Arsenic in Rouyn-Noranda | The punk musician who slays the Horne Foundry

Singer of rock metal, amputated of a leg following a violent cancer, Rouynorandien Simon Turcotte actively participates in the debate on the Horne Foundry, to raise awareness among his fellow citizens. The Press the encounter.

(Rouyn-Noranda) His music group is called Tumeurs.

And the least we can say is that Simon Turcotte does not hold the Horne Foundry close to his heart.

“The last job I had in life was at the foundry,” he says.

A job as a confined space supervisor for a company contractor, which he had to leave abruptly in November 2015 “because of strange pain in his right leg”.

The diagnosis came in: sarcoma. Malignant soft tissue tumor.

After the fourth recurrence, having had radiotherapy treatments “to the point of not being able to do any more”, his leg had to be amputated.

It is impossible to make a causal link between his last job and this “extremely rare, super aggressive cancer that a young man of 26 catches out of nowhere, when he is in great shape”, recognizes Simon immediately. Turcotte.

“But we know the health risks associated with the Horne Foundry,” says the native of Rouyn-Noranda.

He tries to explain these risks to his fellow citizens, especially on social networks, where he offers clear answers to those who minimize the problem of pollution generated by the foundry, which has been at the heart of the news for a good part of the year.

“I find it absurd that the world is not alarmed by this, especially with all the information we have since this year,” he said. He receives The Press in his music room, the Punk House, which serves as a small performance hall for “underground” artists.

Opposite is the Cabaret de la dernier chance, the city’s legendary performance hall, where Richard Desjardins performed his first solo shows.

And at the end of the street: “the Horne”, its lunar terrain, its pipes, its chimneys and its smoke.

He also talks about the Foundry through his music, such as at the Rouyn-Noranda Emerging Music Festival in 2021, where he went on stage wearing a hospital gown.

“Art reflects the reality of the artist,” he says.

Le sujet de la Fonderie Horne a été très clivant dans la dernière année à Rouyn-Noranda, se désole Simon Turcotte.

Bien des gens n’osent pas prendre la parole parce que la fonderie, qui appartient à la multinationale anglo-suisse de négoce Glencore, « tient la ville en otage », estime-t-il.

« Il n’y en a pas bien, bien qui se promènent avec ça », dit-il en pointant son macaron affichant une tête de mort sous le nom Glencore.

Mais ses interventions ne sont pas toujours bien accueillies.

« Surtout par le monde qui travaille là ; on dirait que les gens ne comprennent pas même quand tu leur dis : “Moi aussi, j’ai travaillé là, je suis tombé malade, ça peut t’arriver” », dit-il.

Il n’en veut pas aux employés qui l’invectivent, estimant que « c’est la compagnie [qui] it gets into their heads that everyone is against them”, but on the other hand he is angry with the company and its leaders, whom he accuses of leading the population on a boat.

“They say, ‘We’re going to make changes’, but there’s never been any change,” he gets carried away, adding that with his billions in profit, the company would be well able to ” to invest so as not to kill people”.

If it does not want to do it, if it does not want to comply with Quebec regulations, it closes, he decides.

“Is that 500 jobs? We are in the midst of a labor shortage, there is a lack of employees everywhere in the mines, here in Abitibi, they just have to take a CV elsewhere,” he says.

“Still ironic to say that the city will not survive without a foundry which, literally, kills us all slowly,” he wrote on the Facebook page of the Regroupement vigilance mines Abitibi-Témiscamingue, in July.

To a vice-president of the foundry workers’ union who answered him “why do you live in rouyn my little genius? » [sic]Simon Turcotte explained his dependence on his loved ones for several aspects of his daily life, since he has lost a leg.

“I hope you make sure your mask seals well when you walk around the site [de la fonderie]I wish you none of that, ”concluded the musician.