Small Town Deal The Life and Death of Renfrew Woollen Mills, 1917–1953

Sir John A. Macdonald’s National Policy was meant to foster the domestic production of consumer goods and, in the process, ensure steady jobs at good wages. In reality, in small towns like Renfrew, Ontario women workers laboured for unconscionably low wages, and men worked staggeringly long hours. They suffered largely in silence, their exploitation hidden by a myth of small town community that denied their class standing.

In Small Town Deal, Peter Campbell brings to life the untold story of how small-town workers in the Renfrew Woollen Mills both benefitted from and were exploited by a National Policy that survived on their unseen labour and silent sacrifices. The “small town deal” rested on the expectation that workers would be seen but not heard while employers maintained labour harmony through paternalistic ideals and practices. Focusing on Catholic owners and Catholic workers, this book introduces a different Ontario, one in which the Catholic Church plays a key role in fostering worker acceptance of their class standing. Campbell details both the heyday of this moral economy and the challenge to it in the form of the 1937 strike, then a “company union,” and later the arrival of the Textile Workers Union of America.

Renfrew’s small town deal survived the coming of the international union movement, but could not survive Cold War anti-Communism and the Liberal Party’s dismantling of the woollen textile industry as part of the creation of a new post-war economic order. The era of the National Policy and the small town deal is gone, but the contributions and the struggles of the workers who made small towns like Renfrew places where things were made live on.

About the Author

Peter Campbell grew up on a creek a few miles outside Renfrew where the remains of the foundation of a small, water-powered woollen mill can still be found. This reminder of the past sparked an interest in the history of Canada’s woollen industry and the men and women who worked in the mills. His book on Renfrew Woollen Mills brings together this personal connection with his years of teaching Canadian and labour history at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

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