Mirabel Airport: In the name of development, modernity, and Canadian unity

Abstract

In 1969, in the name of development modernity and Canadian unity, the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau undertook the most extensive land expropriation in the history of the country, to build the largest airport in the world, Mirabel. The Canadian government expropriated approximately twelve thousand people and ninety-seven thousand acres of land for the project. Mirabel was a dramatic failure, for social, political, and economic reasons. This article focuses on the development discourse that the state used to promote its ambitions, the relation that expropriated farmers had to their private property, and the slow but eventually strong and successful resistance of owners whose lands the state requisitioned.