“Sooner or Later, You’ll Discover Kelvinator”: The Causes and Consequences of a Plant Closure in an Ontario City in the Late 1960s

Abstract

The loss of manufacturing jobs is an ongoing challenge for organized labour in Canada and a trend that has been happening for several decades. The loss of full-time, unionized factory work in Canada is commonly thought to have started in the 1990s or 2000s, but the possibility of deindustrialization was already evident in the late 1960s. This article examines the closure of the Kelvinator of Canada plant in London, Ontario, in 1969. That closure illustrates the impact of industrial job loss on workers during a period when Canada’s economy was prosperous and its manufacturing sector was robust. This analysis also reveals how a branch plant opened and expanded in Canada, and why it closed. Appliance manufacturing has never been as prominent in discussions of industrial job loss as other sectors, like automotive, but the Kelvinator closure reveals, over 55 years after it happened, that losing the London plant had a lasting impact on workers and their community while serving as a harbinger of future deindustrialization.