[LINK] "Iroquois Falls latest casualty of changing northern Ontario economy"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC's Karin Wells reports on how the northern Ontario town of Iroquois Falls has just seen its economy gutted by the closure of the town's paper mill. Without that industry, what will keep the town viable?

[A] few weeks ago Resolute Forest Products, the newest corporate incarnation of Abitibi, announced the town's mill would be shut down. The last paper rolled off the machines three days before Christmas.

For the first time in 100 years there is no cloud of steam hanging over Iroquois Falls, no hum of the mill.

"Basically you’re digging your own grave," says Peter Jones, president of local 90 of UNIFOR in Iroquois Falls. "Last time we had layoffs we had an individual who hanged himself in the mill. I don’t want to see that again."

The news has thrown the company town, a single-resource community that relies on the mill for employment and tax revenue, back on its heels. The women at the Legion Bingo, the town councillors, the millwrights and the paper makers are all forced to confront harsh economic realities, and in the middle of a northern Ontario winter they're scrambling to come up with ideas of re-invention.

But many are uncertain about the prospects for revamping the town's economy.

"We’re the colony," says Charlie Angus, NDP Member of Parliament for the area. "We were set up as a resource-based colony for southern Ontario. There’s always a sense in the south that, well, these communities were never sustainable anyway. The northern perspective is that our paper goes south, our wood goes south, our gold goes south, our young people go south."