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  • Welcome to the town of Asbestos, Quebec.

  • These days, 'asbestos' is a word with a sense of doom attached to it.

  • But when this mine was opened in the late 19th century, that really wasn't the case.

  • Which is why they named the town after it.

  • This pit just here was the biggest asbestos mine in the world.

  • Asbestos is a mineral, easily mined in pits like this.

  • It can be turned into strong, cheap, fire-resistant insulation,

  • and it was used in a huge number of building projects in the 20th century.

  • Either as big insulation blocks, or in ceiling tiles, or just sprayed on as cladding.

  • It was a miracle substance:

  • it could even be woven into clothing, like military uniforms or firefighters' gloves.

  • The catch is that it's made up of microscopic little fibrous crystals.

  • If you break asbestos, drop it, sandpaper it,

  • turn it into insulation and spray it around,

  • those little fibres get into the air and build up in people's lungs.

  • Decades later, people who've worked with absestos, or lived near an asbestos mine,

  • they tend to develop a particularly nasty type of cancer called mesothelioma.

  • Any exposure to asbestos fibres, however small, can be dangerous.

  • And in this town, there was sometimes so much asbestos dust in the air

  • that kids could write their names in it when it settled.

  • We know all that now, so: why haven't they changed the name?

  • In 2006, the town's then-mayor tried to change it,

  • but the idea was voted down.

  • And I wanted to find out why, but no-one from the town wanted to talk to me.

  • I emailed quite a few places, the local government, the historical society.

  • Everyone either said no, they weren't interested, or just didn't reply.

  • They were polite, of course, they're Canadian, but it wasn't for them.

  • And it took me perhaps a little bit too long to realise why.

  • The name attracts people like me and viewers like you.

  • I knew this video was going to be titled "A Town Called Asbestos" right away,

  • it's the obvious title, it's got a ring to it.

  • Which is why there's already a five-part series on YouTube from 2011 called exactly that,

  • put together by a researcher who spent years with this town.

  • She turned her PhD into a book, also titled "A Town Called Asbestos".

  • Vice.com published a series by a German photojournalist,

  • titled "A Town Called Asbestos".

  • All the time, people turn up here, to document The Town with The Name.

  • Some of them, like this author, are thorough and sympathetic

  • and take decades of history into account.

  • Some aren't.

  • Some just set up a camera by the mine overlook,

  • turn up for a couple of hours and film something.

  • Others don't even visit, they just make fun of them from the other side of the world.

  • "Why? Because the town's name is Asbestos." [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

  • How do you feel about the name? Why don't you change it?

  • They've answered these same questions for years,

  • and I suspect they're very, very tired of it.

  • The clearest answer that I've found is from an interview in the Globe and Mail in 2016.

  • Ghislain Tessier, vice-president of a local chamber of commerce, said:

  • "Asbestos was our lives. It was our heritage."

  • And I think that's the key to why this town is still called Asbestos.

  • Because, yes, for most of the world, the name is alarming.

  • But here, that's tempered with the fact that this mine,

  • like a coal mine or a gold mine, it was how people made their living.

  • Lots of people worked in the mine,

  • and their parents, and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents.

  • It was part of their identity, a mineral that the world wanted to use,

  • it was made right here by them, and it saved lives,

  • and it really was something to be proud of.

  • Asbestos, and this mine, was defended by the folks who worked here.

  • In '97, just after France banned asbestos, four men from this town,

  • four of the luckier ones,

  • ran the Paris Marathon.

  • And they were congratulated in a statement in Canada's Parliament

  • for showing that the risks weren't that great.

  • Because the risks were drastically downplayed by management and by government.

  • Even after the world at large agreed how dangerous asbestos is,

  • economics and the desire for profit meant that it was still mined for decades here.

  • This mine only closed in 2012. It's only been a few years.

  • Maybe the name will change,

  • if only to stop jerks like me coming along and going, 'ooh, look at this place'.

  • But not just yet.

  • Dr Jessica van Horssen's book is the definitive history of the town and the mine,

  • a lot of this video is based on it, and I thoroughly recommend it.

Welcome to the town of Asbestos, Quebec.

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一個叫石棉的城市 (A Town Called Asbestos)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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