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Every two months or so Terry Loucks makes the five-hour drive from his home in Magog to his childhood town of Arvida, in Saguenay, where he can visit his old high school or drive by the three houses where he was raised.

His parents moved there in 1942 to work for Alcan, the kind of people who “had Alcan tattooed on their bodies.”

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The one thing Loucks always does there, too, is visit the local library where he can leaf through old copies of Le Lingot, a newspaper for Alcan employees.

He finds photos of his father he likes to copy, and reads up on Alcan’s history. A favourite of his is an issue from 1967, with a picture of his father receiving an aluminum watch to mark his 25th year with the company. The 67-year-old Loucks holds onto the watch today.

As Rio Tinto Alcan prepares to move into the Deloitte Tower located beside the Bell Centre next fall, dropping the name Alcan from its signage, a group of researchers and historians are worried about what will happen to the company’s extensive archives.