ASBESTOS, QUE.—For more than a century, the story of the Quebec town of Asbestos was the story of the riches locked beneath its soil.

It used to be a worthless rocky hill. But when they started cutting into the rock in 1879 to get at the tough, fibrous and fire-resistant substance used in brake pads, pipes and building insulation, that hill turned into a stunning scar that grew ever wider and deeper.

The open pit Jeffrey Mine marked the city with its toxic name, but it also ate the city on its way to becoming one of the biggest such sites in the world. With every expansion, the mine swallowed streets, houses, businesses, churches, schools and hospitals.

Each time it was a small sacrifice for the mine’s owners and its well-paid workers to get at the wealth — right up until those sickened by asbestos started to turn against a wonder product sought and used around the world.

As studies funded by the Canadian Cancer Society found asbestos exposure kills more than 2,000 people in Canada each year, the shift in public opinion was brutal.

And there was neither celebration nor desolation in this town of 7,000 as the federal government announced last week it would ban all asbestos use in Canada by 2018.

Since the mine stopped operating in 2011, the residents have been trying to forge a new economy and a new tale for the town out of the rocky remains of its mining past.

“The past is the past,” Asbestos Mayor Hugues Grimard said in an interview. “We’re working on the future.”

Five years after the mine closed, Grimard said the town is starting to find its stride and feel the benefits of a $50-million fund created in 2012 to diversify the local economy.

Companies are being courted with loans and tax breaks. Paperwork and particular requests are being fast-tracked. Employment offers to come and work in Asbestos — a place that still bears the trace of those who cut and processed the rock — are showing up with increasing frequency on job boards.

But change has not come quickly enough for those who remember when times were good.

“It’s slow, slow, slow, slow. S-L-O-W. Slow like death,” said Pierrette Théroux, a retired teacher who is president of the Asbestos historical society.

Speed is of the essence because Asbestos has been through a slow-motion trauma stretched over decades. It began in the late 1970s with a wave of thousands of people bringing complaints and lawsuits against the company for their health problems, including lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis, which is lung scarring caused by the inhalation of the asbestos fibres.

They were costly to resolve. They ultimately bankrupted the company. But the greatest damage was to Asbestos’s reputation.

Francesco Spertini, a former geologist at the mine, recalled the negative reaction when he would mention the name of his hometown when travelling through Europe.

“Wherever I went, people thought I was contagious,” he said.

Théroux remembered one person who joked of the risk they were taking in just shaking her hand.

“Anyone who came from here and had a cancer, they assumed it was because of asbestos,” she said.

Locals still question the science and health risks of the substance they say can be used safely with the proper protection. But they have reluctantly accepted the futility of carrying on the debate.

Municipal officials have already tried rebranding the region. In the mid-1980s, the MRC d’Or Blanc (Regional Municipality of White Gold) as the asbestos fibres were once termed, changed names to become the MRC d’Asbestos.

It was still a tough sell for a region that was increasingly on the hunt for outside investment. In 2006, with the flick of a pen, the MRC d’Asbestos — which also includes six smaller towns — became MRC des Sources. The name evokes nature, water and health, none of which currently appear in a Google search of the town’s name.

Grimard admits that changing the town’s reputation has been as difficult as convincing a battered and doubtful population that there is prosperity on the horizon.

And he says that while it is not actively being debated, he is willing to look at anything, including changing the very name of the town, if it will guarantee a brighter future.

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“I respect our history and I am proud of our history, but we have to look to the future,” he said.

Longtime residents are fiercely opposed to any such renunciation.

“What we have to change is the reality, not the image,” said Serge Boislard, a municipal councillor, former miner and president of Mouvement ProChrysotile québécois, a group that advocates for the safe use of asbestos.

The reality of today is a long way from Asbestos’s golden age, when those who swept the floors earned $20 an hour, miners’ wives wore furs and drove expensive cars, and the mine spent lavishly to buy loyalty, with a golf course, theatres and entertainment.

The corporate largesse discouraged other industries from setting up in town, said Boislard.

But if the mining activities stifled entrepreneurship, the $50-million provincial fund to diversify the local economy has been an inspiration.

Sylvie Beauchemin, a third-generation business owner in neighbouring Danville who is vice-president of a group that oversees the diversification efforts, said $15 million of the fund has been awarded so far, leading to $44 million in private investment. Another 80 proposals are being considered.

The results are companies like the Moulin 7 microbrewery, which operates a restaurant on the main road into Asbestos and serves a distinctive line of beers named for the city’s rock-busting past. Among them are “1949” a nod to a historic six-month miners strike; “L’Or Blanc” (White Gold), for the asbestos fibres; and “100 Tonnes,” an homage to the massive dump trucks that hauled the mine’s contents to the mill for processing.

The town’s access to water has been a lure to attract agri-food companies like Brome Lake Ducks, which received nearly $8 million to expand operations and purchase new equipment.

Last week, it meant that six local hotel rooms were taken up by Dutch workers here to install the machinery. If all goes well, it will translate into 200 local jobs.

But this town, whether it continues to be called Asbestos or takes another name, isn’t likely to escape its rocky history.

Two companies that promise to be the biggest employers in the years ahead plan to extract magnesium from rocks left over from the mining operations. They have been assured of an exemption from the federal ban on asbestos use.

Alliance Magnesium, which is still in the demonstration phase, could employ up to 350 workers when operations are scaled up by 2019, said Pierre Saint-Aubin, vice-president of the company.

He said the best guess based on the mountains of discarded and displaced rock that dot the horizons here is that there is enough to extract magnesium for the next 1,000 years.

With so much hardship and uncertainty in the past, it is starting to lead to hope for the future, said Isabelle Lodge, president of the local chamber of commerce.

“Because of the history, people were like, ‘We’ll believe it when we see it,’ ” she said. “Now we’re starting to see it.”