The documentary by Bruno Carrière, 1948, the silicosis affair: the story of an injusticehas just won the Best Canadian Film award at the 2024 edition of the International Labor Film Festival in Canada.
This 33-minute film recalls that in March 1948, Burton LeDoux, a Franco-American journalist, signed for the Jesuit magazine Relations a long field investigation into a strange industrial disease, silicosis, which sickens and kills the miners of Saint-Rémi d’Amherst, a small town in the Laurentians.
The Canadian Labor International Film Festival, known as the Canadian Labor International Film Festival (CLiFF), takes place during the month of November. This year, twelve documentaries were in the running, and were presented in bursts in some 70 screening rooms, often union offices located in major Canadian cities.
The Best Canadian Film award, awarded by the public who watched the films in competition, rewards a work that brilliantly tells “stories of workers, whether unionized or not,” and that “makes the voices of those who seek justice and dignity in the workplace.
“I am very honored to receive this award for my documentary,” said director Bruno Carrière. “I would like to express my gratitude to the CLiFF team, as well as to the festival-goers who voted for my film.”
-Sculpture
For its part, the municipality of Amherst is moving forward with its project to create and install a monumental commemorative sculpture in honor of the miners who died of silicosis.
During their meeting on October 15, 2024, the members of the municipal council entrusted the Atelier de la pierre Trilobe, by stonemason and sculptor Adrien Bobin, with the mandate to create this work which will be installed in front of the church of Saint- Rémi, closed to worship in 2015 and since converted into a multifunctional room.
The Bulletin municipal d’Amherst presents the projected sculpture as follows: “a fragmented miner’s helmet inside which the names of deceased miners will be inscribed and into which visitors will be able to enter.”
