In Oshawa’s gritty south end, tough economic times mean big business for Father Makarios Isaac.
“Everybody has been affected in this neighbourhood one way or another,” said Isaac, priest at St. Philip The Apostle Catholic Church, a stone’s throw from the General Motors’ assembly plants facing layoffs or closure.
It’s a time when the old adage ”” as GM goes, so goes Oshawa ”” affects more and more parts of the community.
Since I happen to be in one of the Anglican parishes in Oshawa, I can say it’s pretty accurate. For our parish, we run a food bank, and while new registrants are increasing, we’ve not seen that marked an increase in overall users from a year ago. That may be because we’re already established (6 years and counting for the food bank) so those that need us, do use already use us.
One thing is that a LOT of GM employees just do not live in Oshawa anymore. They’ve moved out to the surrounding areas. The south end was already economically depressed long, long before this mess hit, and the downtown core of Oshawa wasn’t that much better. The biggest problem is that Oshawa has been a one horse town for too many years and there was an implicit assumption that GM will always be here.
In fact, the common phrase I heard from people when I moved here was “It doesn’t matter about the car plant, the Truck plant is Oshawa’s bread and butter”. Of course, the Truck plant has been slated for closure since June.
It’s going to be rocky for the next few years, and getting any other industry (manufacturing or otherwise) into Oshawa will be very difficult not only because of the economic situation but also because of the rank bitterness many of the union employees have for any big business (wether it’s justifed or not, I do not know). Personally, I have hope because the city really is rallying around itself, and a lot of the faith communities are sharing resources with each other. We’ll only get through this together.