MINERALS

Hi

Maligne, but construction has been started. on a vast project of power
development at Chute-3-Caron, 25 miles below Ile Maligne, which will
produce 800,000 horse-power. It is said that this construction with
further designed developments will eventually produce the largest aluminium
 reduction works in the world. The ore used is bauxite ebtained from
British Guiana.
That the aluminium development is of first importance to the province
 may be gathered from the fact that the world’s production of the
metal in 1926 was estimated at 210,000 long tons and that the ultimate
capacity of production aimed at bv the Arvida plant is 180.000 tons a
year.

Asbestos.—Of all the minerals that yield fibrous varieties the one
most prized is the chrysotile-asbestos, owing to the whiteness, silkiness
and strength of the fibres. Chrysotile represents about 98 per ceat of
the asbestos used industrially and the Province of Quebec supplies over

\ chestas anarry at Black Lake, Quebec

30 per cent of the world’s consumption of this material. The asbestos
deposits of Quebec occur in a continuous belt of rocks extending for over
100 miles from the international boundary line to within a short distance
of the Chaudiére river, thence for a further distance of seventy miles in
disconnected outcrops to I'Islet county, and after a gap of 130 miles large
sccurrences are again found in the Gaspé peninsula.