"I Heart Asbestos"

"Why does the town of Asbestos, Quebec want to reopen a mine that’s been giving its residents cancer for a hundred years?"

"In 1949, the town of Asbestos, Quebec was rocked by one of the fiercest labour disputes in the province’s history. Nearly 2000 workers at the Jeffrey Mine – which produced chrysotile, the most common form of asbestos – went on strike to demand higher wages and better working conditions from the Johns Manville Corporation. At the time, 'asbestos dust was as omnipresent in the air as the air itself' as the journalists John Grey and Stephanie Nolen put it in the Globe and Mail."

Laurent Bastien Corbeil reports for the McGill Daily April 2, 2012.

SEE ALSO:

"Asbestos Workers at Risk From Heart Disease" (AFP)