The town of Arvida provides a field on which we can observe in microcosm
the birth of an industrial town and the development of the population's
identity as a community. Using a wealth of quantitative and qualitative
data, José Igartua examines what type of people chose to come, who
decided to stay, how they lived, and how the demographic traits of the
region shifted. He argues that even though a significant proportion of
the population came from outside the region Arvida gradually acquired
the character of a Saguenay town, where family, the Catholic Church, and
French-Canadian culture were dominant. Igartua pays particular attention
to the local labour movement, which culminated in the famous wildcat
strike of 1941, revealing that the fight for collective action was the
turning point in the development of a community consciousness.