This bridge over Quebec's Saguenay River, the first in the world to be made entirely from aluminum, connects the former town of Arvida to the Shipshaw II hydroelectric power station. For locals, it a testament to the metal's importance in building their community.Photography by Renaud Philippe/The Globe and Mail
The Arvida aluminum bridge, completed in 1950 as the first of its kind anywhere, stands as a tribute to a symbiotic relationship. Crossing a branch of the Saguenay River, its elegant arch faces the Shipshaw II Power Station.
This is no coincidence, says Lucie Morisset, Canada Research Chair in Urban Heritage, given the link between the aluminum industry and the abundant hydroelectric power in Quebec.
“It’s not the labour that determines the production costs of aluminum, it’s not even the bauxite,” she said, referring to the material from which aluminum is extracted. “It’s the energy costs to produce it.”
Arthur Vining Davis, whose portrait hangs in the Arvida library, was an American mining magnate who helped make the Canadian aluminum industry what it is today.
Arvida, a former company town now part of Saguenay’s Jonquière borough, is named after the father of the Canadian aluminum industry, Arthur Vining Davis, a native of Sharon, Mass.
More than a century after the start of Davis’s business ventures north of the border, his fellow countrymen’s threats of hefty tariffs could jeopardize the future of the industry he began.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump announced 25-per-cent levies on all steel and aluminum imports, reigniting a trade conflict that could have serious consequences for Canada’s export-oriented metal producers. Quebec furnished 65 per cent of the U.S.’s aluminum imports in 2024, according to the Aluminium Association of Canada. Last year, Canada shipped US$24.4-billion worth of aluminum and steel into the United States, equivalent to $35-billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The aluminum industry in Canada employs around 9,500 people, mostly in Quebec. The country’s major producers are Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto PLC, Pittsburgh-based Alcoa Corp. and privately held Quebec-based Aluminerie Alouette.
Raw materials for aluminum production come through Rio Tinto's port facilities at Port-Alfred, in the borough of La Baie.
Industry observers believe Quebec’s abundant hydroelectric power – the same power promise that drew the aluminum industry here at the turn of the 20th century – will help the province weather the latest tariff threat. And while there has been talk of diversifying markets, Quebec Premier François Legault has said Quebeckers need to get used to the idea that their economy will never be the same.
Marc-Urbain Proulx, an economist at University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, said the global aluminum market has been in turmoil on and off since the late 1970s, with the rise of international competitors such as China.
“Major players like Alcoa and Rio Tinto are used to driving through the storm,” he said, adding that Quebec can still count on its advantage: abundant cheap, clean hydroelectric power.
Rio Tinto now owns this hydro dam, built in 1926, one of the installations along the Saguenay that made this area attractive for aluminum making.
From the get-go, Quebec’s powerful rivers were instrumental in aluminum production. The Isle-Maligne power station, on the Grande Décharge River, was completed in 1926 and fed the Arvida smelter. Additional stations were built in the region over the following decades, keeping up with the expansion of aluminum production.
Davis, Arvida’s namesake, had worked for the Pittsburgh Reduction Company. In the 1880s, its founder, chemist Charles Martin Hall, had discovered the electrolytic process for producing cheaper aluminum.
The business was later renamed the Aluminum Company of America, or Alcoa. Davis became its president and chief executive in 1910.
The company poured its first made-in-Quebec aluminum ingot in 1901, in Shawinigan. But the industry got its permanent Canadian footing in 1925 in the Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean region, now crossed by the Aluminum Highway.
Mining and metals giant Rio Tinto operates four smelters in the region, from Alma to La Baie, producing about a third of Canada’s aluminum.
Davis and his associates built Arvida, a company town centred around what would become the world’s most important aluminum smelter, on the shore of the Saguenay River. Production started in 1926 and reached 360,000 tonnes in 1943, at the height of the Second World War, playing a critical role in supplying the Allied forces.
The former town of Arvida is now recognized as a National Historic Site. The Parks Canada website calls it a “well preserved example of a Canadian company town” and “a singular instance of planned quality worker housing.”
Marcel Tremblay is a retired diesel mechanic whose grandfather left the farming life so he, his sons and their descendants could earn a living from the aluminum boom.
Marianne Salesse-Côté, director of Centre d'histoire Arvida, points out Marcel Tremblay in an old photo. Mr. Tremblay still lives in the historic district.Renaud Philippe/The Globe and Mail
Marcel Tremblay’s grandfather, Hermel, was one of the Arvida smelter’s first employees. He sold his farmland for $38,000 and a guarantee that his sons would be offered work there. All seven of them did, including Mr. Tremblay’s father, Albert.
Hermel Tremblay raised his family in a red brick house footsteps away from the smelter. His grandson still lives there. Looking left from the driveway, the sky is permanently obscured by the smoke belching out of the factory’s chimneys, which emit thousands of tonnes of fine particulate matter, sulphur dioxide and other toxic pollutants.
Marcel Tremblay, 84, and his six brothers also worked at what became the Aluminum Company of Canada (Alcan). He was a diesel mechanic for 38 years until his retirement in the early 2000s. Mr. Tremblay is not worried about Mr. Trump’s tariff threats. “I’m not afraid of that. It’s already happened; it’s nothing new,” he said, recalling past economic upheaval that shut down the factory, always temporarily.
The Arvida smelter, owned by Rio Tinto since 2007, is one of many that has made Quebec an aluminum powerhouse over the years.
Saguenay’s aluminum industry started with U.S. capital, Dr. Morisset said, “but it is in fact with the fusion of the American capacity for innovation and the capacity for innovation in Quebec and Canada that we have managed to do what we have done.”
Between 1977 and 1988, Alcan built facilities in La Baie and Chicoutimi, known as the Grande-Baie and Laterrière smelters. It completed the Alma smelter in 2001. All are now operated by London-based Rio Tinto after its 2007 takeover of Alcan, which prompted fears of a corporate “hollowing out” of Canada.
Other producers also settled in Quebec. Alcan’s ancestor, Alcoa, operates three sites in Deschambault, Baie-Comeau and Bécancour. The biggest smelter is Alouette’s, in the remote North Shore region. Only one smelter in Canada is located in another province: Rio Tinto’s Kitimat site in British Columbia.
The bulk of this production is exported to the U.S., placing Saguenay among the Canadian cities most vulnerable to American tariffs, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
The president of the Aluminium Association of Canada, Jean Simard, has sought to be reassuring, saying that the U.S. depends on Canadian aluminum and that tariffs won’t affect workers. However, the association also published a Feb. 11 news release denouncing Mr. Trump’s plan, saying that “Canadian aluminum must remain exempt of any tariffs.”
At the historical centre, an original model of the Arvida district reminds visitors of the ambitious plans Quebeckers made to earn better livelihoods through aluminum.
Sebastien Breau, an associate professor of geography at McGill University who studies international trade, said the reality probably lies somewhere in between. He said it would be difficult for the U.S. to pivot and produce its own aluminum or find other suppliers. But it would also be challenging for Canadian producers to diversify their markets given the integration of North American supply chains.
Dr. Proulx, the UQAC economist, doubts that anyone would invest in building new U.S. smelters that would have to rely on fossil fuels for decades to come. On the other hand, if exports to the U.S. end up falling, other markets such as Europe will be hard to reach because they are already well supplied, he said.
Rio Tinto declined multiple requests for comment. Jérôme Pécresse, the company’s chief executive, aluminum, said in a Radio-Canada interview aired last week that its investment in the region will continue. In Jonquière, for instance, the company is building a $1.4-billion smelter expansion. “We try to stay calm, patient, not to overreact,” he said.
Editor’s note: A previous version of the article included a photo caption that incorrectly said Marcel Tremblay was pointing at himself in an old photo. The photo shows Marianne Salesse-Côté, director of the Centre d'histoire Arvida, pointing at Mr. Tremblay in the photo. This version has been corrected.