Fifty years ago, in February 1976, a suspicious fire consumed a massive old factory building at the corner of Centre and Bickford Streets in JP. Displacing roughly a hundred artists-in-residence, the old factory had once been home to the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company, employing up to five thousand workers at its peak. This presentation explores the origins of the Plant shoe factory in 1896 and its mercurial French Canadian owner, Thomas Plant, known for his pioneering business and corporate welfare practices. It also discusses the thousands of immigrant workers who labored there and sometimes challenged Plant’s anti-union policies.

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