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Demise of the Neighbourhood

Industrial Expansion

During the 1950s and 60s Stelco grew; expanding through an aggressive infilling strategy and by buying up as houses and buildings to ultimately demolish them for its industrial expansion 

Listen: Slag In Front Of The Houses. Click the play circle below.

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Speaker 1:    

Morris Gawlik, he lived on Birmingham, about three, maybe five houses down.. 

Speaker 2:    

Yeah yeah. 

Speaker 1:    

He never sold. And Stelco used to come there at night with the derrick and they had ingots, you know, and they put him on this and they drop them, so the guys couldn’t sleep. But the guys weren’t home at night.  

[laughter] 

So, they got wise and they didn’t know what else to do. So they paid the money. 

Speaker 2:    

In fact, you know the Gallos, who lived next door to us, and they didn’t want that done, so they built a wall around it. They’d be protected but they would be about that far down. 

Speaker 3:    

Like they built a big fence around the house? 

Speaker 2:    

They built fencing.  

Yeah. 

So, they didn’t get the slag up through the house like we did. 

 

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