Asbestos, Quebec has canceled the Canadian Cancer Society’s “Relay for Life”, a fund raising event previously scheduled to take place within the town’s streets. The cancellation is the result of political differences arising between the town’s and the Canadian Cancer Society’s positions on the production of asbestos. While citizens of Asbestos push Quebec’s Premier, Jean Charest, for loans that will breath new life into the floundering asbestos mines, the CCS is urging Quebec’s Premier to “let [the mine] die.”
The Jeffrey Mine has been the economic heart of Asbestos, Quebec for more than one hundred and thirty years. When medical discoveries began to shed an ugly light on the mineral in the late twentieth century, Asbestos’s mine didn’t flinch. While Australia, the European Union, New Zealand, and the United States shut down mines and developed tighter and tighter regulations concerning the mineral’s use, Asbestos, Quebec kept right on with their mining operation.
The CCS’s urge not to loan the mine the funds necessary to expand its operations came in the form of a letter. The CCS’s letter was one among many composed by doctors, health organizations, cancer institutes, environmentalists, and activists across the world.
While the whole world seems to be pressuring the town to stop producing cancer-causing asbestos, the town’s residents themselves feel that the mine is not only part of their history, but also important to their livelihood.
“It’s our past, it’s our history, therefore the population is united in support of the mining industry,” says Hugues Grimard, the Mayor of Asbestos.
The town decided to prevent the CCS from conducting the leg of the “Relay for Life” scheduled to occur in Asbestos, choosing instead to support the local population.
“People have stopped me to say, ‘We don’t want to participate in that event anymore’,” says Grimard, “[and] we’re giving [those citizens] our support. We want to work with our partners and not with our detractors.”
Even with the setback of creating new enemies in Asbestos, Quebec, the CCS is respectfully sticking to their guns.
“Our mandate is really public health,” says a spokesmen for the CCS, André Beaulieu, “and right now, obviously, the community’s looking from an economic point of view and we understand.”
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