Fermont () is a town in northeastern
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Government of Canada, 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 ...
, Canada, near the Quebec-Labrador border about from
Labrador City on
Route 389, which connects to the
Trans-Labrador Highway (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 and Norbert Schoenauer, was inspired by similar projects in Sweden designed by
Ralph Erskine, notably that of
Svappavaara, an iron mining town in
Sweden. The building measures long and stands high.
History
Following the depletion of the Jeannine Lake Mine at
Gagnon Gagnon may refer to:
* Gagnon (surname), people with the surname Gagnon
* Gagnon, Quebec, a ghost town in East-Central Quebec, Canada
* ''Gagnon v. Scarpelli'', a United States Supreme Court case
See also
* Gagné Gagne and Gagné are two distinc ...
in the late 1960s, the
Québec Cartier Mining Company 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'' (2019).
Demographics
In the
2021 Census of Population
The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...
conducted by
Statistics Canada, 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. Although fluency in French is common in
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 community can be found in
Dawson City,
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 language fa ...
.
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
"Fire Lake" is a song written and recorded by the American musical artist Bob Seger. He had planned to record "Fire Lake" for his 1975 album '' Beautiful Loser'', but the track was not finished. The song had been partly written years before, in 19 ...
mines owned by
ArcelorMittal. 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 on the Cartier Railway 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, wetlands and many lakes and small streams. The valleys show the influence of glacial action and contain undifferentiated glacial till and fluvioglacial deposits 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
Carheil Lake (french: Lac Carheil) is a lake in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, Canada. It is just south of Fermont, and is the source of the Carheil River, which runs south to the Aux Pékans River. The lake has been polluted with phosphorus ...
, in the Moisie River watershed. In April 2011 it was reported that water management experts in Sept-Îles were concerned about cyanobacteria, 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 ( Köppen ''Dfc'') with long, severe winters and short, mild summers. Although overall not as heavy as in most other parts of the Labrador Peninsula, 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.
See also
* List of towns in Quebec
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''.
{{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