Video to show grief of GM Oshawa decline
In 1907, Robert Samuel McLaughlin founded the McLaughlin Motor Company in Oshawa, Ontario. The small town just east of Toronto would never be the same.
McLaughlin ushered in the age of the automobile and planted the seeds of a manufacturing legacy that continues to this day. His enterprise eventually evolved into General Motors of Canada, of which he was president from 1918 to 1945.
McLaughlin would never have imagined that 110 years after cobbling together his first Buick-engined buggies, an art gallery carrying his name would be marking its 50th anniversary, and the colossus of GM manufacturing that rose from his humble shop would be staring into an uncertain future.
The Oshawa truck plant shuttered in 2009. GM recently shifted production of the Chevrolet Camaro from Oshawa to Lansing, Michigan, cutting 1,000 jobs. And with passenger car sales slumping, the three vehicles produced at Oshawa’s “flex” plant — the Buick Regal, Cadillac XTS and Chevrolet Impala — could be whistling past the graveyard, though the company has guaranteed a new vehicle in the latest union contract.
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, as part of its half-century celebrations, has commissioned five artists from outside Oshawa to contribute to an exhibition that will run in the spring of 2017. They are invited to offer new ways of seeing this community as it transforms, no matter how painfully or gradually, from a manufacturing centre to one that embraces technology, health care and education.
One of these artists is Trinidadian-born Toronto-based photographer and video artist Michèle Pearson Clarke. She will be creating a video installation that draws on submissions from the public, and she invites all Oshawans to participate.
I’m sitting on the sunny deck of Pearson Clarke’s west-end apartment, sipping tea and getting a read on her project. Named “I’m Thinking of Ending Things …” — drawn from the tone struck by GM negotiators this summer — it will focus on the emotional impact of those affected by the city’s transformation.
“But this is not just about those who lost their jobs,” she says. “Maybe your neighbour moves away, or as a kid you lost a best friend when his dad was laid off. Or you work in a coffee shop and your favourite client doesn’t come in anymore. All these inter-relationships exist because so many work in manufacturing, and as people lose their jobs, a whole network of people is affected.”
Not being from Oshawa, part of Pearson Clarke’s preparation for the project involved driving around the city, getting a feel for the neighbourhoods. “I noticed huge murals, maybe 10 of them, that GM commissioned to commemorate the rule of manufacturing here. So it made me think, what would it be like to commemorate the everyday locations that represent loss for those affected? Almost like a romantic loss.
“Maybe you went to a Tim Hortons every Friday with your coworker, and now that relationship has ended, that Tim Hortons reminds you of that. Or a park you drove by every day on the way to work. I’ m looking for people to share with me locations in Oshawa that have that significance for them.”
Working with her cinematographer, the filmed vignettes will be short and presented in two channels, using a pair of screens that play off each other, creating a visual dialogue.
“I would love it if some people were willing to be filmed in their locations, but I totally understand and recognize being public about this is a challenge. So I’m just asking people to send me these locations, and I will collect them.”
One submission is from a woman who worked alongside her father at a GM fabrication plant that has since been torn down. A Costco stands there now.
Pearson Clarke quickly notes this installation is not meant to critique GM. “For me, creating space for people to acknowledge and talk about their grief and loss is ultimately what the project is trying to do.”
If you wish to learn more about this project or make a submission, visit www.endingthings.com.