Fermont () is a town in northeastern

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, Canada, near the Quebec-Labrador border about from

Labrador City Labrador City is a town in western Labrador (part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador), near the Quebec border. With a population of 7,412 as of 2021, it is the second-largest population centre in Labrador, behind Happy Valley-Go ...

on Route 389, which connects to the

Trans-Labrador Highway The Trans-Labrador Highway (TLH) is a highway located in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. It is the primary public road in Labrador. Its total length is . The complete paving of the highway was completed in July 2022. The ...

(Newfoundland and Labrador Route 500). It is the seat of the Regional County Municipality of Caniapiscau. Fermont (French contraction of "''Fer Mont''", meaning "Iron Mountain") was founded as a company town in the early 1970s to exploit rich iron ore deposits from Mont Wright, which is about to the west. The town is notable for the huge self-contained structure containing apartments, stores, schools, bars, a hotel, restaurants, a supermarket and swimming pool which shelters a community of smaller apartment buildings and homes on its

leeward side Windward () and leeward () are terms used to describe the direction of the wind. Windward is ''upwind'' from the point of reference, i.e. towards the direction from which the wind is coming; leeward is ''downwind'' from the point of reference ...

. Popularly known as The Wall (''Le Mur''), the structure was designed to be a windscreen to the rest of the town. It permits residents (other than mine workers) to never leave the building during the long winter, which usually lasts about seven months. The town, designed by

Maurice Desnoyers Maurice Desnoyers (1927 – 12 December 2022) was a French-Canadian architect and winner of the OAQ Medal of Merit and the Massey Medal. His projects include the Autostade, Musée de la civilization de Québec, and portions of the Montreal Muse ...

and Norbert Schoenauer, was inspired by similar projects in Sweden designed by Ralph Erskine, notably that of

Svappavaara Svappavaara (Meänkieli: ''Vaskivuori'') is a locality situated in Kiruna Municipality, Norrbotten County, Sweden with 417 inhabitants in 2010. It is a mining village. Mining was started around 1650. Large scale iron mining started in 1965. The ...

, an iron mining town in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. The building measures long and stands high.

History

Following the depletion of the Jeannine Lake Mine at Gagnon in the late 1960s, the

Québec Cartier Mining Company Québec Cartier Mining Company was one of the leading producers of iron ore products in North America, now part of ArcelorMittal. The company was founded in the late 1950s by multiple Canadian and American investors, based in Quebec, Canada. The ...

began to develop the Mont Wright Mine. This was a large-scale project that involved mining, processing, and transporting iron ore. Some 1,600 employees would be needed, and the town of Fermont was constructed to house them and their families. By the end of 1972, the first people settled there. The same year, the Fermont post office opened, and in 1974, the place was incorporated as ''Ville de Fermont''. The town, mine and wall were featured in the television crime drama series ''

La Faille ''La Faille'' (English: ''The Flaw'') or ''The Wall'' (French: ''Le Mur'') is a French Canadian television crime drama series of three seasons, with a total of 25 episodes, which started broadcasting on Club Illico in 2019. The series ...

'' (2019).

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...

, Fermont had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. With French being the dominant language within the community, Fermont is the world's northernmost Francophone settlement of any considerable size, being located about one degree of latitude north of

Dunkirk Dunkirk (french: Dunkerque ; vls, label=French Flemish, Duunkerke; nl, Duinkerke(n) ; , ;) is a commune in the department of Nord in northern France.Nunavik and other points north, most in that region have adopted English as their primary language for communication outside their communities. In addition, a

Franco-Yukonnais Franco-Yukonnais () are French Canadian or French speaking residents of Yukon, a territory of Canada. French has full official language status in the Yukon. Demographics The Canada 2016 Census identified 1,575 residents of the territory as franc ...

community can be found in

Dawson City Dawson City, officially the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–99). Its population was 1,577 as of the 2021 census, making it the second-largest town in Yuko ...

Yukon Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...

, but it forms only a minority of the total population. Fermont can also be considered the northernmost town to speak a

Romance language The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...

City council

The city council is composed of a mayor and six city councillors. As of October 2020 the mayor is Martin St-Laurent, and the councillors are Bernard Dupont, Danny Bouchard, Cindy Vignola, Marco Ouellet, Daniel Bergeron, and Shannon Power.

Economy

The local economy is entirely dependent on the Mont Wright and Fire Lake mines owned by

ArcelorMittal ArcelorMittal S.A. is a Luxembourgian multinational steel manufacturing corporation headquartered in Luxembourg City. It was formed in 2006 from the takeover and merger of Arcelor by Indian-owned Mittal Steel. ArcelorMittal is the second la ...

. Over 80% of municipal revenues come from mining operations. Average earnings for full-time workers was $63,982 in 2001, compared to $39,217 in Quebec as a whole. This went up to $70,102 in 2006, whereas the provincial average dropped to $37,722.Statistics Canada 2006 Census
Fermont community profile
/ref> The mine product is shipped to

Port-Cartier Port-Cartier is a city in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, Canada. It is located on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River at the mouth of the Aux-Rochers River, exactly southwest of Sept-Îles, Quebec. Port-Cartier had a population of 6,65 ...

on the

Cartier Railway The Cartier Railway (formerly CFC and QCM) is a privately owned railway that operates of track in the Canadian province of Québec. It is operated by the Cartier Railway Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Arcelor Mittal, formerly Québe ...

where it is converted to pellets. In 2006 the mine was affected by a labour dispute which lasted from early April to early June. It was amicably resolved with a six-year contract renewal. Because of the town's disproportionately high number of (relatively prosperous) men compared to women and the few entertainment options in Fermont's climate, the adult entertainment industry is extremely lucrative in Fermont, and strippers can make a substantial amount of money for their profession.Sunderland, Mitchell (January 3, 2015)
Life as a Stripper in a Subarctic Indoor Mining Town
''Vice Media, LLC''. Retrieved June 14, 2015.

Environment

Fermont is in an area of rounded hills and flat areas with

peat bogs A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muskeg ...

, wetlands and many lakes and small streams. The valleys show the influence of glacial action and contain undifferentiated

glacial till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

and

fluvioglacial deposits Glaciofluvial deposits or Glacio-fluvial sediments consist of boulders, gravel, sand, silt and clay from ice sheets or glaciers. They are transported, sorted and deposited by streams of water. The deposits are formed beside, below or downstream ...

of sand and gravel. Lake Perchard, to the north of Fermont, supplies the town with drinking water. The Fermont waste water treatment plant discharges through lakes Daviault and Sans-Nom into Carheil Lake, in the

Moisie River The Moisie River is a river in eastern Quebec. Known as the Nahanni of the East, it is a wild river of North America. It has been proposed to protect the river with the Moisie River Aquatic Reserve. Course The Moisie River basin lies betwee ...

watershed. In April 2011 it was reported that water management experts in Sept-Îles were concerned about

cyanobacteria Cyanobacteria (), also known as Cyanophyta, are a phylum of gram-negative bacteria that obtain energy via photosynthesis. The name ''cyanobacteria'' refers to their color (), which similarly forms the basis of cyanobacteria's common name, blu ...

, or blue-green algae, that had been found in Carheil Lake and had potential to further affect the Moisie River. The bloom was due to phosphorus discharge from the treatment plant, which has since been reduced. Fermont has a harsh

subarctic climate The subarctic climate (also called subpolar climate, or boreal climate) is a climate with long, cold (often very cold) winters, and short, warm to cool summers. It is found on large landmasses, often away from the moderating effects of an ocean, ge ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (born 1951), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author and ...

''Dfc'') with long, severe winters and short, mild summers. Although overall not as heavy as in most other parts of the

Labrador Peninsula The Labrador Peninsula, or Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, is a large peninsula in eastern Canada. It is bounded by the Hudson Bay to the west, the Hudson Strait to the north, the Labrador Sea to the east, and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the sout ...

, snowfall is still heavy at around and average maximum depth of which is actually deeper than some other North Shore locations with heavier snowfall like Sept-Îles.

References

Sources

* * *

External links

City of Fermont official site

Map

Original site plan by Norbert Schoenauer

(Schoenauer papers at McGill).
Documentary about innovative community design which features Fermont as an example

Mur-Écran, The Windscreen
on the CBC's ''

Ideas In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being. ...

''.

{{Authority control Cities and towns in Quebec Incorporated places in Côte-Nord Populated places established in the 1970s Mining communities in Quebec Planned cities in Canada