In the early 1920s, Fournière Township, the site of the future town of Malartic, was in turn scoured by a host of prospectors. Their explorations confirmed the presence of a rich gold-bearing vein belonging to the Cadillac Fault, an important geological system in Quebec in which my father was a specialist.
Four gold mines were soon established within the confines of the future municipality of Malartic. First came Canadian Malartic Gold Mines, followed by Sladen Malartic Mines, East Malartic Mines and Malartic Gold Fields. Almost all of them can be seen at a glance, so close are they to each other.
James Paul Norrie, a geologist and prospector based in Amos, was interested in this area and held concessions and financial interests in its exploration and subsequent mining of the deposits discovered there. A good friend of my grandfather’s, Joseph Rupert Norrie, brother of the former and manager of East Malartic Mines, offered my grandfather a position as manager of the mine’s general store. In 1938, my father’s family left Amos to settle near the underground and surface ore extraction and processing facilities.
I found a photograph in the archives showing the construction of the mine’s first headframe, before the village of Norrie, named after the mine manager and friend of my grandfather, was developed. The scene is striking. The foreground shows cleared land, vigorously disturbed and still littered with stump debris. Malartic’s original territory consisted of moss and peat muskeg enclaves surrounded by boreal forest. In the background, a band of conifers still stands. In the center of the image is a large pyramidal wooden structure made of freshly logged, delimbed and debarked logs, a rudimentary temporary shelter and a group of men with shovels and wheelbarrows bent over an excavation. Behind the scene, the power lines required for mining are already visible.
In addition to documenting the construction of the first headframe of the complex that was to become the East Malartic mine, the photograph expresses the dynamics of settlement in the territory typical of mine establishment. Identified as overburden in mining jargon, the surface vegetation, soil and humus that ensure the territory’s natural vitality are uprooted and uprooted in favor of the subsoil. From the debris of the former ecosystem, the construction of the headframe paves the way for a deep root that will anchor the life of the nearby community in the highly speculative activity of mining. The stumps, bare roots and scattered trunks already bear witness to the uprooting underway and the new way of living that is taking root. This first shaft, which will eventually descend to a depth of almost a kilometer, is proving to be the true taproot of the town, whose population forms the rootlets rather than the canopy.
Communities of miners and their families grew up around the mines, housed in small apartments owned at the time by the mining companies, which also owned the general store and post office. Once the first settlements had been grouped together as municipalities, the mining companies remained the town’s main employer, and essential financial contributors to the infrastructure and activities, particularly sports and cultural activities, for the local population. The lifespan of these industrial facilities is barely fifteen years, far shorter than the life expectancy of the people who settle near them.
Even today, the town of Malartic is entirely dependent on mining activity. By 2026, the Canadian Malartic Mines operation, which necessitated the complete relocation of the town’s southern district and more than a third of its population, will have exhausted the riches of the subsoil, leaving behind a hole 2 km long, 780 metres wide and 380 metres deep, bordered by waste rock piles and a tailings facility of equivalent volume. Gold represents only the prized crumbs of this frenetic activity, the impressive quantity of tailings, the scale of the sacrifice that will be made.