La mine qui commence à grignoter le village1 : Expansion minière territoriale à Asbestos

The town of Asbestos is home to what was once the largest opencast asbestos mine in the world, the Jeffrey Mine. Most of the town's history has been dominated by the resource industry that gave it its name and by the American Johns-Manville Company, which owned the mine and carried out an aggressive style of land management. When it expanded the edges of the mine into the community in order to meet rising global demand for asbestos, the company brought radical changes to the local environment and landscape. As the global asbestos industry began to collapse, Johns-Manville stepped up its expansion plans, much to the detriment of a local community that, however, did not remain voiceless in this process. This paper examines how the community negotiated a balance between progress and place at the epicentre of this mining industry.