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“However, at our core, we can’t really do anything else because we are on a land of natural resources. Our history is based on natural resources, whether it is fishing, forestry, mines, hydroelectric, aluminum — or iron ore.”

Sept-Îles lies on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in eastern Quebec, just where it begins to widen out to the Gulf. The iron ore arrives by train after being mined in the Labrador Trough and is loaded onto ships for export, mostly to the U.S. and Europe.

For more than 60 years the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) has been at the centre of the town’s industry. In 1949 IOC was officially incorporated and began construction on the 414-kilometre Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway from the mining community of Schefferville, Que., before the Wabush project opened near Labrador City, N.L., in 1958.

The first shipment of ore left Schefferville for Sept-Îles on July 15, 1954, forging a link between the mineral and the people who live there that has meant both dependence and prosperity as the hub of Canada’s iron mining industry.

Today, IOC is a joint venture between the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto, which owns 58.7 per cent, Mitsubishi with 26.2 per cent and the Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Income Corp. with 15.1 per cent.

The iron ore business at the Port of Sept-Îles led to a major increase in population, and housing was quickly built to accommodate it. The town grew from 2,000 people in 1951 to 14,000 in 1961, and 31,000 in 1981. The latest data from Statistics Canada shows the population contracted to just over 25,000 by 2011.