The Hole Truth

In his monumental work, A Display of Heraldry, first published in London in 1610, the antiquarian and officer of arms John Guillim wrote of a stone “that being once kindled and set on fire” will “never extinguish or goe out.” Such a stone possessed “admirable vertues . . . whereby strange and unwonted effects may be wrought.” Guillim thought this unusual rock, which he called asphestus, was to be found in Arcadia, that most pastoral of utopias. Had he lived another three hundred years or so, he would have learned that a lot of it was also to be found not far from Montreal, in the Eastern Townships.

In 1879, a Welsh miner discovered what he thought was a small deposit of asbestos near Quebec’s Nicolet River. A few years later, an entrepreneurial pair realized they were, in fact, standing on pay dirt. What became known as the Jeffrey Mine opened in 1881 and steadily...