mardi 17 août 2010

Smoothing the National Landscape: Victoria Foundry



Photo: Victoria Foundry Scrap Yard

Among the remaining industrial production, there were a number of foundries on LeBreton Flats including the Victoria Foundry complex. In business for 118 years, Victoria Foundry had at the time of expropriation 26 employees, 9 of which had been with company for over 10 yrs and another 13 employees with over 5 yrs. The shop works at the Victoria Foundry consisted mainly of custom foundry and machine work, both in the manufacture of new products and maintenance and repair of existing machinery. The location, in one of the “most central locations in the Ottawa, Hull area” proximity to the “source of semi skilled labour who find it difficult to commute to the periphery of the city, resulting in higher labour costs” as well as increased production cost of operation in new building such as capital costs, municipal taxes. Customers included the Federal Government, the City of Ottawa, and various supply companies.

A number of appraisals were done to assess both the value of the property and the associated costs of relocation. These valuations varied significantly, and are an incomplete record of the life-world of the plant, however, these do point to the view of value creation, and recreation among the pattern of disintegration on the Flats. Like the valuations, the condition of manufacturing fixtures and moveable equipment varied considerably. Mechanical equipment such as “the ducting from blowers to forgers, and from blower to cupola, and from blowers to brass furnaces” were not “economically worth removing for re-installation elsewhere”. Other fixtures were clearly out of date such as the “wooden fixtures such as cupboards, shelving, lockers” whose place would “largely be taken by modern steel racks and binning in a new plant”. Fixtures such “shafting, pulleys, belts, etc., that jointly provide the power of the few pieces of machinery” was “ very ancient” yet reasonably maintained.

Forges and ovens, on the other hand, had “a good proportion of their active life remaining in them” and the overall structure “had adequate utility and physical stamina for the next 25 years”. This latter appraisal considered the advantages of the present building and location over a new site which although it would improve aesthetic considerations, the “prestige building were in no way increases volume of trade or volume” especially since the overall design was not only “efficient”. All of this mechanical residue, judged by appraisers as not ‘economically worth removing for re-installation elsewhere’, would be silenced in the smoothing of the LeBreton landscape.

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