Asbestos: How Lethal Minerals Built a Town

By Jazmine Aldrich
On Thursday, March 27 at 7pm, the Eastern Townships Resource Centre (ETRC) will welcome Dr. Jessica Van Horssen of McMaster University to speak about Asbestos extraction in the Eastern Townships. The talk will take place in Bishop Williams Hall on the campus of Bishop’s University.
The town presently known as Val-des-Sources was known until December 16, 2020, as the town of Asbestos. With the support of their municipal council, residents of the town voted for a fresh start for their “Valley of the Springs” – its former namesake being indivisible from the negative impact of the asbestosis and cancer-causing minerals.
The town of Asbestos was indeed named for the fibrous minerals that were extracted from its depths for over 130 years; the heat- and corrosion-resistant group of minerals literally made a name for the town.
The discovery of asbestos deposits in Shipton Township dates back to the mid-19th century. At the beginning of the 1870s, there was an observable increase in demand for asbestos from British and American industrialists who were prepared to transform the mineral into commercial products.
Asbestos extraction began in its namesake town along Webb’s Ledge – a long strip of asbestos visible in a hillside on the property of a farmer named Charles Webb, whose family had purchased the property from the British American Land Company in 1849. Webb leased the property to a gentleman farmer from Richmond named William Henry Jeffrey in 1879 and in so doing, facilitated the creation of what would at one time be Canada’s largest asbestos mine and the world’s largest asbestos producer.
As mineral exploitation grew over the course of the 1880s, a community of mine workers grew around the area and constituted the hamlet that would grow into the town. In 1884, a post office opened with the name “ASBESTOS” proudly displayed on its sign – marking the official naming of the town.
The fusion of American asbestos manufacturing companies into the H.W. Johns’ Manufacturing Company at the beginning of the 1890s would prove pivotal to the town of Asbestos. The new Company’s significant investment in Quebec asbestos mines meant that it heavily influenced the price of the raw fiber. Most of the asbestos extracted from the Jeffrey Mine went to H.W. Johns in New York.
In 1892, William Jeffrey decided to purchase the property from Charles Webb that he had leased and exploited for thirteen years; however, Jeffrey declared bankruptcy less than one year later following a drop in the market price of asbestos. In the spring of 1894, James Naismith Greenshields of Danville took possession of the Jeffrey mine and its installations – fusing it with the Danville Slate Company to become the Danville Asbestos Slate Company.
Faced with continually dropping market prices, the mine operators found innovative ways to use shorter fibers of asbestos in construction materials, called asbestic. It was in 1897 that the London-based Asbestos and Asbestic Company invested in the area’s ongoing mining operations. The H.W. Johns Co. was an important client for the new asbestic product. Technological innovations continued to mechanize asbestos extraction and processing over the following decades.
Meanwhile, the H.W. Johns’ Manufacturing Company became the H.W. Johns-Manville Company in 1901 with Thomas Franklyn Manville as its president. Manville and his father, Charles B. Manville, were named to the Board of the Asbestos and Asbestic Company in 1902, with two additional brothers – Hiram Edward Manville and C.R. Manville joining the Board in 1903. The Asbestos and Asbestic Company was undoubtedly under the control of the Manville family and its interests.
By 1916, the Asbestos and Asbestic Co. declared bankruptcy and reorganized under the name Manville Asbestos Company Limited; in 1918, the name was changed to the Canadian Johns-Manville Company, Limited. The Canadian Johns Manville – or C.J.M. – would remain at the heart of asbestos mining in Asbestos through the 1949 Asbestos Strike. The company met its end in in 1982 – declaring bankruptcy on the heels of legal action taken against it by its employees who had developed asbestosis and various cancers from their working conditions. The Jeffrey mine continued to operate under subsequent management until it closed its doors in 2012.
If you are interested in learning more about asbestos extraction in the Townships, please attend Dr. Van Horssen’s free lecture on March 27. You may also contact the ETRC Archives for more information, by email or by telephone.
Much of this historical overview was adapted from research published in the book titled “Asbestos, Filons d’histoire (1899-1999)” written by Réjean Lampron, Marc Cantin, and Élise Grimard (1999).