Interviews:
Lorne Bantle & Dwight Krislock
Lorne Bantle and Dwight Krislock were long-time machinists at Celanese who were among the workers left jobless by the plant’s closure in 2007.
Reg Basken
Reg Basken was president of the Alberta Federation of Labour from 1972 to 1978 and president of the Energy and Chemical Workers Union from 1984 to 1992.
Catherine Canning
Catherine Canning, president (in 2024) of Unifor Local 707-A, is a Red Seal electrician who earlier served as 707-A safety representative for electronics at Suncor in Fort McMurray.
James (Jim) Cardinal
Jim Cardinal was raised in a Cree-speaking Indigenous family in Owl River. After several years working in construction in Fort McMurray, he became a welder at Suncor and a union activist. As vice-president and then president of his local of his union local (part of today’s UNIFOR), Cardinal fought discrimination against Indigenous workers.
Sam Cholak
Sam Cholak worked for Celanese, mainly in the cellulose acetate area, for almost 18 years.
Bill Climie
Bill Climie worked for Celanese for 27 years, mostly as a lab tech but also for two years as the full-time Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP, now Unifor) health and safety officer.
David Coles
David Coles was president of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union (CEP) from 2006 to 2014 and played a large role in CEP’s subsequent merger with the Canadian Auto Workers to produce Unifor in 2013.
Kim Conway
Kim Conway became safety chairperson for Unifor Local 707A after working as a lab technician at Suncor from 2001 to 2013.
Terry Dekker
Terry Dekker served for over two decades as president of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Local 777, now part of Unifor.
Tom Enright
Tom Enright, a 25-year employee of Celanese, served as a shift steward, area steward, then local vice-president of the Energy and Chemical Workers Union local which later became Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (today part of Unifor).
Ann Dort-MacLean
Ann Dort-MacLean has fought for improvements for the unemployed, women, Indigenous people, temporary foreign workers, and the environment since she and her family moved to Fort McMurray in 1978.
Vicki Gillingham
Vicki Gillingham is an Indigenous woman and union activist who works as a process operator at Suncor.
Willa Gorman
Willa Gorman’s 40-year career as a lab technician in the women-dominated fiber department of the former Celanese plant gave her firsthand knowledge of the department’s unsafe working conditions and promoted her union activism.
Wally Land
Wally Land worked as an electrician in a coal mine and a pulp mill, in both cases focusing on pressuring employers to take measures to protect workers’ workplace health and lives.
Lori McDaniel
As a heavy equipment operator at Suncor, Lori McDaniel experienced the sexist discrimination faced by women in non-traditional jobs, as well as an uphill struggle to promote occupational health and safety and progressive politics.
Eugene Mitchell
Eugene Mitchell (1931-2018) played leading roles in both the Alberta labour movement and the fledgling NDP over several decades, including serving as an executive officer of the Alberta Federation of Labour from 1968 to 1981.
Neil Reimer
Neil Reimer (1911-2011) was Canadian director, from 1951 to 1982, of the union that evolved into the Energy and Chemical Workers Union, and served as the Alberta NDP’s first leader from 1963 to 1969.
Lisa Rose
Lisa Rose is a journeyman instrumentation technician at Suncor, a longtime resident of Fort McMurray, and an active member of Unifor Local 707A’s Women’s Committee.
Louis Yakimyshyn
Louis Yakimyshyn (1938-2023) worked a variety of jobs at Celanese over 39 years and was president of the OCAW local during a 6-week Celanese strike in 1974.