Credit Herald

TRENTON, N.S. – You can see its skeleton from almost anywhere you stand.

Almost two years after production stopped and the last of 1,200 workers were laid off from the TrentonWorks Ltd. railcar plant that had been the lifeblood of this community for decades, the abandoned and rust-lined structure still dominates the landscape at the bottom of this tiny town built on a hill.

Ernie MacInnis, 58, can see it from his little house perched midway up that steep incline.

"It’s just terrible to see it all boarded up down there, grass growing up around it in the summertime," he says of the plant that had been a fixture in Nova Scotia since 1872 and in its heyday supplied the world with quality steel products.

Variations on an old saying are being put to good use around Trenton and the five other towns that make up Pictou County: if TrentonWorks goes, so does the county.

The county is not known for its riches. Trenton, a town of some 2,700 people, is a bunch of houses, a coffee shop, a few churches and not much else. As Jim MacIvor, a real estate broker in neighbouring New Glasgow laughs: "We’ve been in a recession for 25 years here. We don’t know the difference!"

He was talking about the low price of homes. Others talk about finding it hard to heat them.

At one point, a volunteer group gave out free heating oil to long lines of people with jugs outside an old garage.

Other signs of hardship abound. A flyer tacked to a bulletin board at the shopping centre promotes a dance to raise funds for a family who lost everything in a fire. A bright orange sticker advertises a new price on a for-sale sign outside an empty house with a dried-up Christmas tree on the porch. A former elementary school is listed for $67,000 after a failed attempt to convert it into a fitness centre.

These days, the old saying about the fate of the county is never far from people’s lips.

MacInnis says it. He feels it, too. He worked at the plant 38 years – 33 as a welder and the last five as a safety trainer – before he was laid off in May 2007. He now tops up his Employment Insurance benefits by working two shifts a week doing office work at the Pictou Regional Development Commission, but like 60 per cent of fellow members of United Steelworkers union local 1231 laid off from TrentonWorks, he has yet to find a full-time job.

"See, I’m too old to hire, but I’m too young to retire. I’m caught in the middle," says MacInnis, who has applied for about 30 jobs without success.

He brings home just over half what he did when he worked at the plant. His credit card is maxed out. His wife took in another child to look after during the day along with their grandkids. That helps pay some of the bills. When the federal government came up $900 short on the $8,900 he needed to take an upgrading course, he found it impossible to cover the gap.

"I just remortgaged my house for God’s sake a year before they shut the place down, so I could put a new foundation and roof and windows and all that in it, getting ready for retirement," he says.

Sitting in the living room of the bed-and-breakfast he runs with his wife in nearby New Glasgow, Cliff MacKenzie, 58, remembers the day in 2007 that everything fell apart.

An official from Oregon-based Greenbrier Companies Inc., which owned the plant, held a series of meetings with employees.

"(He) came in and told us all basically that with the Canadian dollar rising in the near future that they are planning on moving to Mexico," recalls MacKenzie, who began working at the plant in 1978.

Rumours spread like wildfire as groups went into the meetings and others came out. Older guys like MacKenzie, who had seen the plant close before, tried to tell the younger ones it would not be so bad; that it would open again.

Greenbrier CEO and president William Furman explained the decision to financial analysts on an April 4, 2007 conference call.

"It is never an easy decision to close a facility cash loans in 1 hour. But the combination of a weaker forest-products market, the very strong secular outlook for the Canadian dollar, uncompetitive labour and benefit costs at Trenton, coupled with geography and other factors really meant that we didn’t have a choice," he said.

"While this will have some short-term pain in terms of the cost to the community and to those of us who have enjoyed the relationship with our associates up there, it will mean a better economic foundation for Greenbrier as we shift and continue to shift our production facilities to Mexico and to our primary facility in Portland, Oregon …"

Fighting red tape to get compensation for a back injury and thinking about packing up and moving to England where his wife is from, MacKenzie is bitter about what little the provincial and federal governments have done to help out those affected by the plant closure.

"It has put everybody really here in a bind where they are losing everything they’ve got and there is no help from anybody," he says.

Over at Trenton town hall, the new mayor, Glen MacKinnon, is trying to do something.

"The Trenton people are very resilient," he says. "What we’re trying to do now is diversify and bring other options to the table as to employment for our citizens. I’m a firm believer in a positive attitude and the people of Trenton."

A new complex for seniors will break ground next month and the town plans to revitalize Main St.

The project will include putting the old axle hammer from the plant – its activity a long-time symbol of prosperous times for the town – on display in a historical plaza.

The Pictou Regional Development Commission, which ran a transition centre that helped find jobs for about 225 of the roughly 500 former TrentonWorks employees who used its services, is also working on a new economic development strategy for the area.

The plant paid the town $1 million annually in taxes, which over the years has accounted for an average of 20 per cent of the municipal budget, MacKinnon says. Now the town brings in only about $300,000. MacKinnon acknowledges that even if the other projects pan out, the future of the town still relies on bringing in a "long-term viable option" into the old plant.

Several sources say a Spanish wind turbine company looking to break into the North American market is interested. "Um, yeah. Let me put it this way," MacKinnon says. "Steel fabrication will be a mainstay for TrentonWorks. Whether it be rail cars or wind turbines, there are a number of companies that continue to be interested in the TrentonWorks property."

On a break from the barbershop he co-owns in nearby Stellarton, Shannon MacInnis says he would hate to be in the position MacKinnon is in – even though he used to have his job and lost it in the October municipal election. He was a new mayor when the bad news hit and says it was a shock because the plant had been running pretty steady since Greenbrier bought it.

"Everything seemed to be roses," he says. "We never really put a thought into what we would do if it was closed. All of a sudden the rug was pulled out from under us and we were left to cope with it."

It was tough. Nova Scotia Power Inc. is there, but pays the province instead of the municipality as part of a privatization deal made in the 1990s. The town was forced to cut back on things like paving.

Shannon MacInnis says he thinks people understood there was little he could do. "It’s more provincial and federal, so they weren’t showing up at our council meetings and stomping on the floor and demanding something happen, but I know in the last election there was a lot of people that felt we should have done more to open the plant and obviously by my not being re-elected," he trails off in a chuckle. "So."

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