Graduate Students

Goltz,  Eileen - Ph.D

The Exercise of Power in a Company Town: Copper Cliff, 1886-1980 - Dr. Gilbert Stelter, advisor            

         The thesis--power is exercised in a company town through housing, land, and employment--is investigated through the medium of a case study, the subject of which is Copper Cliff, which was the administrative centre for the Canadian Copper Company and later for the International Nickel Company mining, smelting and refining operations in the Sudbury area of Northeastern Ontario. Copper Cliff was a company-owned town from 1886 to 1973 at which time it was annexed by the City of Sudbury, and the company began to sell its land and housing within the town.
         Each of the owning companies exercised power in varying degrees within the town through housing, land leases and employment to institute social control over town inhabitants. The company spatially segregated the population according to ethnicity and occupation to provide a delineated company town within which company housing was occupied by Anglo-Saxons. Company-owned land was made available to non Anglo-Saxons for private building in ghettos contiguous to the delineated area. The segregation policies permitted the owning company to restrict the number of houses it provided, and to impose a rigid, visible, structured hierarchy, based on occupational status, on the delineated company town.
          The housing, although used as a tool for the exercise of power, was also expected to generate a profit for the
company through rentals. When the company perceived the benefits of its rental real estate to be diminishing, it adopted a policy of divestment and sold its non-industrial property. Several factors were involved in the decision to divest, foremost among which was the introduction in the Sudbury District by the Ontario Government of a number of co-operative social and environmental programmes to which the company was obliged to contribute through its towns, with contributions being based on an assessment the company could not control. This factor, plus the increasing number of labour relations problems persuaded the company to relinquish housing and non-industrial land.