Pichet to go to Fermont
Philippe Pichet, who used to be police chief here, will be going up north to run Fermont while staying on the Montreal payroll. Fermont sounds like a Martian colony: “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. 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…”
Michael Black 09:27 on 2019-08-04 Permalink
In the seventies I knew someone who’d go to northern Quebec where they were constructing something, and work as a cook. He’d disappear for months, earn some money, then return and write. I got the impression that the pay was great, but nobody wanted to live there too long.
So maybe in some places they have to make things especially comfortable to attract workers, especially since the locations are remote.
Michael
Blork 09:40 on 2019-08-04 Permalink
Here’s a pretty good write-up about Fermont and “the wall” (with further good links within the article).
Michael Black 12:40 on 2019-08-04 Permalink
That reference was interesting, I’d never heard of this before.
Why am I suddenly thinking of Siberia in Soviet times? They wanted to populate the area because if the resources. So the Gulag was mostly there, and that was labor to build housing. “one Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch” a good but relatively short book, is mostly about building housing like that.
But the bleak apartment buildings were utilitarian only, not much in the way of style or luxury. Likely not so warm in the winter. And people were lured, or exiled to Siberia to populate the area.
Not the same thing as this, but both about getting people into an unfriendly environment who might otherwise stay home.
Michael
Uatu 16:16 on 2019-08-04 Permalink
It looks like a setting for one of those Scandinavian murder mysteries you see on Netflix where the characters are snowed in and trapped with someone who’s a murderer.
Kate 07:42 on 2019-08-05 Permalink
Uatu, it does, and that’s no coincidence. Wikipedia says it was inspired by a Swedish mining town designed by British architect Ralph Erskine, who mostly worked in that country.