Asbestos - Things we didn’t know Expo 67

http://mobile.morenciel.com/expo67/les_places/amiante_an.html 
Document Source: Man and his world guide 1968

There were a number of plazas at Expo 67. This is one of them.                                                             (Found in expo67 index in guide official p 277  Asbestos Plaza p 165)

Asbestos Plaza  is also near the Pavilion of Canada on Ile Notre-Dame. The Plaza is sponsored by the Québec Asbestos Mining Association and Québec asbestos was used almost exclusively in its construction, as well as for the construction of flower planters and for the public benches.

     A fountain in the centre of the plaza is sculptured from a gigantic green rock of asbestos ore. Set on a six-foot pedestal of steel faced with asbestos, the fountain is 20 feet high. The rock is illuminated, and so also is the water from jets set in it which gives to the rock the effect of floating in the basin of the fountain.

     Flowerpots and other items made of asbestos illustrate some of the 3,000 uses industry has made of the product.

You’d think asbestos would have been banned a long time ago, obviously not in the 60s when Expo was but that was a long time ago! They knew that asbestos caused cancer by the early 70s. The Current, on CBC radio, in December 2016 said that “Asbestos kills as many as 2,000 people every year in Canada.

     The deadly material is in tens of thousands of homes and buildings across the country. In fact, the carcinogenic fibre has been part of the fabric of Canadian life for at least 130 years.” …

[Julie Ireton] says that up until 2011, the government actively supported asbestos, mining sales and the export of asbestos, "often to poor countries where regulations were lacking"

Asbestos mines operated in Canada from the late 1800s and were closed in 2011 but it wasn’t banned until 2018. The World Health Organization condemned asbestos and by 2016 it was banned in 50 countries.

     Asbestos is still not banned in the United States. See     

     Asbestos is still used in some things in Canada surprisingly. The timeline for their banning is December 31, 2022 and December 31, 2029. You can see more at  

 

More about Expo 67 and Kazakhstan

 More about Expo 67 and Kazakhstan

This is more from a booklet/brochure I have from Expo 67. This sounds really nice, well the “Pastoral.” does, and the “new films” and maybe because we are planning for camping yurts too sound good …

 Soviet KAZAKHSTAN

 Pastural. Animal husbandry combines well with intensive crop farming, and living conditions in the remote pastures are naturally world’s removed from those of the past. Little towns have been built in place of the yurta tent camps and squalid adobe huts …

 Gas containers, new films and a variety of goods are delivered on orders of the herdsmen to the sandy Moyinkuma Desert [Muyunkum] in the south of Kazakhstan.

But, an article about Kazakhstan.  https://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/8681

 From the article, the conclusion:

Turning the “backward” peoples in the USSR into rag-clad refugees who were totally dependent on state “aid” was a way of incorporating these societies. Collectivization and famine accomplished this, too, not merely the subjugation of peasants.

From the notes section:

108 In Kazakstan the reaction to collectivization was particularly violent and it was the herdsmen who were principally involved. In early 1930, there were hotbeds of revolt, both among Europeans and among Kazaks, in all areas of Kazakstan. Data are incomplete but show that in the first six months of the year more than 80,000 people took part in uprisings (Å. B. Abylhožin, K. S. Aldažumanov, M. K. Kozybaev, Kollektivizacija v Kazahstane : tragedija krest´janstva (Alma-Ata : 1992): 20-26). In Kazakstan, for the year 1930 the OGPU recorded 266 “mass revolts” and 332 “acts of terrorism,” such as the killing of Communists, members of the Komsomol or plenipotentiaries for collectivization (“Secret report by the political section of the OGPU on the form and dynamics of class warfare in the countryside in 1930,” dated March 15, 1931, cited in V. Danilov, ed., op. cit., 2: 801, 804).

Citation  Famine in the steppe  The collectivization of agriculture and the Kazak herdsmen 1928-1934 by Niccolò Pianciola  p. 137-192   https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.8681

 A good review of a book about the famines in Kazakhstan in the 1920s and 30s, the review just published in 2020.

Citation: Aaron Hale-Dorrell. Review of Cameron, Sarah, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. December, 2020.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55459