OPINIONS
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How Toxic Dust Awoke a Sleepy Town A People’s History of Canada Column Samantha Candido
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lthough they had lost the war, as the expression goes, the workers behind the Asbestos Strike of 1949 in the Eastern Townships of Quebec did not miss the fight in leading a notable effort against Johns-Manville, an American resource extraction company. In a time of workplace padlock laws and divisions between French and English Quebecers, the strike provoked a surge in the political consciousness province-wide. It was the launch pad for demands for public health reform by workers facing cutthroat restrictions. The 1949 strike primarily centered around curbing the spread of a disease called asbestosis, which is the fibrosis (hardening) of the fluid in the lungs due to the accumulation of microscopic asbestos fibres within the lungs’ lining that prevents them from expanding and
Graphic Aiden Locke
contracting, which could lead to suffocation. The Jeffrey Mine was the largest chrysotile asbestos mine in the world, and the source of the citizens of Asbestos’ glory and ruin. During the late 1800s, asbestos began being mined commercially for its fireproof and practically indestructible properties. It was later integrated across a variety of common household products, including hair dryers, coffee pots, and potting soil. By 1920, Canada already began to take advantage of its mineral wealth, and was providing 84 per cent of the world’s supply of asbestos. It was in this after World War I era that JM bought the mine from its local owners. At first, the townspeople of Asbestos employed by JM enjoyed the fruits of their labour, as the production of asbes-
tos provided modernity and stability to their community. Later on in the Second World War, JM included machines deep in the Jeffrey Mine to replace human labourers. “Men with nomadic drills are busy all the time breaking up the larger chunks of rock. On the floor of the pit, a giant electric shovel (the largest in Canada) scoops up 14 tons [of rock] [...] it looks like some curious, prehistoric monster rooting about for food. This huge electric shovel is mobile, and can move to any part of the pit floor to load rail cars with rock at convenient points,” said CBC reporter J. Frank Willis in a 1942 radio clip, observing the asbestos extraction process that took place at the Jeffrey Mine. Striking became a way for them to bargain for benefits and rights. Miners
O C T O B E R 2019
