On a weekday at 12:56 p.m. in Lac-Mégantic, the sky is low, the lake is choppy and a Canadian Pacific train whistles through the city centre.
The few customers seated at the Musi-Café hear it, even with the rock music pouring from the speakers.
Orange Hapag-Lloyd containers follow black tank cars. Oil. The train continues to move at low speed.
Very close to the restaurant’s benches is a photo of its old façade, before it was razed like everything else in the city centre by the train disaster of July 6, 2013. Many of the 47 victims were in the bar at the time.
At 1:08 p.m., the tail of the convoy emerges. The sound of locomotives rumbling as they climb the hill fills the air.
Up that hill is where the train of 72 crude oil cars from the Montreal Maine and Atlantic was parked, without a driver. It’s where the locomotive caught fire and suffered damage to its brakes, before it hurtled down the slope, the second longest in Canada.
No less than six million litres of oil were spilled. In addition to the 47 deaths, 44 residences and businesses were destroyed, and 2,000 people were evacuated.
“You’re not tired of still seeing trains passing through the city centre?” the waitress is asked.
“Oh yeah… they’re going to bypass…,” she replied, referring to the city centre bypass railway project.
After the indignation, distress and unanimous solidarity that followed the cataclysm, the debate on the need for the bypass became more heated and is still dragging on today.
The final file put together by Ottawa and Canadian Pacific has not yet been presented to the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) for authorization.
A fervent supporter of this project, the mayor of Lac-Mégantic, Julie Morin, expresses a certain impatience, more than 11 years after the disaster.
“The trains are longer with the Canadian Pacific,” says the mayor, whom The Canadian Press met in her office at city hall, near the railway.
Three or four pass through each day, transporting wood, hydrocarbons and chlorine.
Shortly after, as she left city hall, the mayor was stopped in the street by two tourists from New Brunswick who asked her to locate the circumstances of the tragedy. No way to escape this dark page of Megantic history, even on a daily basis.
The bypass, a federal project to avoid another tragedy of that kind, should see the light of day in 2027, the mayor hopes. It would draw a large arc from the north to the east and return to the west once the city centre has been avoided. The green light from Transport Canada and Canadian Pacific, which are preparing necessary documentation, is still missing. Construction could extend over five years, according to an official schedule.
Lac-Mégantic is in favor, but its two neighbors, Nantes and Frontenac, are against this 12.5 km route, the cost of which could exceed a billion dollars, some say, for a project that had been estimated at $133 million at the time.
It has become a divisive issue, a “taboo,” confides the mayor: “Hairdressers don’t talk about it, they tell me.”
There is “disinformation” about the consequences of the route, she continues, accusing the mayors of Nantes and Frontenac of leading a “fear campaign” concerning the water table, even though the three municipalities are participating in a common program to analyze and monitor the 137 wells.
“After 11 years, I think it’s a subject that is outdated,” says the mayor of Nantes, Daniel Gendron, during an interview at the ambulance barracks where he works, in downtown Lac-Mégantic.
“With everything that has come out of the analyses on potable water, on wetlands, I think that people no longer want a bypass route. It was never socially acceptable because it was imposed on us. Social acceptance is no longer there, even in Mégantic.”
“Throughout the region, people are against it,” added his brother, Gaby Gendron, mayor of Frontenac, during an interview at his municipal office.
The project is “an order (from Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau and all those who are against it, they do not want to hear them.”
In Frontenac, a referendum showed 92.5 per cent of voters were against it.
“It’s not a popularity issue, it’s a security issue,” said Morin, who refuses to hold a plebiscite on this issue in her municipality.
She deplores that too much space is given to opponents, “always the same four or five people,” she says.
“There are too many emotions in this issue, it is not a traditional railway infrastructure project, it is a social recovery project,” argues Morin, recalling that her fellow citizens are still suffering.
In 2018, no less than 71.9 per cent of adults in Lac-Mégantic presented moderate or severe manifestations of post-traumatic stress, according to a study by the CIUSSS de l’Estrie.
A third of respondents to this survey welcomed the announcement of a bypass, recalls the municipality in a memorandum.
A year ago, in October 2023, the then federal minister of transport, Pablo Rodriguez, came to announce the start of the work.
“I understand the people who are experiencing the expropriation of being dissatisfied and that there is pain too, we listen to them, then we also hear them, but we must move forward,” said Rodriguez, who today is candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ).
“It was a show,” said the mayor about this announcement, without resentment, however.
“Mr. Rodriguez, he wanted to send the message that, symbolically, the government continued to support the project, she explained. This is preparatory work that the city, ourselves, were already doing.”
Transport Canada is leading the bypass project, while Public Services and Procurement Canada is handling expropriations on the new right-of-way.
“The number of owners who have already accepted the compensation offer sent to them continues to evolve and, as of October 18, 2024, 32 offers out of 42 had been accepted and signed,” confirmed a spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement Canada.
“There remain a few citizens who are firmly opposed, but it is a minority,” maintains Morin.
There are only five lands affected in Nantes and nine in Frontenac, argues the mayor, assuring that everything has been done to limit the impacts, the number of culverts, etc.
Lac-Mégantic will be able to recover the current right-of-way of the road in the city center to build real estate projects.
But the mayor of Nantes, Daniel Gendron, for his part, has had the financial losses caused by the loss of wetlands induced by the new route assessed, $190,000 per year, he says, as well as a potential loss of $5 million in property taxes for real estate projects that will not see the light of day.
He is calling for new consultations from the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (BAPE), compensation for municipalities and more generous compensation for owners.
A list of questions was sent to Transport Canada, notably concerning the estimate of the cost of the project, the steps that remain to be taken, the risk to the groundwater, but the department had still not responded to the request on Monday.
The bypass project was officially announced in May 2018, with a joint Ottawa-Quebec funding agreement, for 60 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.
The project reduces the number of residences located near the railway line from 258 to 18 within a 100 meter right-of-way.
In the 2022 budget, Ottawa released $237.2 million over five years for the construction of the project and the dismantling of the current track.
In spring 2024, an inventory of wetlands in the region was carried out to evaluate the surface area of wetlands affected by the project and estimating the amount to be paid to the Environmental and Water Protection Fund of the Government of Quebec. Frontenac would like the amount to be paid to the affected municipalities instead.
Last July, 14 opponents officially filed a request for judicial review to challenge the expropriation procedure. The judicial review is underway.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews