CANADA GOLD RUSH - LORRAINE MALLINDER
BBC World Service (From Our Own Correspondent)
25 March 2010
The green house stands defiantly on a vast expanse of white littered with red danger signs. Enclosed by a wire fence, it faces a street sign without a street. There are no signs of life, save for the dull thud of a distant dynamite explosion.
A demolition crew is expected some day. This house is obstructing a multi-billion dollar gold mining project.
When rich veins of the precious metal were discovered directly beneath the town of Malartic, a large chunk of the community was uprooted to make way for a pit. But Ken Massé refused to move. He didn’t want to leave the home where he had grown up. Others went quietly for the sum of CA$5,000 each, persuaded by the lure of a fresh start in a brand new neighbourhood, with gleaming institutions and smooth asphalted roads.
Massé wouldn’t be bought. The Osisko Mining Corporation expresses confidence that they will eventually reach a settlement, but legal proceedings are already being launched for seizure of the land.
At the beginning of the year, Massé, the last man standing, left for Montreal to plan his next move. In his conspicuous absence, the gold rush continues apace. It’s boom time, says the local mayor. A team of 400 miners are digging a pit that will eventually stretch two kilometres, bringing jobs, people and life to the town. In a region known for high rates of suicide, “everyone is smiling”, the mayor tells me.
I trudge through the horizontal sleet past locals with heads bent low and utilitarian buildings with corrugated-iron facades, in search of this new-found happiness. It proves elusive. The Château Malartic bar is supposedly where it’s all happening, but it’s less life and soul than last chance saloon. The beer and salad are half frozen.
I detect weary resignation among locals, who have seen a long line of gold prospectors come and go over the past decades. “I’ve been sitting on gold all my life,” says an old boy nursing a cup of coffee in the Kool Café. “Yes, and you’re none the richer for it,” retorts a beady-eyed lady in an electric blue jacket.
In this hard-bitten mining town, history repeats itself. It turns out that many residents resisted the development of the mine at first, mindful of previous projects, the last of which left little more than a crater of poisonous waste, but one by one they relented. The new mine is the only bet in town.
Nobody is against gold mining per se. Rather, it’s the aggressive scale of the big dig that worries them. Fifty-five thousand tons of rock will be wrenched from the land each day over a period of at least ten years. Locals fear that their community is yet again being raided, only this time at a faster and more furious pace.
The Osisko Mining Corporation is fluent in the language of corporate responsibility, but locals are sceptical. Last Christmas, it gave out trees to relocated residents. This proved an unfortunate gesture. “Se faire passer un sapin”, which roughly translates as “receiving a Christmas tree” is the local expression for having been taken for a sucker.
Yet, despite the widespread discontent, resistance is a lonely game. Curiously, Massé, a father of four, hasn’t received much support from other residents. This potential local hero is regarded with a mixture of wariness and derision. I ask around town to find out more about him and hear a tale worthy of a western.
Last year, locals say, a “blue-eyed Indian” rode into town, scenting financial opportunity. Nobody knew where he had sprung from. He gained influence over Massé, they say, pulling him into his schemes to make money from the misfortunes of Malartic.
I meet the pair in Montreal, at their suggestion in the World Trade Centre there. They are a curious pair. Réjean Aucoin, "the Indian", tells me he is a “capitalist shark, just like Osisko”, who has allegedly made a fortune from aboriginal land rights claims. He wants to broker a big bucks class action. A choleric type with a jabbing finger, he responds to each question with an endless supply of documents from a battered brown briefcase.
A pale-faced Massé remains silent throughout. Placid of demeanour, dressed like a hippie, he seems like an unlikely sidekick for the “shark”. Eventually, he tells me that people who raised concerns about settlements, the environment or the future of the community were accused of opportunism by the company’s supporters. Is this the key to Malartic’s woes, this deep-rooted reluctance among folk of meagre means to be seen to be asking for too much? Massé stresses that he is fighting “out of principle”.
I take a picture of him: he lifts his two fingers in a peace sign, his eyes lifted to the heavens. I wonder whether Osisko can afford to make a martyr out of him. But, with gold prices reaching record highs, there’s no time to waste. The corporation plans to start selling next year. The legal wheels have been set in motion for seizure of the land. A few months down the line, the green house will probably have vanished.