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 forc...

The proposed session will examine the unfolding relationship between industrial heritage and those left behind in adjoining deindustrialized working-class areas. The four papers seek to understand the socio-economic and political impact of recognizing the industrial past in the present. Two guiding questions will be asked. Can industrial heritage support those ‘left behind’ in deindustrialized areas where nothing, or very little, has filled the economic or cultural vacuum? Has industrial h...