I was born in Rouyn-Noranda. I grew up 700 meters from the Horne Foundry with loving parents who, like any caring parent, wanted what was best for me. They were far from suspecting the risks to which they exposed me.
As a child, I fell asleep to the sound of the comforting roar of the “mine”.
Quickly, I understood that life would be beautiful. Between two games of “boot the cane” hidden in the “mine slam” and a trip to Laurier Park, my childhood revealed to me in the most beautiful way, I thought, the strength of the bonds we weave. I learned the pleasure of encounters and shared moments.
Of course, I left Rouyn-Noranda, but long after having created many ties and many memories that rooted me in the territory and in my community. Today, it seems to me, each street, each park speaks to me in its own way of my past.
So I left. I went to see what the world had to tell me. Like many, I went to study almost a thousand kilometers from my home.
When the time came to settle down, I felt the need to return, to my family, to the land that had seen me grow up. Of course, I was aware that I was settling in the shadow of a large industrial complex. I assumed at that time (I was in my early twenties) that in Quebec the government was enforcing the standards that were supposed to protect us.
I know today that I was wrong, that a climate of permanent fear, lies and silence, bought with sponsorships and big “jobs”, pushed people in my community into denial. All of them had taken refuge in a discourse that trivialized, even made invisible, the crisis that had already been raging for too long. I built myself in this culture.
My three daughters were born in Rouyn-Noranda. Three magnificent human beings who, in turn, roam the city creating memories and making unforgettable encounters. They continue to weave the fine and delicate social fabric. They soak up the territory… Now that I know that the emissions from the foundry soak up their fingernails to the point of lowering their intelligence quotient, increasing their risk of developing cancer and reducing their life expectancy, I am terrified.
I came to completely question my relationship to the territory. The attachment to an environment that makes you sick is probably not a healthy attachment. Beyond the guilt that torments me for exposing my children to all these risks, I am horrified at the idea of having bequeathed to them this ambiguous sense of belonging. Roots immersed in the territory should however be a beautiful heritage.
I am sad because I would have liked to raise my children in innocence. I would have liked to garden with them. Show them how generous nature is. From ten pips of an apple, ten trees will be able to spread their branches and in turn give hundreds of apples, and so on ad infinitum. Here, I don’t think it’s safe to garden, any more than to raise children while preserving their naivety. At the first moment of their life, even when they were nestled in the pit of my belly, their right to live in a healthy environment was already flouted. I must imperatively teach them to be part of the fight.
For almost 100 years, generation after generation, the inhabitants of my city have been poisoned by the Horne smelter with the complicity of our successive governments. As early as 1979, the authorities had been alerted by the Bureau of Studies on Toxic Substances (BEST). Forty-four years later, after a collective awareness, months of citizen mobilization and a public consultation against it, the government has the insolence to announce the uprooting of an entire neighborhood, 200 households.
With this buffer zone, he pretends to care about the health of the residents of my city. However, by choosing not to require the Horne Foundry to comply with Quebec standards, it abandons all the rest of the inhabitants of Rouyn-Noranda, who will be exposed to exceeding the standard for arsenic of 2166% over the next year, 1500% in the following three years and 500% in the fifth year.
I find it important to remember that my father, who is aging with Parkinson’s disease, was once a child who was not protected by our institutions. It is unbearable for me to think that it will be the same for my children.
The government’s contempt for my community is unbearable.
It is not up to the people of Rouyn-Noranda to sacrifice their health, but rather up to Glencore to sacrifice its profits.
We have never consented to breathe this air which poisons us. I will therefore be standing, among my people, to defend this territory so that it can once again welcome life in a safe way, because more than anything I want the wind to be gentle on my cheeks.