developed very strong opinions of wives and mothers working in the mine. One IOC woman remarked:

I didn’t go to the hair dressers. I went a couple of times but you don’t go back. Oh, no. You get in there and you’re listening to all these women talking about the women working in IOC: “Nothing but a bunch of whores in there screwing everything that’s in there.” One day I turned over and I said: “Listen, you know who we’re screwing? Your husbands, cause it’s all your husbands we’re working with.”22

Unable to socialize with the women of the town, some IOC women tried socializing with other IOC employees, but this came with its own problems. Just as IOC men had been accustomed to their male-only work environment, they also enjoyed a male-only social life. When IOC women entered the bars where IOC employees commonly gathered after a shift, the men ignored them:

They didn’t want you in there because they figured you didn’t belong. You go in here at happy hour at the clubs in the evening after work, even though it was a union centre and the women should have been allowed just as much as the men, but if I walked in with my husband everything just went dead . . . it was obscene for you to walk into the club because that was where the men went after work, not the women.23

Women were not given the cold shoulder just at the clubs. While the men would talk to women at the plant, once in town they refused to even acknowledge women’s presence. The small group of IOC women suddenly felt like outcasts in their own community. As some interviewees noted, it took a “different breed of women” to last in the mining workforce because they had to endure hardships both on and off the project.24 The few IOC women who were willing to endure the work and town harassment built strong and lasting friendships with each other. As Elizabeth said, “I knows some of them more than I knows my family, right because I was nineteen when I started. I mean, I knew them for thirty years.”25 These friendships were essential in preventing depression and social isolation among the women.

In spite of the gains made by women in the 1980s, in many ways Labrador City retained many of the gendered social roles of the previous generation. At this time, 73 per cent of the adult residents were married. Of these, 87 per cent lived in a nuclear family setting where women remained responsible for domestic labour. Most often, there were four to five members per household.26 This lifestyle was strongly encouraged by company housing policies. Mining companies in the region urged residents to buy housing since company officials believed that home ownership encouraged long-term residency, a stable workforce, and lower costs for the company.27 IOC provided subsidies for its employees, but these subsidies came with a number of unwritten rules. Priority went to married men, preferably those with families, followed by single men. IOC women, married or single, could not obtain any housing subsidies.28 While technically a home could be owned by anyone who could afford it, the majority of women did not qualify for a mortgage. This forced some women to remain in abusive relationships, and it caused others to seek marriage when they had no interest in it.29 Ultimately, IOC women were deprived of the independence and freedom they were fighting for when originally entering the industry.

Even as late as the 1980s, there was a clear socially acceptable path for Labrador City women to follow. As single, young adults, women worked until they found husbands. They could take jobs as babysitters, nurses, schoolteachers, office workers, or service industry workers.30 They were then expected to take the position of housewife until their children reached maturity. Social pressure and particularly a lack of child-care facilities encouraged women to remain home with younger children. The town, which prided itself on all its modern amenities, did not have a daycare centre until the 1990s.31 As one resident recalled:

Mom didn’t work for most of while we were growing up. I can remember her coming to us and saying she was getting a job and we were going to have to take care of ourselves at lunch. So we’d have to get our own lunch. I was probably about thirteen or fourteen.32

Once the children reached their teen years, women could choose to go back to work part-time or even full-time in positions categorized as women’s work. It appeared that the community embraced and in many cases encouraged women to work in the town’s service industry. In fact, some women even gained town support as they became entrepreneurs. When Alison Wiseman became a widow in 1987, she decided to open the Dollar Plus Souvenirs and Convenience store in the town mall. When Wiseman faced financial hardships, the community gave her monetary and emotional support.33 Women were also supported when opening home-based businesses such as Linda Cassell’s sewing venture.34 Much like their entrance into the mining industry, some women saw this as an opportunity to gain independence.

While working was acceptable for those women without young children, some interviewees reserved harsh judgments about the effect that working mothers’ absences had on their children. One informant believed that staying home when her children were young had made them better behaved and educated. She stated:

I stayed home . . . when she got home from school, to give her a ride, to do different things with her . . . Some kids were left from the time they got out of school in the evening to the time their parents got home in the evening. God only knows what they were at . . . Mine were supervised and I found a difference, not only in their behaviour but even in their attitude and their language . . . I carted around a lot of kids and I picked them up and dropped them off and I could see a difference. Every day as time went by some of them got worse.35

She further argued that there was a marked difference in school grades. Since working mothers did not have as much time to devote to their children and could not always find a babysitter, children were left to do their homework as they pleased. The parents would find out how their children were doing through the report cards, and by then it was too late to fix the problem. The housewives, on the contrary, “kept an even keel on it,” which yielded better grades.36

On the opposing side, women who did work often believed that less doting on the child created a more independent, responsible, and well-rounded young adult who was ready to move out and experience life. Elizabeth Andrews was one working woman who had strong opinions on the matter:

When the mother stays at home, [the children] had a harder job leaving the home, they had a harder job going to university; a lot of them don’t know how to take care of themselves . . . I must say mine are three quite independent go-getters. Determined they were . . . and I say: “Parents, do they think they’re doing a wonderful job if their kids never had to cook, never had to clean, never had to do for themselves?”37

The working mother believed that by taking on the added pressure of working while raising a family they were also able to provide more for their children and meet the demands of the consumer world. Keeping them busy in extracurricular activities and giving them things such as skidoos prevented boredom and created a well-rounded child.38

Interviewees suggested that working women were sometimes blamed for changing marital relations and domestic breakdowns.39 Working alongside men at the mine led to a perceived increase in extramarital affairs. As men and women spent sixteen-hour shifts together, they were often seeing more of their work partners than they were of their spouses, ultimately leading to family breakups.40 From a different perspective, women also used mine employment as a means to secure financial independence and escape unsatisfactory or abusive relationships.41 In households where both spouses worked in wage labour, families needed to adopt a new division of domestic labour, sharing the household responsibilities as a result of opposing shift work and limited access to babysitters and cleaning services.42 But changing one’s domestic practices was not easy for some families, and in Labrador City it triggered resentment from some of the men who were used to being “tended on” by their wives.43

In the late 1980s and 1990s, both IOC and the town’s women organized to push for gender equality in Labrador City. These efforts led to the establishment of the local Women’s Centre run by Marion Atkinson and Barbara Doran. This was designed to provide a safe place for women in the area and to promote equal rights.44 In response to growing rates of sexual and marital problems (such as abuse, infidelity, and divorce) in the town, the Labrador West Status of Women Council and the newly formed Women’s Centre created the Labrador West Status of Women Committee to study gender relations in the town and in the workforce.45 Finding that working women felt that they were not supported, the Women’s Centre established coffee groups, children’s play time, skills-training programs, and emotional support groups. The centre was also a safe house for victims of domestic abuse.46 The IOC publicly supported the Women’s Centre and the Labrador West study. The company also joined the federal government’s voluntary affirmative action program, which was launched in 1978 as a means of establishing gender equality in the workplace.47 IOC’s actions helped regain the image they once had of being supportive and involved in the success of the community as well as the industry.48

By the 1990s, despite IOC’s outward enthusiasm for equality in the workplace and town, the company and its male employees still drew clear lines separating feminine and masculine work at the mine. A study on women in the workforce of Newfoundland and Labrador revealed that while 46.8 per cent of women worked in paid labour, women represented less than 10 per cent of the workforce in trades, technology, and operations fields.49 Those women who worked with IOC still most often occupied roles consistent with stereotypes about women’s abilities: they worked as cleaners, or were funnelled into other jobs that were not as physically demanding. Their positions usually did not pay enough relative to the community’s cost of living. Therefore, the majority of women still depended on marriage for financial security.50

Nevertheless, in the 1990s, there was a sudden increase in female mine workers at IOC. At this time, the town and company noticed a large number of second- and third-generation children leaving the small town to seek education or jobs, which meant a loss of potential employees. Thus, IOC joined forces with College of the North Atlantic’s local campus and the local steelworkers’ union to develop the two-year mining technician diploma as part of the “Employee of the Future” program.51 Students were almost guaranteed a job with the company upon successful completion of the program.52 As anticipated, the program effectively encouraged a number of young men to stay in the community. It also unexpectedly raised the percentage of female employees. Since both IOC and the college followed the affirmative action program, their education program needed to be accessible to everyone, and women of all ages took advantage.53 Noreen Careen, the director of the Labrador West Women’s Centre, noticed the program resulted in a significant change in the lives of working women in the community. As she argued, “it’s the greatest move that was ever made because it gave women an opportunity for their independence that otherwise they would never have had in this community.” Just as IOC strongly influenced women of the 1960s and 1970s to embrace the role of housewife, it was now one of the main forces encouraging women’s paid employment. Now the majority of Labrador City women were working, if not at IOC then in the supporting services in the town.54

The growing participation of women in the Labrador City workforce did not make up for the labour shortfall in the booming community. In fact, some secondary industries and volunteer organizations began to suffer from a lack of available employees. IOC had an unwritten rule that it would not steal employees from other businesses; however, if an employee quit a position before applying to IOC, that person was considered fair game. With limited choices, stores began hiring people at younger ages, and soon they were hiring children as young as thirteen and fourteen. Other stores and restaurants were forced to close earlier in the evening, as early as six o’clock. Many businesses that should have succeeded, given the average family income in the town, were forced to close permanently.55 By the early 2000s, businesses began hiring temporary workers from developing countries.56 Tim Hortons was the first company to do so, and soon Walmart, McDonald’s, and other local businesses followed. These companies hired groups of foreign workers, most often from the Philippines, for two-year contracts that included one shared house for approximately ten to twenty employees.57

Like the secondary industries, most of the volunteer roles in the town were originally filled by women. As noted earlier, women used these roles to give them something to do throughout the day. Yet with full-time paid positions, women no longer needed or had time to participate in volunteer work. While children took on some responsibilities in the town, few were willing to become involved in volunteer work when they could easily find paid employment. This resulted in fewer social events in the community, and some residents felt the town spirit was fading.58

As a result of IOC’s new policy toward hiring women, the company achieved parity in the number of male and female employees by the early 2000s.59 The company added women’s locker rooms, washrooms, and lunchrooms, and removed derogatory pictures from the walls. IOC and the union developed an anti-harassment policy with zero tolerance for bullying.60 As IOC increasingly sought female employees, men encouraged their wives to enter the workforce, and mothers encouraged their daughters to avoid depending on male breadwinners. As one mother recalled:

I tell my girls, you get your education, get a job, be independent, look out for yourself, then find someone that you can stay with and be with. I’ve seen so many people I know my mother’s age, like I have a friend whose parents were in a bad relation but the woman couldn’t leave because she has nothing to go to: no education, no job, no skills, but now it’s so different.61

Increasingly, women in Labrador City regarded paid employment as a means of achieving financial independence and personal empowerment.

Still, the achievement of gender parity in the town’s main industry did not eliminate conflict over gender roles in the workplace. Many mining-industry employees noted that the positions in the workforce have simply been divided along gender lines. While a few women filled trade positions such as mechanics and electricians, they were a very small minority. Most women remained in less physically demanding positions such as truck driving. Some women did feel that they fit into this work environment well. One remembered:

I worked with the guys and the guys treated me like I was one of the boys. And one of the guys even said that to me, “Oh you’re just one of the boys,” and I think that was one of the best compliments I ever had . . . I thought that was perfect. I got along great with the guys. There was none of this sexual suggestiveness or anything like that. Every now and then they’d tell an off-colour joke, but I mean you just laugh at it. As long as it’s not geared towards me personally, I don’t mind an off-colour joke or dirty joke or whatever. No big deal to me.62

It is clear, however, that in order for women to fit in, they needed to present themselves as “one of the boys.” If women appeared weak, male employees did not appreciate working with them. In fact, some men believed that women were given “easy jobs” because they were often unable to do jobs requiring strength. This left all the physically demanding jobs for the men. If a man wanted to rotate to an easier job for a few weeks, there were often none available.63

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As the town of Labrador City celebrated its fiftieth year in 2008, the residents took pride in their generations of hard work in the mines and marvelled at the vast changes to the region’s landscape. Yet, the same mine that evokes such strong pride was also at the centre of the cracks that emerged in the town’s gender relations, a fraught history revealed through oral histories of this fifty-year period. Despite women making inroads into paid labour in the 1970s, company policy and a masculine workplace culture constrained the number and quality of positions that were available to women. Oral interviews also suggested that working women experienced social pressure and at times outright condemnation for entering the workforce. Moreover, through the period of low commodity prices in the 1980s, it was female workers who were most vulnerable to layoffs, showing that their foothold in a male-dominated workforce remained tenuous.

If the call for gender equality in the Carol Lake Mine began with the broader feminist call for greater access to wage employment in the 1970s, progress on the issue was slow. Indeed, gendered inequalities maintained a strong hold over Labrador City until the 2000s, when a significant increase in women’s employment and more tangible social and workplace equity policies from the town and company (child care, anti-harassment, etc.) led to significant gains for working women. Other studies have suggested that, as in Labrador City, a combination of policy changes in the workplace and fundamental cultural and social change within the local community is a prerequisite for the advancement of gender equity in single-industry towns.64 In Labrador City, policy innovation and cultural change proceeded more slowly than was typical elsewhere in Canada. The memories of women who lived and worked in the town suggest, moreover, that the intransigence of management and cultural resistance among other working-class residents worked in concert to reinforce male dominance and gender inequity at the mine.

Notes

1 Angela John, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Women Workers at Victorian Coal Mines (London: Croom Helm, 1980).

2 Meg Luxton, More Than a Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women’s Work in the Home (Toronto: Women’s Educational Press, 1980), 13; and Bonnie Fox, Hidden in the Household: Women’s Domestic Labour under Capitalism (Toronto: Women’s Educational Press, 1980).

3 Vicky Seddon, The Cutting Edge: Women and the Pit Strike (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1986). See also Sheila Rowbotham, “More Than Just a Memory: Some Political Implications of Women’s Involvement in the Miners’ Strike, 1984–85,” Feminist Review 23 (Summer 1986): 407–21; and Jill Liddington, “Gender Authority and Mining in an Industrial Landscape: Anne Lister 1791–1840,” History Workshop Journal 42 (October 1996): 58–86.

4 See Mary Murphy, Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte, 1914–41, Women in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Janet Finn, Tracing the Veins: Of Copper, Culture, and Community from Butte to Chuquicamata (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Elizabeth Jameson, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998); Thomas Miller Klubock, Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile’s El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1951 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998); and Kathryn McPherson, Cecilia Louise Morgan, and Nancy Forestell, Gendered Pasts: Historical Essays in Femininity and Masculinity in Canada, Canadian Social History Series (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).

5 “All interviewees are given pseudonyms, except those representing specific groups or organizations.”

6 Linda Shopes, “Oral History and the Study of Communities: Problems, Paradoxes, and Possibilities,” in The Oral History Reader,, ed. Robert Preks, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2006), 267; and Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

7 Karen Beckwith, “Lancashire Women against Pit Closures: Women’s Standing in a Men’s Movement,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 21, no. 4 (Summer 1996): 1042.

8 Sharon Gray Pope and Jane Burnham, “Change Within and Without: The Modern Women’s Movement in Newfoundland,” in Pursuing Equality: Historical Perspectives on Women in Newfoundland and Labrador, ed. Linda Kealey (St. John’s, NL: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1993), 207.

9 Labrador West Status of Women Council, “Submission to the Employment Practices Commission,” 1989.

10 Rick Rennie, The Dirt: Industrial Disease and Conflict at St. Lawrence, Newfoundland (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2008), 108–12; Ed Hamilton, Buchans Historic Research Group, and Red Indian Lake Development Association, Khaki Dodgers: The History of Mining and the People of the Buchans Area (Grand Falls-Windsor, NL: Red Indian Lake Development Association, 1992), 57–59; and Labrador West Status of Women Council, “Submission to the Employment Practices Commission.”

11 Arn Keeling, “‘Born in an Atomic Test Tube’: Landscapes of Cyclonic Development at Uranium City, Saskatchewan,” Canadian Geographer 54, no. 2 (2010): 228–52.

12 Richard Geren, Blake McCullogh, and Iron Ore Company of Canada, Cain’s Legacy: The Building of Iron Ore Company of Canada (Sept-Îles, QC: Iron Ore Company of Canada, 1990); Jacqueline Jacques Driscoll, “Development of a Labrador Mining Community: Industry in the Bush” (PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 1984); and Iron Ore Company of Canada, “Historical Data,” St. John’s, 1967.

13 Elizabeth Andrews, Personal Interview, May 15, 2011; and Nichole Churchill, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011.

14 Nichole Churchill, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011.

15 Linda Ann Parsons, “Labrador City by Design: Corporate Visions of Women,” in Their Lives and Times: Women of Newfoundland and Labrador: A Collage, eds. Carmelita McGrath, Barbara Neis, and Marilyn Porter (St. John’s, NL: Killick Press, 1995), 214–17.

16 Elizabeth Andrews, Personal Interview, May 15, 2011; and Nichole Churchill, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011.

17 Beckwith, “Lancashire Women against Pit Closures,” 1996.

18 Valerie Hall, “Differing Gender Roles: Women in Mining and Fishing Communities in Northumberland, England, 1880–1914,” Women’s Studies International Forum 27, no. 5/6 (November 2004): 521–30; Linda Kealey, ed., Pursuing Equality: Historical Perspectives on Women in Newfoundland and Labrador (St. John’s, NL: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1993); Richard L. Loder, “Changing Familial Patterns in a Newfoundland Mining Town: A Town of Widows and Orphans,” paper presented to Professor Louise Charimonte (Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1972); and Rennie Slaney, More Incredible Than Fiction: The True Story of the Indomitable Men and Women of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland from the Time of Settlement to 1965: History of Fluorspar Mining at St. Lawrence, Newfoundland (St. John’s, NL: Confederation of National Trade Unions, 1975).

19 Elizabeth Andrews, Personal Interview, May 15, 2011.

20 Parsons, “Labrador City by Design,” 215.

21 Geren, McCullogh, and Iron Ore Company of Canada, Cain’s Legacy; Driscoll, “Development of a Labrador Mining Community”; Parsons, “Labrador City by Design,” 214–17.

22 Elizabeth Andrews, Personal Interview, May 15, 2011.

23 Ibid.

24 Margaret Carlton, Personal Interview, May 7, 2011.

25 Elizabeth Andrews, Personal Interview, May 15, 2011.

26 Linda Ann Parsons, “Passing the Time: The Lives of Women in a Northern Industrial Town” (MA thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1987), 36–47.

27 John H. Bradbury, “Declining Single-Industry Communities in Quebec-Labrador, 1979–1983,” Canadian Studies 19, no. 3 (1984): 132–33.

28 Parsons, “Labrador City by Design,” 216–20.

29 Ibid.

30 Labrador West Status of Women Council, “Submission to the Employment Practices Commission.”

31 The daycare facility was provided by the Women’s Centre; however, with limited volunteers, the program ended a few years later and there is no longer daycare available (Noreen Careen, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011).

32 Andrea Locke, Personal Interview, May 8, 2011.

33 Alison Wiseman, Personal Interview, May 15, 2011.

34 Andrea Spracklin, “No Business Like Sew Business (re: Cassell’s Sewing Business in Labrador City),” Downhomer 14, no. 10 (March 2002): 35.

35 Laura Fewer, Personal Interview, May 13, 2011; individuals who agreed included: Lorraine Carolynn, Personal Interview, May 13, 2011; Ashley Fewer, Personal Interview, May 11, 2011; and Gerard Martin, Personal Interview, May 7, 2011.

36 Laura Fewer, Personal Interview, May 13, 2011.

37 Elizabeth Andrews, Personal Interview, May 15, 2011. Individuals who agreed included: Alison Wiseman, Personal Interview, May 15, 2011; Andrea Locke, Personal Interview, May 8, 2011; and Nichole Churchill, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011.

38 Debbora McDonald, Personal Interview, May 12, 2011.

39 Parsons, “Labrador City by Design,” 222–24.

40 This was a common consensus among the interviewees. Some people who specifically focused on this subject included: Ashley Fewer, Personal Interview, May 11, 2011; Lorraine Carolynn, Personal Interview, May 13, 2011; Gerard Martin, Personal Interview, May 7, 2011; Laura Fewer, Personal Interview, May 13, 2011; and Noreen Careen, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011.

41 Noreen Careen, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011; and Elizabeth Andrews, Personal Interview, May 15, 2011. Ashley Fewer, Personal Interview, May 11, 2011; Lorraine Carolynn, Personal Interview, May 13, 2011; Gerard Martin, Personal Interview, May 7, 2011; Laura Fewer, Personal Interview, May 13, 2011.

42 Paul Rickards, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011.

43 Labrador City Questionnaire, 25 Personal Interviews, May 6–16, 2011.

44 Pope and Burnham, “Change Within and Without,” 180.

45 Labrador West Status of Women Council, 1–3; and Pope and Burnham, “Change Within and Without,” 180.

46 Pope and Burnham, “Change Within and Without,” 180, 185–86, and 198–89.

47 Bobbie Boland, “At a Snail’s Pace: The Presence of Women in Trades, Technology, and Operations in Newfoundland and Labrador” (St. John’s, NL: Women in Resource Development Committee, April 2005), 15.

48 “NFB of Canada: Too Dirty for a Woman,” film (Labrador City, NL: IOC, 2011), and “Labrador City: From Tailings to Biodiversity,” film (Labrador City, NL: IOC, 2010).

49 Boland, “At a Snail’s Pace,” 5.

50 Parsons, “Labrador City by Design,” 215.

51 Boland, “At a Snail’s Pace,” 25.

52 Robert Tobin, Personal Interview, May 12, 2011.

53 Noreen Careen, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011

54 Nichole Churchill, Personal Interview, May 9, 2011.

55 John Shmuel, “Labrador City’s Huge Worker Shortage Threatens Small Businesses,” National Post, December 3, 2012.

56 Ibid.

57 Labrador City Questionnaire, 25 Personal Interviews, May 6–16, 2011; Gerard Martin, Personal Interview, May 7, 2011; Ashley Fewer, Personal Interview, May 11, 2011; and Lorraine Carolynn, Personal Interview, May 13, 2011.

58 Personal Interviews; comparison of Driscoll, “Development of a Labrador Mining Community,” and the Labrador West website, http://www.labradorwest.com/default.php?ac=changeSite&sid=1.

59 Personal Interview with Marilyn Currie, the co-chair of J.O.S.H.E. and the United Steelworkers, May 2011.

60 Margaret Carlton, Personal Interview, May 7, 2011, and Personal Interview with Marilyn Currie, the co-chair of J.O.S.H.E. and the United Steelworkers, May 2011.

61 This was a common consensus among the interviewees. The quote was from Margaret Carlton, Personal Interview, May 7, 2011.

62 Andrea Locke, Personal Interview, May 8, 2011.

63 Lorraine Carolynn, Personal Interview, May 13, 2011.

64 See Griselda Carr, Pit Women: Coal Communities in Northern England in the Early Twentieth Century (London: Merlin Press, 2001), and Rowbotham, “More Than Just a Memory.”