Cross-Currents: Hydroelectricity and the Engineering of Northern Ontario

CONCLUSION: The Cross-Currents of Development

Conclusion: The Cross-Currents of Development The Mattagami and Abitibi Rivers of northeastern Ontario tell us much about hydroelectric development specifically and industrial development generally. While it is tempting, and even preferable at times, to conceptualize development within models both rigid and static like the hydroelectric dams themselves, and while it is also tempting to view development in terms of power relationships with the power resting largely with the developers, yet placing the focus of study at the rivers themselves, demonstrates that development is in fact a much more fluid process in which actors come and go and power relationships wax and wane. Like rivers, development proceeds through an intermingling series of cross-currents as user groups, environmental characteristics, technological innovations and market conditions intersect at various points along its way, causing turmoil that is either submerged temporarily or incorporated into the process. Because of this fluidity, development is unpredictable and complex. When industrial development in Canada spread beyond the land’s agricultural limits at the turn of the twentieth century, optimism about nature’s bounty and Man’s abilities abounded. Images of struggle, competition and conquest dominated discussions of opening the ‘‘wilderness ’’ to industrial exploitation and these images were reflected in historical writings and have been reflected in historical analysis right up to the present day, placing most of these battles within the political and economic arenas, referring only briefly, if at all, to the great works of the great engineers. As well, technology, workers, Aboriginal people, women, and nature were largely ignored. However, the growth and intermingling of environmental concerns, of feminist and social historians ’ emphasis on groups and process, of the development of complexity 165 theories by ecologists, biologists and computer scientists, and of the influence of Aboriginal thought on Western culture, point to the need to view history and development with a different and broader perspective, both in terms of scope and imagery. Before hydroelectric development could commence in northeastern Ontario, a suitable social environment had to be created and a suitable natural environment had to exist. Suitability meant that governments and the public had to support such development and the interests of those who did not would have to be submerged; also that the natural features of the northeastern rivers matched technological capabilities. These preliminary criteria were met by 1911, when both the Hollinger mining company and E.A. Wallberg, an independent entrepreneur, started building generating stations on the Mattagami River; Wallberg’s work was completed by the Northern Canada Power Company the following year. Increasing demands for power from the mining companies, coupled with drought in the 1920s, encouraged Northern Canada Power and other companies to build more stations on the Mattagami and Abitibi Rivers. This construction interacted with and altered the riverine environment; it also intruded upon the lifeways and lands of the northern First Nations. When the Nesbitt Thomson Corporation purchased the assets of Northern Canada Power, including the Mattagami River sites in 1924, this marked a change in the practice of northeastern hydroelectric generation . No longer were the Mattagami River stations isolated from other hydroelectric developments. Now, they were connected to an interprovincial system that included power sources on other rivers in Northern Ontario and Quebec and that obtained direction and financing from Montreal. In the early 1930s, the Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario, largely as a result of political manoeuvring, entered northeastern Ontario by taking over the development of the Abitibi Canyon power source from the Abitibi Power and Paper Company. For the next two decades, both Nesbitt Thomson and the HEPCO operated in northeastern Ontario, alternatively competing aggressively against each other for customers and co-operating on the sharing or exchanging of power loads as a result of environmental or business exigencies. These two organizations also co-operated with other interests using the rivers, especially the lumber companies, who had a legally protected access to the waterways. The 1930s and 1940s signified a difficult time for Nes166 Cross-Currents bitt Thomson as it lost court battles over rate structures and contracts and faced a decrease in the demand for power from its principal customers in the gold-mining industries. Consequently, Nesbitt Thomson sold its Ontario power generating stations, including those on the Mattagami River, to the HEPCO in 1944. The HEPCO was now the sole system operator in northeastern Ontario. The post-war boom in southern Ontario and the post-war drought in northeastern Ontario wrought...