March 18, 2005

Asbestos, Québec, by any other name? - “There was a time when the people of Asbestos, Que., bore their town's name with pride. Those were the days when asbestos was the miracle fibre that paid for new schools, new homes and new hopes every day.”
posted by Space Coyote 19 years ago
  • Drove through there, once. Beautiful rolling hills of the Eastern Townships in autumn, up and down curving country roads, then a giant scar of a pit clear through to the centre of the Earth.
  • I see nothing wrong with their name. Sincerely, IFU Thalidomide, TN
  • No comment from the people of Dildo, Newfoundland.
  • I was born in a town called Anal. My family name is Ward.
  • The 1949 strike is also a scar in Quebec's memory, of a time when 'le Chef' Duplessis controlled the province with an iron hand. Mon oncle Antoine, the greatest canadian film ever made according to some, was filmed in the region and presents the life as it might have been before the Asbestos strike.
  • I used to live in the next county up from a county in south-west Sichuan called 石棉 (Shimian) which is Chinese for asbestos - I think there's a mine there that's a prison labour camp.