An Insight into the Extent of the Sundown Town Phenomenon in Canadian Company Towns; the Thompson, Manitoba, Case Study

The notion of “sundown town” broadly encompasses the various methods employed by American towns and counties to exclude specific racial or ethnic groups from their borders. This paper mobilizes the sundown town notion to explore the dynamics of exclusion present within Canadian company towns by first establishing a sundown exclusion scale that categorizes cases of sundown towns in the United States. Using this framework, it then specifically examines the case of Thompson, Manitoba, a Canadian mining community established in 1956 by the International Nickel Company (INCO). Findings reveal that there appeared to be a voluntary absence of consideration by the parent company of the issues relating to employment and housing discrimination faced by the town’s First Nations and Métis population during the town’s first years of existence. The paper further discusses the lasting effects of these dynamics of exclusion and marginalization on the city’s residents of Indigenous identity

Economic geography · Ethnography · Geography · Phenomenon · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Urbanization and City Planning

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  Open Access•Carla Jung-König, Editha Marquardt et al.•Urban Studies•2026

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