Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century

The industrial boom that reshaped the cultural landscape of Cape Breton Island in the late nineteenth century was as profound as it was short-lived. Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century considers the periods of industrialization and deindustrialization the island experienced over the course of more than an actual century, analyzing how these processes determined people’s lives and experiences.

The collection of essays is edited by two associate professors of history at Cape Breton University: Lachlan MacKinnon, who is the Canada Research Chair in Post-industrial Communities, and Andrew Parnaby, the university’s dean of Arts and Social Sciences.

The “long” twentieth century covered in the book encompasses the growth of the coal and steel industries beginning in the 1860s and continues up to the decline of those industries in the early 2000s. A first section entitled “Formations” includes essays analyzing the political forces that drove industrialization and the society they shaped, while the book’s second part, entitled “Legacies,” tracks the cultural effects of rapid deindustrialization.