“The Wall” Housing Structure In Fermont, Quebec
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Quite a weird place, though definitely not 50m tall.
That looks like an incredible trip!
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120904222048/http://www.caniap...
[2] redirected to https://web.archive.org/web/20130720073238/http://www.caniap...
One of my favorites is lake mistassini[1], an immense lake shaped like claw marks
I like the way that you switch between your side, and your wife's.
This is my favorite kind of blog, excellent stuff.
It doesn't surprise me that small mining towns have strip clubs. Lots of people temporarily move to work there and are lacking in human comforts of all types.
Such a great song and video, awesome cinematography, and includes some clips of residents shortly talking about it.
Enjoyed the sci-fi / Moon[1] vibes at t=189[2] (those neons might be to improve visibility of the trucks in the dark and/or during storms?).
I got a flat tire somewhere near the border, then pulled into Fermont and tried my best high school-level French to find somewhere to fix my flat tire.
I asked the guy at the gas station: "Excusez-moi, savez-vous où je peux trouver un garage pour réparer mon pneu crevé ?"
He looked at me and said "Fixer le flat, huh?"
No amount of formal French prepares you for Northern Quebecois "French" :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiac#Example_sentences
A slightly legendary music video in Chiac:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cRPH4lb8UI
Right drôle!
OMG. They're awesome. Thanks for good find
Typical greeting isn't "What's up" but "Where ya at?" The response I was told is "This is it."
source: French from FR living in QC :)
Still have a certain song in my ear that we heard live in a bar in Quebec "Quand je change ma vie, je rue la Gaspesie...". Which is what we did after Quebec... If you asked in French, the local people immediately switched to English and were extremely nice and helpful.
If they recognize you as a 'local' (i.e. immigrant) and you don't speak French you will get into trouble in most places in Quebec. Even in Montreal though not everywhere in Montreal. If you aren't aware, Google about the referendum and the "OQLF" and their practices for example. It's very telling that even the Bank of Montreal moved their headquarters to Toronto back then.
Most people aren't like that, but there are assholes out there...
Despite being born and raised in America and having lived the last 20+ years in the Bay I somehow spoke more French than him. But I honestly questioned why he immigrated there in the first place when there’s 50 states and 9 other provinces he could go to and live exclusively in English? I get he probably couldn’t pass the higher bar for US immigration but that still leaves 2/3rd of Canada to go to.
Side note: apparently there are "agencies" in some countries that let you pick an equivalent city in their own country as a "benchmark" for the kind of lifestyle you'd like to have and they tell you which North American city to immigrate to and how to do that (i.e. how to meet the legal requirements, paperwork etc.). Maybe he used one of those services.
Maybe. He seemed to really want to come to the US but the performance and behavioral issues made it a big no. I don’t think he would have passed the stricter requirements anyways.
One of the things he ranted about was how his kids attended public school in French. I mean, here in California public schools operate in English because it’s what the people speak. In Quebec it’s logical they would operate in French in a French province.
http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/en/parents-and-guardians/ins...
So by law you may not be able to send your kids to English school even though there's one down the road, which I guess can be a bit surprising. Not sure if that was the case for that person though, or if they were just complaining about lack of English schools in general...
I'm still not sure what he was complaining about. French in general it seemed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byker_Wall
I just measured it on Google Maps as 979 metres long (the Fermont Wall is 1.3 km). Also, i don't think it has continuous internal corridors and extensive commercial space, as Fermont does. It's just an unusually long block of flats. I'm also not sure it's continuous - i think there might be breaks around the swimming pool building.
What the two walls have in common is that they were built to protect an enclosed area from an external hazard - in Fermont, it was the wind, but in Byker, it was noise from a proposed motorway which would have run round the estate.
Wait what? How?
Tho technically you get a bit of fresh air for that one.
It's probably indicative that it's nice for everyday residents. Most people's lives are pretty mundane.
It's ironic because if you visit Montréal in the summer everyone is outside.
Also, if a French Canadian take you to lunch, expect to eat for 1+ hour. No such thing as a quick lunch.
I lived in Chicago which has something similar, and never went down there except to take the train. It's all chain stores that have "upstairs" versions as well. Good if you're walking around outside and you notice there's a tornado heading your way, though.
Can't imagine what it would be like to live in one of these things. Probably the closest we'll ever get to seeing how real life vault dwellers would play out.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060421035031/http://www.caniap...
When people want to escape suburbia, the natural higher density option is the 2-3 story terrace, rows of individual homes that share lateral walls and have front access to the street and a back yard. Owning your own personal yard and trees is an immense quality of life factor compared to a cramped apartment and a balcony.
The next, even higher density option I've seen in some european cities is to squeeze the frontal street, remove all parking there and move it in the back yards. A concrete slab covers the back parking and the backyard is effectively elevated one flood into the air.
This produces a dense, walkable urban environment with comfortable individual houses, each with a lot on the order of 150 square meters (1600 sq feet).
Take this with a grain of salt, but I believe a big percentage of the habitations still are under their ownership. A lot of split houses were built in the last 10 years and if you work for the company and accept to transfer to Fermont, they offer you to live in the house for cheaper and offers you to buy it for a reasonable price after a few years.
It is a small compact town, but as soon as you leave, you're in the wilderness. It's paradise.
> The next, even higher density option I've seen in some european cities is to squeeze the frontal street, remove all parking there and move it in the back yards.
I lived in Munich and it seemed like the default was almost always having underground parking. Our first place was in an apartment complex of maybe 10 units, and it had its own underground parking garage. Next place was a backyard duplex with a 6-unit complex in front, and this combined complex also had an underground parking garage.
I'm not sure I've ever seen tiny little underground parking garages like this in the states for small multi-family housing buildings, but in Munich they were everywhere.
But in some cities, for example highly priced London areas, people have been starting to do the opposite: they dig lavish basements at enormous expense and keep large front lawns and wide streets with ample parking spaces, all in the name of preservation of the area's "character", as understood by the local council doing the permitting. Humans are a wierd bunch.
I get the impression that this style of development is common even in somewhat lower density areas. People in Germany just don't like the seas of asphalt so common in the states.
I am sure I would enjoy living in that building and the community design seems good, if not quite as dense as might be ideal given some of the green space placement. If they have concerns about the wind they really need a lot more trees, I would venture a guess that a couple of good windrows of trees would be as good or better than the building -- but then of course trees aren't houses!
I've worked many years in the mining industry where I had to stay both in Fermont and inside workers camps on the mine itself (Mont-Wright). I went back during the summer of 2021 during my vacations to reminisce the good old days. Here is a video that shows older footages from inside "Le Mur", but it still looks the same to this day, minus the fact that most stores has since been closed.
This structure is hosting a lot of apartments, a grocery store, a school, a medical clinic that I believe is only accessible from outside (You sometimes see people wearing pajamas at the grocery store or inside "The Wall" itself), a small bar with erotic dancers (La Fer-Tek), an ice rink and much more. I'd return live there in a heartbeat if I had the opportunity.
Here are a video showing older footage followed by a video clip recorded in Fermont. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQWQqVp8v6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI9R2H_KkQk
The first video shows the inside of an apartment at time 5:40, https://youtu.be/wQWQqVp8v6w?t=340 . It has plenty of natural light, with windows on two sides. Nice!
What did you like about life in Fermont? What were the downsides for you?
You are close to Labrador City in case you need to take a flight, the salaries were insanely good in my field, the inhabitants were really friendly and always ready to help no matter what.
On the downside, I would say that other than going in Newfoundland for errands, you are really far away from any other town and the more importantly, the sea (I'm from a fisherman village). Other than that, it does get really cold during winter. I've personally witnessed -63C on an iron mine, but fortunately, the humidity level is really low (it's dry).
Cheers from the Great White North!
All those shops shut and bowling alleys etc closed down.
Really sad.
Surely not amazons fault out there! Is the work drying up?
The economy over there is mostly driven by the price of iron which has ups and downs. The future is never certain.
Also, a lot of workers are doing fly-in fly-out contracts (mostly 7, 14 or 21 days in a row) hence the decline in population. It does have a toll on the local business and I'll add my grain of salt by saying that Fermont mostly had essential stores with the exception of a few non-essential ones which has mostly died since.
Furthermore, most people drive ~20-30 minutes to reach Labrador City and buy what they need from the multiple stores you can find (Walmart, Canadian Tire, etc). As for Amazon, I'm confident it's been used by many people and has an impact, but I personally doubt they could've have found these items locally if all these closed stores were still open.
...here we go! https://99percentinvisible.org/article/self-contained-cities...
Quebec is NOT a piece of France in America.
That’s the mistake lots of people make.
I know what I’m talking about. I’m in Quebec.
Now Quebec is more influenced by the European way of living, but there is still a very "American" way of life.
However, a European way of living in Quebec? Not sure, I agree with that. Sure, there are more bakeries than in neighboring Ontario, but it pretty much stops there.
Maybe 50 feet 15.3m? That's the height of standard 5 five storey building like in the pictures.
"Nature isn't perfect, so why should we be one?"
The Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna, Austria is over 1000 m in a straight line, from one end to the other. Still the longest residential building in the world.
There are pros and cons to such long buildings. Hong Kong actually started regulating breaks in buildings, because tall walls of buildings + mountains + irregular street grid meant that there was insufficient ventilation for roadside pollution to dissipate.