Gagnon (Quebec)
Gagnon is a ghost town in the province of Quebec in Canada . The former mining town in the Côte-Nord region was dissolved in October 1984 by a resolution of the Québec National Assembly .
history
In the far north of the province of Québec, near the Lac Jeanninine and Lac Barbel , iron ore deposits were found in 1957 , whereupon the Québec Cartier Mining Company founded a mining settlement. It was named after the politician Onésime Gagnon , the vice governor of the province of Québec. In 1960 the city was officially founded. Residents of the province, but also immigrants and the like. a. from Italy and Portugal , worked in the mine and lived in the modern small town, which had around 4,000 inhabitants. Initially, Gagnon could only be reached by rail and air. The 50-megawatt Hart-Jaune power plant from 1960 supplied the mine and the city. The route 389 to 300 km distant city Baie-Comeau was only until 1987, three years after the release of the site.
The working-class city only developed positively in the first few years. The ore deposits were already exhausted in the mid-1970s and the mine was closed in 1977. Manufacturing facilities were relocated to Fire Lake , 90 kilometers away , and workers had to commute to that location. In 1984, after the town was dissolved, houses and streets were dismantled, only two streets with the intersection in the former center and the mine dumps remained. A celebration of the residents was to commemorate the place in 2015.
literature
- Aude de Tocqueville: Atlas of the lost cities . Frederking & Thaler , Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-95416-179-9 .
Web links
- Photos of Gagnon to 1962-63 (Engl.)
Coordinates: 51 ° 52 ′ N , 68 ° 7 ′ W