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.
