Town looks for new anchor for local economy
Five years after mine closure, community looks to turn the page
To residents of Asbestos, the once-mighty Jeffrey mine that gave the town its identity is known simply as “the hole.”
But almost five years after Canada’s largest asbestos mine stopped producing the controversial fibre, Asbestos is looking to move on from the industry that supported it for more than a century.
Key to the efforts is a $50-million regional diversification fund, put in place by the former Parti Québécois government in 2012 after it cancelled a $58-million loan the Liberals had promised to help the mine renovate and reopen.
Mayor Hugues Grimard is hoping the subsidies available through the fund, paired with industrial know-how and a little hustle, will be enough to attract new businesses to the town of 7,000 residents two hours east of Montreal.
“There are several projects on the table, several important announcements that have been made, and others are coming,” he said. “The strategy is working.”
In June, Brome Lake Ducks announced a $30-million plan to create a new processing plant and hatchery in the town. That project is expected to produce 150 jobs.
Other new businesses include a pharmaceutical company, a cheese factory and a microbrewery with beer names such as “La Mineur” (“The Miner”) and “L’Or Blanc” (“White Gold”).
But it hasn’t been easy. There have also been closures, and many of the new businesses are taking over facilities vacated by others.
Grimard says the town is turning the corner. “It won’t get done tomorrow morning but over the next few years we’ll change the economic context because the base is there,” he said.
For the sake of image, he says all the mine’s buildings that aren’t currently in use are being demolished. But the mine itself, which is more than two kilometres in diameter, 350 metres in depth and six square kilometres in total area is hard to ignore.
It was opened after asbestos was discovered in the region in the late 1870s, and grew as demand skyrocketed for the “magic mineral” known for its fire-resistant properties. But by the 1980s, worldwide demand for the fibre was in a free fall due to a spike in the number of cases of asbestosis, an inflammatory lung disease linked to different cancers. The mine’s workforce was slashed and production halted, returning intermittently until the PQ’s announcement quashed the final hope for a revival.
On a drive into the pit of the defunct mine, Francesco Spertini, a retired geologist who spent 32 years working in the mine, stops to pick up a rock with a white, fibrous streak of asbestos running through it.
“It’s sad, the end of the mine,” he said. “Usually, the mine ends when the material is exhausted, but that’s not the case here.”
Spertini says the site contains other minerals including magnesium, which is present in the same rock that produces asbestos.
Although one magnesium-extraction operation went bankrupt a few years ago, an improving market could make it viable again.
One company, Alliance Magnesium, is in the process of creating a pilot plant that could begin extracting magnesium from the mine’s tailings in 2017.