In the depths of the recession, John LaCroix stopped at a traffic light in his green Ford Windstar and found himself struck by a wave of anxiety.
He had been working only part-time since being laid off at the Sterling Truck plant in St. Thomas in 2007 and fears about running out of money had been waking him in the middle of the night. Now, they were beginning to dominate his daytime thoughts as well.
“You’re stopped at a red light. There’s nobody around; you’re looking at your gas gauge and thinking of your money. ‘I’m wasting gas that I need. This is serious. This is food for my table. I’m not sitting here when there’s no other cars around. I’m going through this red light.’” And he did.
Mr. LaCroix’s journey through the recession reflects the devastation the manufacturing crisis has wrought on St. Thomas, the one-time railway capital of Canada that now has a strong claim to another, more dubious title: the Canadian city hit hardest by the recession and factory closings.
The shutdown of the Sterling heavy-truck plant, the looming closing of a nearby Ford Motor Co. factory and numerous other shutdowns have rippled well beyond Mr. LaCroix and thousands of others whose jobs have vanished, hitting social service agencies, the United Way, local school boards and taxpayers in the city and the surrounding area.
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