Jessica van Horssen. A Town Called Asbestos: Environmental Contamination, Health, and Resilience in a Resource Community. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2016. 256 pp.

In A Town Called Asbestos, Jessica van Horssen tells the story of Asbestos, Quebec, a mining town founded in the late nineteenth century. The town was named for the mineral, which when added to materials made them flame resistant, an increasingly important quality in the industrializing world. A geological anomaly, the asbestos in the mineral deposit located roughly equidistant from Quebec City and Montreal lay in the form of a circular mound versus the more typical linear sheets. William Jeffrey discovered the site in the 1870s, and working with Charles Webb, formed a company to work the newly named Jeffrey Mine. Asbestos the mineral represented the marvels of modernity ahead, and Asbestos the town and its inhabitants looked to it to build their fortunes. In recounting the story of Asbestos over the course of a 100 years plus of history, van Horssen examines three different, but overlapping, kinds of bodies – the physical land, human beings, and the political arena. In eight chapters plus an introduction and conclusion, the book chronicles the story of this Canadian resource town. In the process, it examines understandings of risk, the regulatory state, the significance of resource towns, and the making of an industrialized mining operation. The Introduction and Chapter 1 cover the founding of the town and initial mining operations up to 1918. The site’s physical layout allowed opencast mining which was also the best way to “harvest” the highly valued long-length asbestos fiber, desirable because of its quicker processing time and ability to be spun into a kind of yarn. The realization that the discarded earth held copious amounts of short length fibers – asbestic – represented wealth not waste and helped increase the mine’s worth at a crucial time. This material could be ground up and added to an infinite number of products, including paint, shingles, even wall plaster. The Jeffrey Mine output was valued at over $2 million in 1905. The town’s population boomed as well, with a French Canadian mining workforce and anglophones heavily represented among mine’s management. Mining operations were eventually purchased by an American corporation, Johns-Manville (JM). While JM modernized mining operations, it neglected to raise miners’ wages. At the end of the First World War the international asbestos trade increased and helped ensure the 1920s would be a profitable decade as the Jeffrey Mine expanded to satisfy increased demand. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 all examine the period from 1918 to 1949 from different vantage points. Chapter 2 focuses on the dramatic changes in the land that the mine and town occupied. The Jeffrey Mine’s geographic advantages made it an enormously productive and profitable mine. Increased demand meant the mine consistently expanded on the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. This put it in conflict with the local community. Mine owners paid for township lands and goodwill by providing residents’ electricity, plowing city roads, and paying for new roads and buildings. The city mostly cooperated with only minor pushback. Work during the Great Depression meant that JM’s expansion needs would be met. In the process, the Jeffrey Mine grew wider and deeper, profoundly changing workers’ experiences and the local landscape. Chapter 3 shines light on a particularly dark aspect of the Asbestos story, the considerable and consistent suppression of medical information on the health hazards posed by working with asbestos. The 1920s and 30s saw increasing medical concerns over specific conditions associated with exposure to asbestos fibers: asbestosis, where lungs lost their flexibility and the increasing stiffening of tissue caused pain and decreased lung efficiency; mesothelioma, cancer of the lung and abdominal lining; and generalized cancer beyond …