Malartic

Ten years after Canada’s largest open-pit gold mine opened in the heart of Malartic, in Quebec’s Abitibi region, how is the town faring? At first glance, prosperity hasn’t come to Main Street, and the statistics bear this out, showing no evidence of demographic gains. Malartic is a powerful deep dive into the life of a town that is still on life support, despite having an extremely wealthy “tenant”. It’s also a story of contamination—of the environment and of health—against a backdrop of staggering wealth inequality.