Inside GM's Oshawa Plant: How Canada's Car Empire Was Built and Lost

0:00 The last shift in Oshawa 1:43 Robert McLaughlin and the carriage years 4:27 Sam McLaughlin builds a Canadian car company 10:56 Factory life and the fight for union power 15:07 War production and the Auto Pact boom 22:08 Competition, restructuring, and decline 28:01 The closure and the last vehicle 32:46 The comeback and what remains I trace the rise and fall of Oshawa, from Robert McLaughlin’s carriage works to the final vehicle assembly shift at General Motors of Canada. The story follows the people, deals, strikes, and trade rules that turned the city into Canada’s Motor City. I look at Sam McLaughlin’s partnership with Buick, the growth of General Motors, Oshawa’s wartime production, the Auto Pact boom, and the factory’s decades of union struggle and industrial change. I also examine the closure of car production, the white GMC Sierra that ended an era, and the pickup-truck comeback that followed. Oshawa’s factory survived, but the car empire that built the city did not.