History
The R. L. Hearn Generating Station was the site of Canada's first 100 MW steam turbo-generator set. The station was officially opened on October 26, 1951 by Leslie Frost, Premier of Ontario, with the first two units in service. Four units were in operation by 1953. The plant originally burned coal which was transported on ships through the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The station was designed by Stone & Webster. The turbine generators were built by Parsons in England and the boilers were made in Canada by Babcock & Wilcox (Cambridge, Ontario) and Combustion Engineering (Montreal, Quebec).
Construction on the station was not even finished in the 1950s when Hydro officials and the government began to talk about phasing out the plant with nuclear power and closing it. The early years were marked by difficult labour relations and several near strikes. Several unions were involved in conflicts with management and each other during the life of the station. The R. L. Hearn station was one of the founding locals of the Canadian Union of Operating Engineers and General Workers (CUOE Local 100) in 1960.
Read more about this topic: Hearn Generating Station
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)