by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

There's a building on St-Patrick on the Lachine canal that was built long ago to help assemble trains. The trains all got built. Then it was used to make munitions for both war efforts. Then Northern Telecom took it over and used it to make rotary dials that twirl back to position, along with other phone equipment. By the end of the '80s it was abandoned and the city bought and renovated it for $6-million.

Back then the city was full of people demanding politicians restore some of the old-time proletarian factory jobs.

So Mayor Doré found a little $360,000 and handed the factory over to a shmata company that was looking for a home. The company had expertly given the world double-knits and had now graduated to fancy fabrics like lycra bathing suits and sports bras. They wanted a place they could dye their own fabrics. Doré gave it to them.

True story: the day of a massive hiring blitz down at the soon-to-get-going company, one of Doré's minions noticed that every one of the applicants for the 160-employee-firm had a nice brown tan. He thought something was amiss. Wasn't the idea to help the area by giving jobs to people in the area? Surely not everybody in St-Henri was Asian. Hey, said the company: we put the ad in, these people showed up. We don't control that.

It was a massive task to simultaneously hire and train all those workers but it got done. Soon the smokestacks were blowing and indeed, quite literally so. Dyeing plants make smoke. It's a good thing Quebec has low standards for air pollution, as the smoke blew all over the Point.

Inside, ethnic segregation took place. The workers of Chinese extraction started dominating the dyeing department. The East Indian Montrealers had a stranglehold on the knitting section. Who knew why?

Another strange thing: the brass found a few honest, hard-working, loyal employees and promoted them. These good people instantly turned into tyrants. One of the new managers even started selling jobs. You want a job? A thousand bucks and you're in. To make an opening, somebody had to go. The crooked boss started arbitrarily firing workers so he could score kickbacks.

Meanwhile, the brass was busy dealing with NAFTA. It was simple to make clothing, but nowadays your flowery cotton panties have probably travelled more than you ever will. The cotton gets grown in India, then spun into yarn somewhere else, then dyed, knit, cut and sewn all in different countries.

But the bees hummed inside and out of the hive. Guys with pickups would drop by and buy what you figured was garbage - snapping up a few miles of 3/4-inch strips of lycra, trimmed off your bathing suits. These guys would buy it, shred it and turn it into stuffed animal fillings or rags that ended up on the shelves at Canadian Tire. Other buzzing entrepreneurs would zoom up and buy your rejects to peddle at flea markets.

Another unforeseen bit of business: yuppies started paying half a million for a condo on the canal, right next to the smoky old factory.

The factory was pushed to the limit by Third World competitors. The bosses were constantly walking on eggshells trying to please buyers like Sears, which had grown into a feared giant, inspecting your factories, hardballing you on the last nickel and dictating the way you did business. If you're one day late in delivering - even for something beyond your control, like a trucker strike - you get fined in the thousands. Do it again and you're on their blacklist for 18 months or so.

The mission born a decade ago had become an impossible challenge.

Two years ago, it was bought by big-money corporate scavengers who cut staff and promised a major turnaround. This spring the factory was closed. It awaits its next assignment.

Trains, guns, phones or even spandex bathing suits - the building is likely finished with those things. All that's left is to get the Ikea bookshelves and Reno-Depot kitchens and recessed halogens in.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca