In 2010, a labour landmark devoted to diversity within the community was erected in Whitney Pier. The Whitney Pier Melting Pot monument, designed by local artist Cyril Hearn, was placed outside the local fire station on Victoria Road, just blocks away from the former Sydney steel plant. Although it does not directly address the experience of workers and their families, it pays homage to the culturally diverse community that they helped to build. The monument is composed of a steel base, which is an actual melting pot left over from the Sydney steel plant, with 23 flags protruding at the top. The topmost three flags are, in order, the Canadian flag, the flag of Nova Scotia, and an unofficial flag of Cape Breton Island. The remaining flags include those of France, Italy, Newfoundland, Russia, Spain, and the United Kingdom, among others. The flags are meant to symbolize the diversity of Whitney Pier, which emerged when workers from many of these nations immigrated to Canada to find work at the steel plant in Sydney. This link to the local industrial past is established by the combination of these flags with an actual relic of the steelmaking past, the melting pot. The erection of this monument corresponds with an effort, spearheaded by the Whitney Pier Historical Society, to have the neighborhood designated as a National Historic Site by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. This effort began in 2008, when a number of community members put together an application for historic site designation on the grounds of the area’s early history of multiculturalism. [1]
Footnotes:
[1] Cape Breton Post, 14 March 2008.
Footnotes:
[1] Cape Breton Post, 14 March 2008.