The definitive history of Canada's oldest community-development corporation, written by its former President and CEO.

In the 1970s, Cape Breton was a place of limited prospects. The community had no means to help itself; there was scant support for people with disabilities or the elderly, limited access to affordable housing or skills training, and few grassroots economic opportunities.

Father Greg MacLeod, a Catholic priest and a professor of philosophy, wanted to change that. Inspired by the principles of economic education, independence, and action that grew out of the Antigonish Movement, and with the help of numerous others, he founded New Dawn Enterprises, a non-profit, private, volunteer-directed enterprise dedicated to community-building in Cape Breton.

In The Search for a New Way: The Story of New Dawn Enterprises, author and former New Dawn President and CEO Rankin MacSween examines New Dawn's decades-long search for a better, more humane, more truthful way to build local communities and regional economies through people-centred community development. With his unique insight, MacSween provides the most thorough history ever written of Canada's oldest community-development corporation. Includes fifteen black-and-white images.

Rankin MacSween has devoted much of his life to understanding the rebuilding of communities in decline. In the process he has grown New Dawn Enterprises from a small volunteer-run organization into a well-known, independent community development corporation that employs 150 people in the fields of homecare, residential care, immigration, arts, food security, investments and housing. He and his wife, Marie, live on land in Ironville, Cape Breton, that has been in his family for five generations.

Rankin MacSween's profile page