Recognition and respect

​​​​​​By Daniel et Marie Laurion - mars 2006

He begins to work to Atlas Asbestos in 1948. This small company of the street Hochelaga, property of a British multinational, uses asbestos which causes ignitions with the lungs transforming into amiantose and cancer. At the time when the asbestos dust floated everywhere, the workmen did not know that they worked under dangerous conditions and several are quickly condemned.

Reached in his health, Euclide Laurion militates so that his company recognizes her responsibility. His fight against this disease is a very great test for him. The unconditional support of his sister in law Huguette and his children help him enormously. Visits and chemotherapy at the Hospital Hôtel Dieu or Hospital Maisonneuve of Montreal do not amount any more.

Euclide Laurion must even walk with a small portable "respirator" to quickly be able to breathe oxygen when that he misses some.

He does not even have the possibility of being operated bus like he says it: "The lungs, it is what there is more important. When you will make you operate, one makes you blow in a “baloune”. If you are not able to blow, one is too afraid. Me, one said to me, if you are operated, have you 90% of chance to remain there.....".

In 1972, the Commission of the industrial accidents recognizes officially his asbestosis and give him $163 per month.

In spite of that, one obliges him to work until March 1977. The law 52, which withdraws the minors of the asbestos mines, do not occupy of the employees of factories of asbestos transformation. Seriously sick, "amiantosés" of factory must remain with their employment until, if one can say thus, "dead follows".

They are 122 with many years of seniority to be suffered from this dreadful disease of the lungs and with being more or less invalid. They are,, and they know,f condemned man, but they want to live in dignity the years that they remain to them to live.

Euclide Laurion cannot work any more. He has too, lost his compensation "for asbestosis". Indeed, in September 1978, at the hospital of Sacré-Coeur, one said to him that it "could be" that the obvious pulmonary disorders and which invalidates him are due to another cause that asbestos. Consequently, he has just a pension of invalid of the Régie des Rentes ($263 per month) and, for thirty years of service to the company (28 years and 6 months in fact, the company refusing to recognize his absence due to disease), just $64 per month.

What makes him $80 per week and any possibility of finding work.

Irony of the fate, Euclide Laurion receives a certificate for his 25 years of service at Atlas Asbestos. This recognition does not give again health to him.....

"If they think that we will sit down with our beer case, they are mistaken. In our state, we can practically nothing eat, nor to even sleep. We must take a special syrup to all two or three hours. Finished, long nights of sleep "

"Us, we don’t fight for us. We fight for the young people who will enter. It is recognized that they is much less dangerous than in our time, than one aired, than precautions are taken, even if it is probably not enought "

"But us, we are finished, we can’t work more, we know that we will perhaps not last a long time. We ask this company for which we worked 15, 20 or 30 years, to give us a reasonable pension, perhaps $ 150 per week, to go to finish our days in peace. It is requested too much there from a millionaire who made profits at the expense of our health? "

A little before the strike, the company had tried to offer peace to her "amiantosés" $780 crude per month "covering all", i.e. prohibition to have another employment, not unemployment insurance, including the allowances of the CAT, and especially a amount fixe and not indexed. After reflexion, they refused.

The disease "winned".... Euclide Laurion is deceased on January 29, 1980 at Hôpital Maisonneuve of Montreal. His eagerness to make recognize the responsibility for Asbestos Atlas and an article published on November 28, 1978 in the Press of Montreal allowed a releasing of the file and a recognition of his disability at 100%. His fight was not for nothing bus after his death, the succession received a few thousands of dollars of the Commission des accidents de travail. Unfortunately he didn’t live long enough to see that.

St-Bruno - Québec /  Blonay- Switzerland, 2005