Paper short abstract:

Starting with a tiny apatite pebble, which was mined in Quebec, Canada, in 1890, and later found in Northumbria, UK, in 2022, this moving image and live story-telling performance explores the speculative histories and futures of apatite extraction in Quebec.

Paper long abstract:

In the mid-1870s an ‘apatite-fever’ took hold in Quebec, Canada, where speculators rushed to invest in mines and apatite could command $15-$16 per ton (Rothwell and Raymond,1881). New townships were established in the forested hills; communities created by global markets. The apatite was shipped to Europe for use as a phosphate fertiliser. In 1891, one shipment, on the SS Gothenburg City, ran aground at St Mary’s Island, Northumbria, shedding 300 tons of apatite into the sea.

In July 2022, I found a fragment of this load, a tiny apatite pebble on the beach at St Mary’s.

It is this apatite pebble that I will bring with me to the Materials Library. The pebble carries a lot of questions, of the past, but also the future. By 1892 apatite from open cast mines in Florida began to undercut the Canadian prices, the industry in Quebec collapsed, the mines closed. But what became of the communities that were temporarily established? And the land that was purchased by prospectors? And what can a reconstruction of this history of speculation, tell us about the future? A future in which ‘First Phosphate’, a company newly listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange, will resume apatite mining in Quebec, this time for use in lithium batteries.

For the Materials Library I will share, via a storytelling and moving image performance, the research and development stage of my forthcoming docu-fiction film, Apatite Findings, which will bring into dialogue the histories and futures of apatite extraction in Quebec.