Boom Town Blues: Collapse and Revival in a Single-Industry Community tells of the Northern Ontario city of Elliot Lake, once the uranium capital of the world, which was devastated by the closing of the uranium mines operated by Denison and Rio Algom. The closures and mass layoffs were first announced in 1990 with the layoffs occurring from then until June 1996. Throughout the period after the layoffs were announced, several major research projects were undertaken. One, the Elliot Lake Tracking and Adjustment Study, follows approximately 1,000 of the laid-off miners and 530 of their spouses through their adjustment processes. Another, the Seniors Needs Assessment, examines the human resource and service needs of the increasing numbers of seniors moving to Elliot Lake as part of the community’s economic strategy. In addition to these social scientific studies, several land and environmental reclamation research projects have been undertaken. Boom Town Blues: Collapse and Revival in a Single-Industry Community tells the reader about the results of these studies and gives a variety of community-based perspectives on the Elliot Lake story. The book highlights the struggles and successes of families and of the community as a whole. Boom Town Blues is about one community’s struggle to survive, to shift its economic base from mining to one where retirement living for seniors, mine decommissioning, and a community-based research facility would be among several economic survival strategies. The book is of interest to readers throughout Northern Ontario and, indeed, wherever single-industry towns are threatened by major shifting in their economic base and are struggling to survive. The book also provides an excellent case study for teachers, students, policy makers, and politicians.

Drawing on themes from John MacKenzie’s Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires (1997), this book explores, from Indigenous or Indigenous-influenced perspectives, the power of nature and the attempts by empires (United States, Canada, and Britain) to control it. It also examines contemporary threats to First Nations communities from ongoing political, environmental, and social issues, and the efforts to confront and eliminate these threats to peoples and the environment. It becomes apparent that empire, despite its manifestations of power, cannot control or discipline humans and nature. Essays suggest new ways of looking at the Great Lakes watershed and the peoples and empires contained within it.

Root and Park examine the plight of workers displaced from two paper mills and their paths to reemployment, retirement decisions, and the personal struggles they faced as a result of their dislocations. They provide insightful, personal portraits of workers that are representative of the hundreds who lost their jobs as a result of two mill closings—one in Sartell, Minnesota, and the other in Bucksport, Maine. In addition, the authors describe the types of assistance that were offered to the workers displaced by the mill closings, dedicate a chapter each to the plights of female workers and of spouses who were both displaced by the closings, discuss the importance of community when economic displacement occurs, compare the experience of a mill closing in Canada with the Maine and Minnesota closings, and conclude with ways that society can be more proactive in assisting workers who suffer job displacement and the economic and psychological impacts that so often occur as a result. Overall, this book adds a human perspective to the problems facing dislocated workers, not only in the shrinking paper industry but also in other contracting industries in the United States.