Name change for Asbestos, Quebec

[oscar]

The new name, pending provincial approval after a local referendum, will be "Val-des-Sources" (Valley of the Springs).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/asbestos-quebec-val-des-sources-canada/2020/10/19/29e32e5e-1244-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html (may be paywalled)

See also (h/t to Stephane Dumas, who mentioned this in the Quebec Highways thread) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/asbestos-quebec-name-change-val-des-sources-1.5768512

The regional county municipality containing Asbestos (which is its county seat) was once known as Asbestos MRC, but was renamed in 2006 to Les Sources MRC.

[Stephane Dumas]

It'll take a while for me to be accostumed to the new name. ^^;  There sometimes where I still call some streets with their old name.

As for the WAPO article, there's the archived copy to bypass the paywall option. https://archive.vn/AZIlL

And the Regional county municipality before it was named Asbestos, it was named "Or-blanc" as a reference to the color of the asbestos. Another regional county municipality named "Appalaches" (French for the Appalachian mountains) was once named "Amiante" before 2008 where Thetford Mines is the county seat.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

So they are removing Asbestos from the map due to high cancer risk? Because I cannot get why this name change otherwise.

[GaryV]

It's gotta be for the "image".  Asbestos is now considered nasty, so why do we want to be associated with it?  Plus, the name would be a reminder that the town was based on an asbestos mine, and who wants to be around one of those?

[hotdogPi]

Quebec already has a history of changing town names. Until about 5 years ago, there were some less well-known (Asbestos has a sign for it from A-55) town names with the N word in them, which only existed as long as they did because the word is less of a problem in French than it is in English. I believe these have all been changed.