April 10, 2014

Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois government led by Pauline Marois was soundly defeated in provincial elections on April 7 by the Parti Liberal. Premier Marois even lost her own seat in the provincial parliament and was, thus, forced to step down as party leader. Marois was the first woman premier of Quebec and the leader of the shortest-lived government in the province’s history. Canadian political pundits suggest she may also be the politician who rang the final death knell for the Quebec separatist movement. Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert noted that by rejecting the party’s central issue, voters “have inflicted a life-threatening defeat on the Parti Quebecois.”

Marois called the snap election on March 5 in the belief that she could transform the minority government, which won in September 2012, into a majority. According to political experts, she seriously misjudged the mood of voters. Parti Quebecois was initially damaged by her government’s proposed “charter of values,” which specifically prohibited civil servants from wearing such overt religious symbols as a turban or hijab. During the campaign, Marois stated publicly that provincial employees who did not comply would be fired, even including doctors, nurses, teachers, police, and firefighters. This produced a huge backlash, particularly among such powerful interests as civil-service unions and religious groups.

Quebec City is the capital of the province of Quebec, Canada’s only province whose residents are largely descended from French ancestors. (c) Nik Wheeler

Marois was also pushed by an inexperienced party candidate into turning the election into a referendum on Quebec independence. This, experts suggested, drove voters into the arms of the Parti Liberal–the only Quebec party completely against separation from Canada. “People are fed up with that kind of debate. They want something else,” Jean-Marc Leger, president and chief executive of a Montreal polling firm, remarked to The New York Times.

On the night of the election, Ms. Marois again turned a deaf ear to the mood of the electorate, pundits reported. Her only regret, she stated, was that she did not reinforce the use of French in the workplace while she had the chance.

Additional World Book articles:

• Bloc Quebecois
• Canada 1997 (a Back in Time article)
• Canada 1998 (a Back in Time article)
• Canadian provinces [Quebec] 2012 (a Back in Time article)

July 9, 2013

On July 6, a run-away train with more than 70 crude-oil tanker cars derailed in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, triggering an enormous explosion. At least 15 people are known dead and 60 others are missing, feared dead. As many as 30 buildings were destroyed in the blast, including the town grocery and library. The tankers, en route from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota to a refinery in New Brunswick, carried pressurized crude oil. Fires from the massive explosion forced the evacuation of about 2,000 of the town’s 6,000 residents.

Yesterday, officials learned that the train—parked outside Nantes, a town 8 miles (12 kilometers) west of Lac-Megantic, during an overnight driver shift-change—started rolling downhill on empty tracks just minutes after firemen had extinguished a blaze in one of its locomotives. “About five minutes after the firemen left, I felt the vibration of a train moving down the track,” eyewitness Andre Gendron told Reuters news service yesterday. “I then saw the train move by without its lights on.” Reuters also reported that Nantes Fire Chief Patrick Lambert confirmed that his crew had switched off the locomotive late on July 5 while putting out a “good-sized” blaze in the motor. “Our protocol calls for us to shut down an engine because it is the only way to stop the fuel from circulating into the fire,” he noted.

In a diesel-electric locomotive, an air compressor runs off the diesel engine and keeps the locomotive’s brakes charged and working. When a locomotive is shut down, its brakes will eventually cease to function. (Electro-Motive Division of General Motors Corporation-World Book diagram)

According to the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic (MM&A) Railway, the engineer parked the train in Nantes on July 5, but left one locomotive running to ensure the air brakes worked properly. “If the operating locomotive is shut down, there’s nothing left to keep the brakes charged up, and the brake pressure will drop finally to the point where they can’t be held in place any longer,” MM&A railroad chairman Ed Burkhardt told the Toronto Star newspaper.