Efforts to preserve industrial heritage occurs in a socio-economic and political context. But what is being preserved and for whom? And, relatedly, what is the relationship between industrial heritage sites and the deindustrialized working-class communities that often adjoin them? The keynote will consider the ways that the preservation of Montreal’s Lachine Canal, Canada’s premier industrial heritage site, has enabled gentrification processes that have forcibly displaced the very working-class communities who once worked in these neighbourhood factories. Sadly, the preservation of the area’s industrial aesthetic and the creation of a green belt has served real estate developers extraordinarily well. The industrial heritage sector needs to go beyond recognition and consider the material consequences of our work for deindustrialized working-class communities.