Bruay-la-Buissière
Bruay-la-Buissière (; ) is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region in northern France. Geography. A former coalmining town some southwest of Béthune and southwest of Lille, at the junction of the D57 and the N47 roads. History. With four coal mines, it was the headquarters of the Bruay Mining Company. The coal mines closed during the 1960s, to be replaced by light industrial work and chemical factories. In April 1972 the murder of miner's daughter Brigitte Dewevre became a politicized event when Pierre Leroy, a local middle-class  lawyer associated with the local mining company, was arrested: "La Cause du Peuple", the paper of the Maoist Gauche prolétarienne, publicized the case with the headline 'Bruay: And Now They Are Massacring Our Children!' The two places of Bruay-en-Artois and La Buissiere were joined as one commune in 1987. Population. The population data given in the table and graph below for 1982 and earlier refer to the former commune of Bruay-en-Artois.