Fermont, Quebec is a unique town located in northeastern Canada, near the Quebec-Labrador border. It's situated about 23 kilometres from Labrador City on Route 389, which connects to the Trans-Labrador Highway. Fermont is the seat of the Regional County Municipality of Caniapiscau and is known for its rich history and unique architecture.
Fermont, a French contraction of "Fer Mont" meaning "Iron Mountain", was founded in the early 1970s as a company town to exploit the rich iron ore deposits from Mont Wright, located about 25 kilometres to the west.
Following the depletion of the Jeannine Lake Mine at Gagnon in the late 1960s, the Québec Cartier Mining Company began to develop the Mont Wright Mine. This large-scale project involved mining, processing, and transporting iron ore. To accommodate the 1,600 employees needed for this project, the town of Fermont was constructed. By the end of 1972, the first people settled there. The Fermont post office opened the same year, and in 1974, the place was incorporated as Ville de Fermont. The town, mine, and wall were featured in the television crime drama series La Faille in 2019.
Fermont is notable for its huge self-contained structure containing apartments, stores, schools, bars, a hotel, restaurants, a supermarket, and a swimming pool. This large building, popularly known as The Wall (Le Mur), was designed to be a windscreen to the rest of the town. It allows residents (other than mine workers) to never leave the building during the long winter, which usually lasts about seven months. The town, designed by Maurice Desnoyers and Norbert Schoenauer, was inspired by similar projects in Sweden designed by Ralph Erskine, notably that of Svappavaara, an iron mining town in Sweden. The building measures 1.3 kilometres long and stands 15 metres high.
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Fermont had a population of 2,256 living in 976 of its 1,538 total private dwellings, a change of -8.8% from its 2016 population of 2,474. With a land area of 451.12 km2, it had a population density of 5.0/km2 in 2021.
French is the dominant language within the community, making Fermont the world's northernmost Francophone settlement of any considerable size. Although fluency in French is common in Nunavik and other points north, most in that region have adopted English as their primary language for communication outside their communities. Fermont can also be considered the northernmost town to speak a Romance language.
Fermont is located in an area of rounded hills and flat areas with peat bogs, wetlands, and many lakes and small streams. The valleys show the influence of glacial action and contain undifferentiated glacial till and fluvioglacial deposits of sand and gravel. Lake Perchard, to the north of Fermont, supplies the town with drinking water.
The Fermont waste water treatment plant discharges through lakes Daviault and Sans-Nom into Carheil Lake, in the Moisie River watershed. In April 2011, water management experts in Sept-Îles reported concerns about cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, found in Carheil Lake that had the potential to affect the Moisie River. The bloom was due to phosphorus discharge from the treatment plant, which has since been reduced.
Fermont has a harsh subarctic climate with long, severe winters and short, mild summers. Snowfall is heavy at around 2.9 metres and average maximum depth of 85 centimetres, which is actually deeper than some other North Shore locations with heavier snowfall like Sept-Îles.
