In one Southwestern Ontario city, forever linked by history to all things jumbo, one of the world’s largest automakers is building Canada’s biggest factory – a $7-billion colossus expected to employ about 3,000 people.

Only 50 kilometres away, in another community, another big automaker has suspended production at a once-revolutionary factory amid weak sales of its only product built for another revolution. The future of 1,100 workers there has been cast into limbo.

Booming St. Thomas, buoyed by Volkswagen’s arrival, and gloomy Ingersoll, a town where General Motors has pulled in its horns, are a relative stone’s throw apart. Yet the two are worlds apart in the anxiety about the future – both excitement and worry – that’s sweeping Southwestern Ontario’s auto belt, a backbone of one

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