By: Heidi Kwok, asbestos tenant advocate
Over the summer, SFU’s asbestos community was served a notice to vacate the fifth floor of the W.A.C. Bennett Library on the Burnaby campus. This eviction coincides with the reopening of the floor on August 25, following a nearly three-year renovation project. Henry J. Asbestos Junior, the primary tenant, and his extended family of over nine and a half million particles (and counting!) have been locked in a bitter eviction battle with the library since November 2022. They allege to have been victims of a targeted renoviction campaign and are demanding justice.
“We are beyond outraged,” said Henry J. Asbestos Junior, a concerned father of 485 asbestoslings. “For six decades, we’ve been model tenants — quiet, respectful, and generous. With open arms and open lungs, we have proudly offered refuge to countless panic-stricken undergrads since our humble floorboard beginnings. Although admittedly, not everyone appreciated our hospitality or our complimentary parting gift basket. It included goodies like chronic chest pain, wheezing, and mesothelioma.”
The tenants claimed to have entered into a perpetual fixed-term lease contract with the library since 1965. However, Gohar Ashoughian, SFU’s University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, told The Peak otherwise. “The asbestos community has continuously failed to pay rent and strata fees, failed to contribute meaningfully at bi-weekly floor occupant association meetings, and has been unapologetically freeloading off of student health plans. We had to put our foot down on the floorboards.”
Asbestos Junior showed The Peak what remained of his former home — now a grey, soulless, refurbished office space for the health sciences’ library liaison. “They have ruined everything,” he tearfully said. “Our former home had a certain je ne sais quoi — a distinct charm and character.” Upon walking up to the newly constructed private study room 5063, Asbestos Junior was practically bawling. “This used to be where our community centre was built. We held picnics, book club meetings, Friday night bingos, and barbecues during the summer here. Sometimes, we’d even use the nearby books the librarians so helpfully supplied as kindling.”
The Fifth Floor Fibrous Coalition, a grassroots movement fighting for asbestos justice, has filed a complaint with the BC Residential Tenancy Board and vows to take the library to arbitration. “This is our home. Where else are we supposed to go — the campus dorms? They’re already occupied by a thriving single-family neighbourhood of Moulds. Virtually every corner of campus has been called dibs by other more hostile communities like the Dust Mites Mafia, the Mildew Missionary, and the Raccoon Society,” said a spokesperson from the coalition. “We are living in the worst crisis of gentrification in SFU’s 60-year asbestos history.”