April 9, 1959. I was born at the hospital in Rouyn, a few steps from Lake Osisko, and a few hundred meters from the Noranda mine. That’s what we’ve always called the Horne Foundry, part of the Glencore group: the Noranda mine. This Noranda Mines which became Noranda Inc., before swallowing Falconbridge and continuing its sprawling activities under this name in 18 countries around the world, before being acquired by Xstrata, and finally Glencore in 2013.
It was Noranda Mines, which caused rain and shine in many countries, which in 1973 recovered 49% of the “Chile Canadian Mines” subsidiary after the coup d’état in Chile.
Lac Osisko, which is located in the center of Rouyn-Noranda, is highly contaminated. When I was little, we built a filtration plant that was supposed to decontaminate it in a few years. We all believed that one day, not so far away, we could swim there again. This is still not the case in 2022.
” In 2006, [la Ville de Rouyn-Noranda] set up a working group to study the possibility of restoring access to the lake to its citizens for recreational purposes. However, the report concludes that the pH of the lake is high, sometimes even higher than the limit of 9 recommended for swimming. It would also present sediments of aluminum, cadmium, copper and lead that should be avoided by the use of motor boats, note the researchers, “we read on Radio-Canada, July 22, 2015 .
In March 2022, Quebec awards a $379,000 grant for the revitalization of Lake Osisko, the newspaper tells us. The citizentelling us that this “contribution will go to the search for viable solutions to clean up the body of water and make it more attractive”, while telling us that we are not yet at the clean-up stage, but that decontamination is very doable, it is not an impossible task.
The MNA for Abitibi-Est, and Minister of Forests, Wildlife and Parks, Pierre Dufour, in The citizen still believes that there is still work to be done before getting to clean-up, but maintains that the news is good regarding the future of the lake. Do these people really take us for fools?
At the same time, the mine was also dumping its toxic residues on adjacent land, transforming them into veritable lunar landscapes of orange mud. The child that I was engraved these images in his memory.
On Friday noon, the mine triggered its almighty siren, like an announced bombardment. And that meant: go back to your houses, close doors and windows. Because at that moment, it was a thick stinking cloud that was literally falling on the city. Every Friday.
More than 40 years ago, in 1980, the new CSN union at the Noranda mine launched a vast operation on the health of workers and their families, by joining forces with researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Despite the pitfalls posed by the employer, and threats of protest, 933 Noranda employees out of 956 had then exercised their right to a medical examination, reported The sunin June 1980.
The study found the health consequences of exposure to toxic substances, such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, zinc and sulfur dioxide (Work, CSN newspaper, June-July 1980). This investigation was followed by a team of directors, Daniel Corvec and Robert Monderie who, with Richard Desjardins in search, produced a film released in 1984, Noranda. For Corvec, the conclusion of this study is beyond doubt: “it is a killing machine for the world”.
In 2021, the Horne Foundry released 23 different contaminants into the air of Rouyn-Noranda, including 36 tonnes of arsenic, a Radio-Canada analysis showed.
In Quebec, the standard for arsenic is 3 nanograms per cubic meter in the air, but the Foundry benefits from an exemption which allows it to emit up to 100 ng/m3.
Faced with this essential issue for people’s health, it is citizen mobilization (the “Stop toxic emissions” committee, “Mothers at the front”, doctors, etc.) that is making things happen at the moment. While, unsurprisingly, and as in the days of Duplessis and Iron Ore, Premier Legault speaks to us, in The duty, paying jobs at the Foundry, while his Minister of the Environment “wishes to force” the smelter to meet standards for all metals. We don’t know which ones.
Where is the Noranda Mine Workers Union? Its president, Stéphane Larente, says he is caught between a rock and a hard place and prefers to launch a criticism against “the supportive MP for Rouyn-Noranda-Témiscamingue and the singer-songwriter Richard Desjardins, who said that the region’s economy is capable of recovering from a Foundry closure. She will not have my vote, he said about Émilise Lessard-Therrien “, in an interview with Radio-Canada. And this, while declaring, in a press release, that it is necessary “to obtain the greatest technically possible reduction of arsenic in the air”.
What to say in the face of so much nonsense?
I’m not angry with this company that has always reigned as king and master over the city. I am not angry with this third-world report that marks the relationship between many of our regions and the metropolis, and with the powers of money. What about this political class, whose height is that of a carpet and which keeps us in this state in the name of development and good jobs?
You have (and are) a dirty face, Noranda.