Author name: Brome County News

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The CLSC Lac-Brome will be closed from June 17 to Sept. 8 and the CLSC Sutton will be open only two days a week during the same period, the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS has confirmed.

The reduced hours are in anticipation of staff shortages as many employees go on vacation. “Like every year at this time, we are making service adaptations to take into account the workforce situation and the needs of the population. Each time we make an adjustment, we ensure that there are CLSC services accessible within a reasonable distance to receive care and services,” CIUSSS spokesperson Nancy Corriveau told the BCN.

Contrary to certain media reports, Corriveau said there would be no change to the opening hours of the CLSC de Bromont, which would remain open two days a week.

Corriveau said the scheduling changes had been announced during a press conference May 16. Although the press conference generally addressed summer scheduling changes and service cancellations, the Lac-Brome and Sutton closures were not specifically mentioned during the event. A CIUSSS press release previously said the Lac-Brome testing centre and “nursing care service point” would be closed during the summer.

Brome Lake Mayor Richard Burcombe said he found out about the impending closure a few weeks ago from a town receptionist who also worked at the CLSC. “There was no consultation – it was an arbitrary decision,” he said. He called the situation “unacceptable.”

“We’re being treated as second-class citizens. Right now, it takes two weeks at a minimum to get an appointment, and by closing us completely and reducing the hours in Sutton…it will make the delays even worse,” he said. “We have an elderly population, and we also serve West Bolton, Brome Village and parts of Potton and Sutton … now, those people will have to go to Cowansville or Bromont.”

He noted that last year, the CIUSSS announced plans to close the CLSC for the summer but it was ultimately kept open two days a week after backlash from the public. “It’s very important to keep that public pressure up,” he said.

Sutton Mayor Robert Benoit was dismayed to learn from members of the media that CLSC hours were being cut in Sutton. “There was a communiqué that mentioned [Brome Lake] but there was no mention of Sutton,” he said. “I support the mayor of Brome Lake and we’ll try to make our voices heard. I know [the CIUSSS] is having difficulties with human resources, but this is an essential service and at the end of the day we have to find a way.”

“I understand the concerns raised by citizens of Brome Lake following the modulation of health services for the summer which will result in the temporary closure of the CLSC Lac-Brome. The CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS assured us that this is a temporary measure taken in a context of labour shortage and staff taking vacations. We also know that dressing, routine nursing and laboratory services will be available at the local service point in Cowansville, located 20 minutes away, and in three other CLSCs less than 15 minutes from Brome Lake. My team and I will continue to monitor the situation closely,” Brome-Missisquoi MNA Isabelle Charest said in a brief statement.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The construction of new fire stations in Dunham and Frelighsburg will go ahead as scheduled despite changes to a provincial subsidy program. The two towns had initially submitted a joint grant request under a Quebec government program for municipal infrastructure, the Programme d’amélioration et de construction d’infrastructures municipales (PRACIM). However, the joint request was denied and the municipalities were told to apply separately.

“It’s too bad – we would have liked to have one fire station in Dunham and a smaller one in Frelighsburg. The costs would have been a bit lower… but it’s a government decision,” Dunham Mayor Pierre Janecek said. “It would have been nice but it didn’t work out.” Janecek said that if the initial request had been granted, 83 per cent of the cost of the new fire station would have been paid by the province; now, he expects only 70 per cent will. Beyond that, though, the decision “doesn’t change a lot.”

Janecek said the municipality expects to apply for the grant over the summer and start construction in fall 2024 or spring 2025. The cost of the new building, which has been in the works for “seven or eight years,” is estimated at $7.5 million, of which the municipality will shoulder just over $2.7 million. The new fire station, more spacious than its predecessor, will be on the corner of Route 202 and Rue Malenfant next to the Parc de L’Envol near the municipal garage. Calls for tenders will be launched soon.

Frelighsburg mayor Lucie Dagenais said splitting Frelighsburg’s fire station project from Dunham’s “gives us a little more freedom.” Like Dunham, Frelighsburg has been planning for a new fire station for several years. “Have you seen the fire station?” Dagenais said. “It’s totally obsolete – we can only fit two small trucks in and we have to rent a space to store the fire truck. Our fire department shares a tiny office with the public works department – now they’ll have [their own] offices.”

Dagenais said she hoped that the new fire station, shared with the public works department, would help the part-time fire department recruit and train more members. “We care about our fire department and we want to give them a better work environment and a training and practice space better adapted to their needs,” she said.

The fire station, with an estimated budget of $2 million, will be built on the site of the former filtration marsh once the town’s new water treatment plant is built. Dagenais expects it to be in use by 2026 at the latest.

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs, which oversees the PRACIM program, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The municipality of Cowansville and the Comité de sauvegarde du bassin versant du Lac Davignon (CSBVLD) are seeking volunteers for efforts aimed at preventing the spread of the invasive Eurasian watermilfoil. Volunteers are needed to help remove the tarps and weighted bags put down to prevent watermilfoil growth last year and place tarps in other strategic locations in the lake.

The work will be carried out in two phases, from June 17 to July 12 and from Aug. 1-16, in collaboration with experts from the Regroupement des associations pour la protection de l’environnement des lacs et des bassins versants (RAPPEL).

“In 2024, the Town of Cowansville reinvested $100,000 in the Fonds Bleu, a fund dedicated to protecting the lake. This fund will make it possible to carry out phase 2 of the vast operation. It is a necessary investment to maintain recreational activities and the biodiversity of the lake,” Cowansville Mayor Sylvie Beauregard said in a statement.

“Our committee will be mobilized again this year … to ensure that operations run smoothly,” said CSBVLD president Pierre St-Arnault. “We are counting on our many volunteers to help us.”

Watermilfoil has been present in Quebec lakes for several years and watermilfoil control is a priority for many lakeside municipalities. The dense, feathery clumps of watermilfoil crowd out native aquatic plants, get caught in fishing equipment and the motors of small boats, and inconvenience swimmers.

St-Arnault previously told the BCN that although it’s essentially impossible to eradicate watermilfoil, the goal of the initiative is to suffocate the invasive plant as much as possible. To do this, RAPPEL divers position large tarps in predetermined areas where the watermilfoil is abundant. Weighted bags are then dropped on the tarps to hold them in place, first by professional divers and then by volunteers piloting a pedalboat.

St-Arnault also emphasized the role of boaters in preventing the spread of invasive plant and shellfish species in the lake by washing their boats. “The Town of Cowansville has installed a boat washing station at the nature center in order to limit the introduction of invasive exotic aquatic species, including Eurasian milfoil. Other invasive species are on our doorstep, including the zebra mussel and other invasive aquatic plants. Let’s practise prevention by washing our boats,” St-Arnault said.

Anyone interested in volunteering to contribute to watermilfoil control efforts is encouraged to contact the CSBVLD via its website at lacdavignon.org.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

More than 3,200 community nonprofits working in health, social services and disability advocacy are asking questions about future provincial funding after what they are calling arbitrary changes to the Programme de soutien aux organismes communautaires (PSOC).

The $28-million PSOC received a $10-million top-up in the most recent provincial budget. Eligible organizations initially believed that the top-up funds would be divided equally, with a few thousand dollars going to each nonprofit. However, they recently learned that the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS) intended to divide the money “according to criteria Minister [responsible for social services Lionel] Carmant alone knows,” explained Daniel Cayley-Daoust, co-spokesperson for the Coalition des Tables Régionales d’Organismes Communautaires (CTROC), a provincewide network of regional networks of community organizations. “Our understanding is that the money is still there, but we don’t know how it’s going to be distributed.”

When the budget was passed in March and during the detailed study of budgetary appropriations in April, CTROC was under the impression the funding would be distributed equally. “This is the first time, as far as we know, that money was given in the budget, confirmed in appropriations and then walked back by the minister,” said Dominique Vigneux-Parent, a spokesperson and research and analysis officer at the Sherbrooke-based ROC Estrie, a CTROC member.

Cayley-Daoust explained that PSOC funding is “mission-based funding” which cash-strapped nonprofits use for administrative costs, to run activities and to fill shortfalls. For some organizations, it represents as much as 80 per cent of their budget. “Having a situation where only some groups have access to this money creates an issue with equity; it creates competition that is not healthy and it creates extra work,” he said. 

“The money should be distributed to all the member organizations, but [the government wants] to pick and choose,” Vigneux-Parent said. “We have no idea of the criteria that will be used.”

Late last week, Vigneux-Parent told the BCN CTROC was hoping to secure an emergency meeting with Carmant.

“The process for analyzing funding requests within the framework of the amount of $10 million, as presented in the budget plan, will be clarified soon,” MSSS spokesperson Francis Martel told the BCN.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Potton taxpayers will have to wait to find out if they will be on the hook for at least some of the money owed to dog attack survivor Dominique Alain and her partner Leo Joy.

Alain was attacked by three pit bulls belonging to Potton resident Alan Barnes while jogging in Potton in March 2019; according to medical reports cited in court documents, her injuries were so severe that doctors initially feared for her life. While she eventually regained the ability to walk and to drive her car, she still lives with significant physical and cognitive limitations and has not been able to return to full-time work.

The dogs involved were euthanized; Barnes was found guilty of criminal negligence in 2021, served six months in prison and has been banned for life from owning dogs. The same year, Alain and her partner, Leo Joy, sued Barnes; GF Inc., the owner of the land on which the attack occurred; and the municipality of Potton for a combined total of just under $562,000, alleging that town officials had known for several years that the dogs were dangerous, known that they were being kept illegally at a time when an anti-pit bull bylaw was in force, and failed to act.

On May 15, Superior Court Judge Sylvain Provencher ruled that Barnes and the municipality both bore responsibility for the incident, and awarded Alain and Joy $535,000. It is not yet known how or if Barnes and the municipality will split the sum. On May 31, Marie-Michelle Chartier of public relations firm Arsenal Conseils told the BCN that the municipality would respect the judgment and that the Fonds d’assurance des municipalités du Québec, the town’s insurer, would not appeal. Potton director general Martin Maltais said the insurer would determine how the sum would be divided between Barnes and the municipality.

“Whether insurers will cover the entire cost or just part of it, I don’t know. One thing is certain, in addition to the deductible for the municipal administration, the rest is paid by the insurers (and perhaps) Alan Barnes in proportions that I do not know,” Maltais said. “This part is in the hands of the insurers linked to Mr. Barnes.” Maltais didn’t know when the insurers’ decision would be made public.

Former mayor calls for councillor’s resignation

Court documents state that several town employees and elected officials knew about, or should have known about, the dogs and the danger they posed as far back as 2016. Provencher ruled that then-public works director Ronney Korman, Coun. Jason Ball, municipal building inspector Marie-Claude Lamy and town clerk Claire Alger should have been aware of the dogs and ensured action was taken. According to the ruling, in 2016 an unnamed cyclist  came to the town hall and reported being bitten by a dog to Alger and receptionist Melissa Harrison, but no action was taken at the time; Ball was slightly bitten by one of Barnes’ dogs in 2017 and Korman’s wife, Suzanne Viens, narrowly escaped attack later that year.

According to the judgment, Ball, who was not yet a town councillor at the time he was bitten, was afraid of the dogs and of how Barnes might react if he filed a complaint, so no complaint was filed. He didn’t bring up the dogs with the municipality until June 2018, when the town’s cultural heritage committee was considering putting a walking path in place near where the incident happened. “The Court is of the opinion that Ball, as a municipal elected official, was not only personally aware of facts and circumstances demonstrating a real danger … but also that he should then have taken measures for Potton to intervene with the aim of minimally ensuring the safety of pedestrians who would use this section of the route … which he neglected to do,”

After the judgment was made public, Louis Veillon, mayor of Potton from 2013 to 2017, issued a statement calling for Ball’s resignation. “I was mayor at the time [Ball was bitten] and I wasn’t aware of it,” Veillon told the BCN. “As an elected official, you are held to a higher standard, and your first obligation is to report it. The fact he was attacked by a dog and he never reported it is a problem.”

Ball and Potton communications director Valérie Thérien declined to comment.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

In a surprise announcement on May 22, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government tabled a bill declaring a three-year moratorium on several common types of evictions and expanding eligibility for protections offered to some older renters.

“The bill we have tabled today places a moratorium on evictions for the enlargement, subdivision or change of vocation of a property,” Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau told reporters at the National Assembly. If the bill passes before the end of the current legislative session, the moratorium will be in effect retroactive to May 22. It may be selectively repealed in certain regions if the rental housing vacancy rate rises above 3 per cent.

Property owners will still be able to evict tenants who violate the terms of their lease; evictions to house close family members will also remain legal.

Additionally, measures that ban evictions for low-income seniors 70 and older who have lived in the same unit for at least 10 years will be extended to seniors aged 65 to 69, and the income threshold raised by 25 per cent. Unlike the moratorium, the expanded protections for seniors will be permanent. Additionally, renters already have the right to contest what they believe to be an abusive rent hike without breaking a lease, but the new bill would make that option clearer.

“This [moratorium] is a strong measure which is justified by the magnitude of the current housing shortage,” said Duranceau, noting that more than 560,000 new temporary residents, have moved to Quebec in the last two years. “Considering the context and the strong demand for housing, some owners may be tempted to evict tenants in order to obtain better profitability. Unfortunately, in the absence of a sufficient supply of housing, the consequences of eviction … can lead to precarious situations for citizens [which] will impact several facets of our society, including the demand for health care, homelessness resources and food banks. We’re proposing a time-out to give the market time to respond to the demand.”

She argued that subdivisions, enlargements and changes of use – the three reasons for eviction targeted in the law – “change the portrait of the rental market without doing anything constructive to expand availability.” Duranceau called the bill “complementary” to Bill 31, the controversial housing reform bill passed earlier this year.

She said the only long-term solution to the housing crisis was to “increase supply, and construction … takes two to three years.”

Duranceau thanked Québec Solidaire (QS) housing critic Andrés Fontecilla, who has called for a similar moratorium since 2019, for his collaboration on the bill. “These aren’t gains for the CAQ or for Québec Solidaire – they are gains for renters,” Fontecilla said at a separate announcement alongside QS seniors’ affairs critic Christine Labrie. Labrie said QS was “pleasantly surprised” by the bill but would have liked to see protections for older renters further expanded.

The Regroupement des Comités logement et Associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ), a provincewide federation of renters’ rights groups, called the moratorium a “pleasant surprise.” However, RCLALQ spokesperson Cédric Dussault said it should include guardrails to prevent legal bad-faith evictions. “For example, there’s no control over the repossession process [where a property owner evicts a tenant to house themselves or a close family member. There should be follow-up to make sure the [family member] is actually living in the unit.”

He also said depending on private developers to increase the housing supply for poorer renters was “magical thinking” and that greater investment in social housing had to be part of any housing plan. “We need to place better [controls] on evictions, rent controls, address the [units] we lose to tourist housing, augment our construction of social housing and support marginalized and older renters – if we don’t address all of that, homelessness will go up,” said Dussault.

Véronique Gagnon of the Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU) noted that the measure came too late for the thousands of renters who received eviction notices late last year or early this year, and are scrambling to move before July 1. “There are a lot of people who are living with roommates, living in places that are too small or have nowhere to go. We’re expecting a tough July 1.”

The Quebec Landlords Corporation, better known by its French acronym CORPIQ, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the new bill. The landlords’ association “understands the laudable intentions behind this measure, but emphasizes that it will not help resolve the widespread housing shortage which continues to grow,” its president, Éric Sansoucy, said in a statement.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

A patients’ rights group is raising the alarm after the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS announced plans to temporarily close 12 beds at the CHSLD de Bedford this summer.

While several long-term care facilities in the region are slated to temporarily lose beds this summer because of anticipated staffing shortages, the loss of 12 beds in Bedford’s 42-bed facility is proportionally the largest planned cut in the La Pommeraie local service area, according to Pierrette Messier-Peet, co-spokesperson for the Bedford Pole Health Committee.

Messier-Peet said she understood the labour shortage and the need for staff to take summer vacations, but worried that moving CHSLD residents would compromise their care and make it harder for family members and informal caregivers to visit. “Everyone knows someone [in Bedford or the surrounding towns] who has been sent to Farnham or Cowansville because there’s no room in Bedford, and now there’s even less room,” she said, adding that her uncle, a resident of the CHSLD de Bedford, had been moved four times in the last year. “These are very vulnerable people; this is their last address and there’s nowhere else for them to go. Being moved around will disorient people and even hasten their deaths.”

She also worried that the closure of the beds would be permanent. “The labour shortage won’t end by magic in September,” she said. She also worried about the implications of the bed closures for the CHSLD’s long-delayed expansion project.

CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS spokesperson Nancy Corriveau sought to allay Messier-Peet’s concerns about relocation. “The temporary closure of these beds will be done gradually by not filling the places left by the departure of users,” she said. “It is also possible that some residents will receive an offer to be relocated to a desired environment. Not all residents wishing to stay at the Bedford CHSLD will be relocated.”

Corriveau said the CIUSSS was expecting to be able to reopen the beds in September.  “Regarding the renovation project, we are currently under evaluation in order to consider the evolving needs of the population and the availability of staff,” she added.

Messier-Peet noted that in response to a labour shortage in acute care hospitals in the Côte-Nord region earlier this spring, Health Minister Christian Dubé had dispatched a mobile team, known in health sector jargon as an équipe volante (“flying team”). “We’d love a flying team down here.”

Messier-Peet said Notre-Dame-de-Stanbridge Mayor Daniel Tétreault, the point person on health issues for the Bedford pole, is working on addressing the issue with local elected officials. Neither Tétreault nor the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS was available to comment at press time.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

A residential addiction treatment centre for women has requested a permit to open a facility in the Villa Châteauneuf, a former convent turned religious retreat centre at the heart of a dispute between the municipality of Sutton and the nonprofit board of directors responsible for its maintenance.

The Villa Châteauneuf is a former convent and school that was built in 1911 on a 25-acre plot donated by philanthropist and politician Eugene Dyer. In 1971, it was transferred to the Foyers de la Charité, a network of religious retreat centres-slash-utopian communities based in France and affiliated with the Catholic Church. In June 2023, amid declining religious participation and the impact of COVID restrictions, the papal delegate of the Foyers de la Charité decreed the closure of the entire network; the last six permanent residents of the Sutton centre moved out last September. Since then, the complex of eight buildings has sat empty, overseen by a nonprofit board of directors. The board of directors intends to donate it to a charity; the municipality wants to use its right of pre-emption to take the complex over and move local services there, replacing the aging Centre John-Sleeth.

Both Sutton mayor Robert Benoit and board vice-president Victor Marchand said they believed their plan was in accordance with Eugene Dyer’s wishes for the property. The BCN contacted Dyer’s great-granddaughter, Sutton resident Ann Dyer, to see if it was possible to consult written records of the donation, but the documents weren’t available. Dyer has previously supported the municipality’s plans for the Villa Châteauneuf. 

Caught in the middle of the dispute is La Passerelle, the province’s only long-term residential alcohol and drug rehab centre exclusively for women. La Passerelle currently has a 24-bed facility in Saint-Simon de Bagot, in Montérégie, and a long waiting list; director general Amélie Lemieux said acquiring the Villa Châteauneuf would allow it to add a second facility with 40 more beds in private rooms and invest in bilingual services.  Lemieux said she was aware of the conflict between the town and the board, but believed it was “not our problem.” 

Lemieux said the planned La Passerelle centre in Sutton, like the one in Saint-Simon de Bagot, would be a long-term rehabilitation centre for women in recovery from addiction to alcohol or other drugs –  not a “deintoxication centre” for those going through acute withdrawal. Some patients apply for places at the centre on their own initiative; others are assigned there by a court after being charged with a crime linked to their addiction. They would not be allowed to leave the property on their own. “When we came to Saint-Simon, there were people who didn’t want the centre in their backyard, but we ended up building good relationships in the community,” she added.

La Passerelle would need approval from the municipality and the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS to open a treatment centre. Benoit confirmed that the centre had requested a permit from the city, but said he had not spoken with anyone from La Passerelle, and had not had any communication from the Villa Châteauneuf board in months.

Benoit said the town has the right of first refusal for any proposal to do with the property – a right he intends to use. “Our priority is to use it for a community centre, and these people [the Villa Châteauneuf board] are depriving the citizens of Sutton of a community centre which would serve our needs.”

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

A Quebec Superior Court judge has ordered Potton resident Alan Barnes and the Municipality of Potton to pay a combined $535,000 plus court fees to Dominique Alain, who was critically injured when she was attacked by Barnes’ dogs while jogging in March 2019, and Alain’s spouse and caregiver Leo Joy. A third defendant, GF Food Equipment, the owner of the property where the dogs were housed, was found not responsible.

In a separate criminal case related to the incident in 2021, Barnes was convicted of criminal negligence and sentenced to six months in prison and 240 hours of community service, and banned for life from owning dogs. The dogs involved were euthanized.

Alain, a small business owner who also held a part-time job as an elite tennis referee, was mauled by three pitbulls belonging to Barnes in March 2019. She suffered significant blood loss and injuries that were initially life-threatening, according to medical reports cited in the ruling, and required more than a dozen operations; for several weeks, she was bedridden and unable to move her arms or legs. Through extensive rehabilitation, she eventually regained enough mobility to walk unaided, drive and return to work a few hours a week. However, reduced stamina and balance, memory and concentration problems, post-traumatic stress and chronic nerve pain as a result of her injuries have hampered her ability to return to a normal life. She has suffered extensive scarring of her arms, legs and back. She is unable to work more than 15 hours per week at Pro-Lens, the replacement optical lens company she owns, and has never been able to resume refereeing; she initially sued the municipality for about $211,000 in lost revenue in addition to $250,000 in non-pecuniary damages. The court ruling was based on a smaller estimation of lost revenue ($164,000), but the court ruled that her request for $250,000 in non-pecuniary damages was justified. “No sum of money can wipe the memories from [Alain’s] mind,” Provencher wrote, stating that Alain’s inability to work full time or enjoy outdoor activities she once loved has contributed to “enormous suffering.”

Joy, for his part, was awarded $75,000 by the court for non-pecuniary damages, specifically for psychological trauma, time spent caring for his partner (several hours a day, every day, according to the ruling) and money invested in adapting the couple’s house to Alain’s mobility needs.   

According to the ruling, the municipality “denied all responsibility.” However, the court ruled that the municipality should have been aware the dogs were a threat to public safety, considering that several complaints had been made to the town hall about the dogs dating back to 2016.  Provencher also noted that Potton bylaws prohibited the possession of pitbulls in the municipality between 2005 and 2018; Barnes kept the dogs illegally for at least two years without any apparent action on the part of the municipality.

“[Ronney] Korman, Director of Public Works and Public Safety Services (fire and first responders), [Jason] Ball, town councillor, [Marie-Claude] Lamy, building inspector responsible for enforcing the by-law concerning animals, and [town clerk Claire] Alger,  all aware … that Barnes’ dogs are aggressive and dangerous, and … banned from the territory of Potton until May 2018, all demonstrate passivity, laxity, even nonchalance in that they all fail to take action,” Provencher wrote, noting that Ball had been bitten by one of the dogs in 2017 and Korman’s wife, Suzanne Viens, narrowly escaped attack that same year.

Valérie Thérien, a spokesperson for the municipality, told the BCN that the town’s insurance company was reviewing the file and the town could not comment further.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

It was November 15, 1976, and Quebec voters had just brought to power the first sovereigntist government in the province’s history. In the coming years, thousands of English-speaking Quebecers would leave the province to escape what for them had become an untenable political climate; Law 101 and the 1980 sovereignty referendum were just a few years away. Brendan O’Donnell was sitting in a Montreal tavern with his brother Kevin, thinking about what it all meant for the English-speaking community. Lord Durham famously mocked French-speaking Canadians as a “people without a history;” the O’Donnell brothers were worried that with the rise of Quebec nationalism, the same fate would ironically befall the English.

“He [Kevin] said no one had written a definitive history of English-speaking Quebec. If someone wanted to write a history, they would need secondary sources,” Brendan O’Donnell said. 

In the intervening years, O’Donnell, who now lives in Stanbridge East, has compiled an exhaustive bibliography of works on English-speaking Quebec. Over the course of his career with Parks Canada, he travelled widely and spent his free days in university libraries, noting every work he could find that referenced the history of English-speaking Quebec – “from the University of British Columbia to Memorial University in Newfoundland.”

First published in print, the bibliography went online-only in 2009; now hosted by the Quebec English-speaking Communities Research Network (QUESCREN), it contains over 14,000 titles in multiple languages.

Next month, the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN) will honour him with the Marion Phelps Award, given annually to a person who has made outstanding long-term contributions to the preservation and promotion of Anglophone heritage in Quebec.

“It’s an honour to receive the award for this project,” he told the BCN. “It’s not a book that explains Quebec history; it’s a tool for researchers.”

O’Donnell is a longtime volunteer at the Missisquoi Museum, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this spring. He observed that no museum or university department is dedicated to sharing the history of English-speaking Quebec as a whole. “We tend to work in silos – we talk about Irish and Jewish and Italian Canadians in Quebec, and about English Quebec literature, but no one has really taken an interdisciplinary approach to English Quebec history. There is QUESCREN, but there’s no faculty of English Quebec studies. There’s the QAHN quarterly magazine [Quebec Heritage News] but there’s no peer-reviewed scholarly journal. There are the small regional museums such as the Missisquoi Museum which do a lot of work on English-speaking Quebec, but there’s no museum specifically dedicated to English-speaking Quebec history. One of the things I’ve been hoping this project will spawn is a discipline called English Quebec Studies [encompassing] the Italian, Jewish, Irish and Black anglophone communities, and people in the Pontiac and the Gaspé and the Townships, their history as well.”

QAHN president Matthew Farfan said advocating for the preservation of anglophone history is “a constant battle” in today’s Quebec – a battle to which O’Donnell has dedicated countless hours. “We have to be vigilant and make sure our community is reflected in the history of modern Quebec,” he said, alluding to the history museum in Quebec City proposed by the Coalition Avenir Quebec government, where the place of English-speaking communities remains unclear. “It’s really important to recognize people, especially volunteers, who are a huge part of preserving that history.”

QAHN will present the Marion Phelps Award and the Richard Evans Award (given to an organization or group that has made a significant contribution to the preservation of anglophone heritage) at a ceremony at the Maison Forget in Montreal on June 29. For more information about attending, email home@qahn.org.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The town of Bromont has taken another step toward restricting the whistling of trains on its territory, but one expert helping the municipality navigate the process told the BCN that it may be another year or more before the whistles stop.

“We hope we’ll get there,” Bromont Mayor Louis Villeneuve said at the May 6 council meeting. “It can’t happen overnight. There are more and more trains passing so we are hoping to get ahead of this. We’re about to send humans to Mars, so I’m sure we can get improved signaling systems. This is a long project but I’m hoping we’ll get there eventually. 

There are seven railroad crossings on the territory of the town of Bromont. In July 2023, councillors passed a resolution asking Canadian Pacific, the owner of the tracks that cross the city, to restrict the use of whistles. At the May 6 meeting, councillors passed two resolutions asking the Quebec Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility (MTQ) to approve their request to stop the whistles.

Donald O’Hara, co-ordinator of the Alliance du corridor ferroviaire Estrie-Montérégie (ACFEM), has been mandated by the city to navigate the whistling cessation approval process. Once council and MTQ approval is granted, the municipality has to work with CP to develop and implement alternative strategies to get pedestrians, animals and cars off the tracks without using the whistle, and implement them at each of Bromont’s seven crossings, he explained. These strategies can include improved safety gates, fencing, strobe lights and other sound signals. Transport Canada must then review the safety plan co-developed by the company and the municipality. Whistling can only stop once Transport Canada gives its final approval. Even then, train drivers can still use the whistle if they believe it’s necessary to clear people or animals from the tracks.

“The whistle is an important safety feature and it’s there for a reason. The process is long and expensive, and involves not just negotiations, but the physical process of putting up gates and signage, and that takes time and money,” O’Hara said, pointing out that a single safety gate can cost several hundred thousand dollars. “The cost is shared between the municipality and the railway company, and there are grants available, but it takes the time and money that it takes. It is taxpayer money and councillors have to consider that.”

O’Hara estimated that Bromont was still “a year, a year and a half away” from getting a whistle ban implemented. In Sherbrooke, which is also working toward a ban, he expected the process to take several years, because plans needed to be put in place for each of the city’s 46 crossings.

Only one municipality in the region has successfully banned train whistles on its territory, according to O’Hara. That was Coaticook, more than 20 years ago. Along with Bromont, Magog and Sherbrooke are also working toward whistle bans. “Different municipalities have different approaches – in Lac-Mégantic, people want to hear the whistle, because it means someone is driving the train. In some other municipalities, it’s a nuisance. It’s definitely not the greatest thing when it wakes you up at night.”

No one from the City of Bromont was available to comment further at press time.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The Organisation du Bassin versant de la Baie-Missisquoi (OBVBM) is partnering with the Granby Zoo to improve survival rates for a rare species of turtle in the Pike River watershed.

The Eastern spiny softshell turtle is considered endangered in Canada, and the Pike River, Missisquoi Bay and Lake Champlain watersheds are home to Quebec’s only viable Eastern spiny softshell turtle population. The mother turtles, who don’t lay their first eggs until about the age of 15, lay their eggs about 50 metres from the riverbank, and floods mean some baby turtles drown before they hatch. Juvenile and adult turtles are at risk from predators and boat propellers.

Biologist Patrick Paré is the director of the research and conservation department of the Granby Zoo. “The first thing you have to understand about the eastern spiny softshell turtle is that it’s a softshell turtle,” he said, emphasizing the fact that boat propellers can cut through the turtles’ shells and cause serious injury or death.

He said there are only about 300 eastern spiny softshell turtles left in the area, including as few as ten egg-laying females. Juvenile survival rates are also low. “The babies weigh only six or seven grams…and if we release 2,000 babies, we get 50 adult turtles.”

The Granby Zoo project, run annually since 2009 and funded for the next three years by the OBVBM, involves monitoring turtle nesting sites along the Pike River, removing the eggs to be incubated in a lab and releasing juvenile turtles back into the wild.  Paré said researchers spend ten hours a day observing riverside nesting sites in June in order to bring eggs to the lab.

In 2023, 209 young turtles whose eggs were incubated at the Granby Zoo lab were released into the river. “By protecting eggs from threats such as predation and significant fluctuations in water levels caused by climate change, the program aims to preserve this emblematic species of the region,” OBVBM communications and mobilization coordinator Julie Reinling said in a statement.

The OBVBM also plans to keep working with boaters to raise awareness of the threat turtles face from boat propellers and stress created by vibration and noise from boats. In 2023, the organization surveyed over 1,500 boaters, of which just over half were aware of the presence of the endangered turtle. Four out of five were willing to reduce their speed to 10 km/hour to decrease the risk of turtle collisions.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

When Jen Tevyaw opens the door of the Centre d’Action Bénévole (CAB) in Sutton on May 25 for the weekly Baby Drop-In, she’s expecting to see not just babies and their parents, but grade-school children and even teenagers. Alumni are more than welcome at the program’s tenth anniversary celebration – the session has even been moved from Friday to Saturday for the occasion to allow working parents to attend with their school-age kids.

A decade ago, Tevyaw, a busy mother of three who had recently completed doula training, noticed a lack of English-language services for young parents in rural areas in the Eastern Townships. “I was really eager to see something flourish here in our community that, you know, I could facilitate, but also participate in as a community member,” she told the BCN. She approached the CAB and Baby Drop-In was born; fifteen parents attended the first Friday morning session. Originally, Baby Drop-In was a monthly volunteer-run program for parents in Sutton and Abercorn; a year later, thanks to grant funding, it became a weekly event, and it now attracts families from all over the region. Earlier this year, a similar program, the Lac-Brome Playgroup, was launched in Brome Lake, and the CAB Sutton now offers a home visit respite care program for new parents as well.

Parents can “drop in” at the CAB between 9 a.m. and noon, share a coffee and chat while their babies and toddlers play in a safe environment. The program includes a sharing circle and presentations on different aspects of pregnancy, the postpartum experience or parenting. Parents are welcome to arrive at any time and to speak as much or as little as they like. “Come as you are,” said Tevyaw.

“My biggest goal with the program is that people feel really welcomed when they come in, that they’re introduced to other parents, and that there’s a warm environment for them to settle into and not feel alone as young parents,” she said. New parents “might be a little bit socially shy and not want to show up to a gathering where they don’t know people. So they’ll often come for the first time when there’s a [presentation] topic that interests them. Then they’ll be like, okay, it’s warm, it’s welcoming. I’m going to stay here.”

“I think we assume that we’re just going to go into [parenting] and know what to do, but we don’t – and unfortunately, in our culture, we’re really disconnected from one another,” Tevyaw said. “You’re not just going to walk up to someone in the grocery store and talk to them about what you’re going through…but we had three new-ish moms at this morning’s session and they went to the park across the street and they’re still out there chatting now.”

One of the goals of Baby Drop-In, she said, was to create a “village” around new parents. “Just to have someone else hold your baby while you can go pee and have a coffee is so precious,” she said, adding that parents who have a community around them are at lower risk for postpartum depression and anxiety.

The anniversary celebration on May 25 will include snacks, cake, live music and a discussion around the future of the program, including a name change that will reflect the fact that it is bilingual and open to parents of older children.

To learn more about Baby Drop-In, contact the CAB Sutton directly.                                   

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Bromont residents who want to borrow sports equipment at Grégoire Park in Adamsville can now do so through a mobile app at a self-service kiosk. Mayor Louis Villeneuve and Adamsville Councillor Jocelyne Corbeil officially opened the service on April 30 alongside representatives of the city’s recreation department and the Montérégie recreation and sports directorate and students from the nearby St-Vincent-Ferrier primary school.

People who want to borrow equipment from the Boxup kiosk will have to download an app using a QR code displayed onsite, fill out an online form and provide a piece of ID, explained Laurent Bédard, sports and recreation co-ordinator for the Ville de Bromont. They’ll then be able to open the locker containing their chosen ball, bat or pair of skates, and use the equipment for the next three hours.

The Boxup module in Grégoire Park has six lockers; Bédard said city staff will make sure the equipment on offer varies from season to season. “There will be things like baseball bats and gloves and a basketball there in the summer; in winter we want to bring in hockey helmets and skates,” he said. The module will be in Bromont for at least the next four years as part of a pilot project; it may be moved from one park to another during that time depending on demand.

“In light of the labour shortage, the city wants to use digital tools to offer equipment rental in parks where there are not necessarily staff there all day,” Bédard said. “We also want to make sure everyone has access to recreation – stereotypically, Bromont is a wealthy city, but there are families that find recreation expensive.” Annie Guillemette, a recreation advisor at the Conseil Sport Loisir (CSL) Montérégie, said studies showed that a lack of accessible equipment made immigrants and families with young children less likely to try outdoor activities.  Bédard, who has a young son, said the opportunity to rent equipment will also come in handy for people who want to try a sport or let their children try a sport without buying a full set of equipment or without hauling their own equipment to the park.

“We want the project to be well known and used, so that it brings more life to the parks and is used by kids and the whole neighbourhood,” Guillemette said.

The Bromont self-service kiosk is part of a provincewide project co-ordinated by regional sports directorates, aimed at increasing access to borrowed or rented equipment. By the end of June, similar kiosks should be set up in Val-des-Sources, Danville, Weedon, Cookshire-Eaton, Potton and Ayer’s Cliff, according to Nadia Fradette, coordinator responsible for outdoor activities, parks and recreational spaces and adapted recreation at the Conseil Sport Loisir de l’Estrie. The same application allows people to rent equipment from any box in the province. Other sports equipment rental projects, not involving the app, are planned later this summer for Val-Saint-François and Windsor, and elsewhere in the Montérégie region, according to Fradette and Guillemette.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Ski Sutton, Ski Bromont and several other area tourist attractions will benefit from the latest round of post-pandemic “relaunch” funding from the provincial tourism ministry, Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx announced April 29.

“The tourism industry is booming in the Eastern Townships, a region that has nearly 1,400 businesses and more than 20,500 tourism-related jobs. According to the most recent data, the economic contribution of sectors associated with tourism amounted to $794 million. The supported projects will promote the growth of tourism, an important driver of local economic development,” the minister’s office said in a statement.

Alongside CAQ MNAs from around the region, Proulx announced that the government would provide $34.3 million of funding across five programs – the Programme d’aide à la relance de l’industrie touristique (PARIT), Programme d’appui au développement des attraits touristiques (PADAT), Programme de soutien aux stratégies de développement touristique (PSSDT) and the regional development agreement for digital transformation in tourism.

“The investments announced today demonstrate the dynamism of local businesses and the strong tourism potential of the Estrie and Brome-Missisquoi regions. I congratulate the organizations in my riding which have received support from our government, in particular Ski Sutton, whose project is in perfect agreement with its mission to offer … distinctive four-season activities in the great outdoors,” Brome-Missisquoi MNA Isabelle Charest said.

Ski Sutton was one of the largest recipients, receiving a $5-million PARIT grant to install a new four-person lift cabin, automate its lift access system, expand its sculpture garden with contributions from local artists, add a lookout for hikers and add summer glamping (luxury camping) facilities. Expérience Embargo, which organizes the annual Soif de Musique music festival in Cowansville, got a $35,000 grant through the regional development agreement toward organizing this year’s edition. Ski Bromont ($35,000 for real-time visitor communication tools) and the Vignoble Léon-Courville in Brome Lake ($23,000 for renovations and improvements to guided tour areas) also received regional development agreement funding.

Soif de Musique cofounder Philippe Mercier said the funding comes at a crucial time for the rapidly growing festival, which is preparing for its fifth edition. “Everything is costing more and it’s harder to find volunteers,” he told the BCN. This year’s festival has an impressive list of headliners – Flo Rida, Charlotte Cardin, Patrick Watson, Les Trois Accords, rising Montreal-based girl power band Les Shirley and Acadian trad-rockers Salebarbes – and will also feature an expanded campground and vineyard tours with surprise pop-up concerts.

Ski Sutton CEO Jean-Michel Ryan echoes Mercier’s sentiments. “This support is fundamental … since the pandemic, costs have exploded, and a lot of projects would not be realizable without PARIT.” he said. He said the new four-person lift will make it easier for families with young children to stick together on the same lift. The size, exact location, capacity and opening date of the “glamping” facility are yet to be determined pending discussions with the Town of Sutton, although Ryan said it would include “more cabins than tents” and would provide one more possible place for tourists to spend the night in a region struggling with a shortage of housing options.

Ryan said he expects the lookout, the new “glamping” facility (exact placement and capacity to be determined) and the expanded sculpture garden to help the resort develop year-round revenue streams, a necessity in light of climate change and shortened ski seasons.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

During the week, the grounds of Sutton School ring with the shouts and laughter of elementary school children. On May 11, the municipality is hoping to draw a more varied crowd.

The Sutton-Abercorn Community Development Table is organizing the second post-pandemic edition of the Fête des Générations (Generations Party) on the school grounds that day from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“Many families with young children know other families with young children, and many people over 60 know other people over 60, but this is an invitation to go and mingle,” said Sutton resident and organizing committee member Chantal Renaud, 39.

The event will feature a free cold buffet, board games, storytelling, arts workshops, slacklining, pickleball, skateboarding, pump track activities, activities for babies, concerts by local artists including performers from the Sutton International Fiddle Festival, kiosks with information about community services and an intergenerational barter market. In case of rain, the event will be moved inside the school; only the activities that require specific outdoor facilities, like the pumptrack, will be cancelled. The event will be free and people will be able to drop by for a few minutes or stay the whole day. Although there is no charge for the buffet, there will be a $2 charge for compostable dishes – participants are encouraged to bring dishes from home. Organizers are planning for a crowd of several hundred.

“We’re trying various things to get people talking and mixing, things that are appealing to all age groups,” said Renaud, who attended the event last year with her family and was won over by the concept. “You might be sharing a table with people you don’t know at lunch, or trading an unopened toothbrush for a puzzle, or something like that, at the barter market. The sky’s the limit!”

“If your kids are in school or daycare, you run into your kids’ [classmates] and their parents all the time, but you don’t necessarily run into other people in the village. A lot of my neighbours are seniors, and we see them regularly, but we wouldn’t necessarily invite them to our house because our house is messy with three kids and they might not feel comfortable. That’s why it’s important to have activities where different generations can meet up, like the Grace Church supper and like this event.”

Renaud said she believes it’s important for children and young parents to get the opportunity to interact with seniors, and vice versa. “So many seniors suffered from the absence of children in their lives during the pandemic. For kids, it’s important to see people older than your parents, to get the whole picture of what life is – it broadens your horizons. For my children, their grandparents don’t live close by so it’s important for them to have that contact with elders. We’ve learned a lot about Sutton [by getting to know seniors], and sometimes a lot of just general life and parenting wisdom.”  

The volunteer organizing committee, CAB Sutton, Sutton School, Sutton School Parent Participation Organization, Club FADOQ Les Deux Monts, Racine Pop, Maison des jeunes Le Spot, Parc d’environnement naturel de Sutton, Jardin d’enfants de Sutton, Coop Gym Santé Sutton, CIUSSS de l’Estrie – CHUS and the Town of Sutton have collaborated to organize the community party, which gets funding from the CIUSSS de l’Estrie – CHUS (“Éclaireurs” project) and the Réseau de développement Brome-Missisquoi funded by the Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon. Anyone who would like to volunteer during the event can write to fetedesgenerations.sutton@gmail.com. 

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The East Bolton public market will soon have a permanent home in Terrio Park. Construction is scheduled to begin this week on a permanent pavilion with a steel structure and wooden roof to replace the seasonal tent used to house the market in past years. The new pavilion, set on a 12×18 concrete slab and 6.6 metres high, should be finished by mid-July, according to the municipality.

When the market is not in session, the pavilion can be used for public events, concerts and family reunions, Mayor Vinciane Peeters explained. Although it won’t be heated, it will be accessible year round and set up close to an existing parking lot.

The pavilion is expected to cost $330,000, with more than half of that amount funded by grants from the MRC de Memphremagog and the Quebec ministry of agriculture, fisheries and food (MAPAQ). Le Rucher Boltonnois, the food security and arts and culture nonprofit which coordinates the public market and a concert series in East Bolton, took steps to have it installed, Peeters said.

The Saturday morning public market began in 2018 in a small gazebo in the park and has kept growing ever since. Peeters said the municipality has been trying to have a permanent structure for the market built for the past several years. “The market is doing well, but it costs a lot to put the tent up and take it down again, and [the tent] will reach its expiration date at some point, so we thought it would be better to have something permanent,” Peeters said. The structure could be expanded with added awnings if needed, she said. The market will begin in June under the tent before moving to the pavilion when it’s ready; the tent will eventually be sold.

Peeters said by building the pavilion, the municipality hopes to encourage local farmers and “create a living community space” used for events and public gatherings. “We don’t have a big community hall in East Bolton, so we’ll hold public events there [weather permitting],” she said. Residents who are planning events such as family reunions will be able to call the municipality and book the pavilion, although priority will be given to town events.

“Our municipality sets itself apart by using its park to encourage inclusion and vitality in its

community. It wants to make it a place that fosters the creation of links between people of all

backgrounds in order to encourage at the same time the local and proximity economy, culture,

family and community life in nature and in a pleasant outdoor setting,” Peeters said. An official opening ceremony should take place later this summer. 

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

An ambitious public transportation project in Bromont has been quietly shelved after three calls for tenders failed to give rise to any workable bids.

After a pilot project in summer 2021 showed encouraging ridership results for a shuttle service within the city, plans were announced to expand the shuttle service as early as 2022, implement a taxi-on-demand service similar to the one in Cowansville, work with major employers and surrounding municipalities to set up transport for employees, and set up a municipal car-sharing system that would allow people to loan their cars to their neighbours.

At the time, the then-head of the city’s sustainable mobility committee, Pierre Vinet, said transit advocates hoped to “develop a package that will allow people to get rid of their second car, if they have one” by 2024.

Vinet and MRC Brome-Missisquoi (MRCBM) director general Mélanie Thibault confirmed that the project as it was originally conceived is off the table.

“We made three calls for tenders, and sometimes we had no bidders and sometimes the estimated costs were so high that we couldn’t move forward,” Thibault said. “One of the impacts of the pandemic and of everything that was happening with the world economy meant that costs exploded.”

Amélie Casaubon, communications and citizen services co-ordinator at the Ville de Bromont, told the BCN the city was “working on a sustainable mobility plan, but it’s still at a very early stage.”

Service not resumed in Sutton

In Sutton, an environmentalist group held an Earth Day rally to call for the return of inter-city bus service to the city. Transdev, the company which provided the service, never brought it back after the pandemic. Solidarité Environnement Sutton spokesperson Sylvie Berthiaume said the organization was asking for an on-demand taxi service between Sutton and Bromont, where people would be able to use an existing private bus service to go on to Montreal or Sherbrooke. There is an on-demand taxi service, but Berthiaume said reservations need to be made far in advance, “which isn’t going to inspire anyone to get rid of their car.”

“We feel that this bus service needs to be public, because it’s not profitable enough for a private company and we pay a lot [in taxes] to maintain the roads,” she said. “There are more and more people in this region, and new companies opening, bringing more and more workers who are not all living in town. If we don’t do something soon, there will be even more cars on the road and that will create extra pollution,” she said.  “We need to think in the medium term.”

Berthiaume called on the MRC to appoint a sustainable mobility point person and invest in wider, safer bike paths as well as scaling up public transit. She and her colleagues say a lack of alternatives to driving makes it harder for senior citizens, young people, low-wage workers and people sharing a car with others in the same household to get around.

Thibault said it was “possible” that details would be released in the near future about a public transit project serving Sutton, but couldn’t provide further details.

A constant challenge

Thibault explained that the MRC works with municipalities on the development, funding and coordination of calls for tenders for city transit projects. Most recently, earlier this month, it launched a weekday city bus pilot project in Cowansville in collaboration with the city and the ministry of municipal affairs.

“We have six service hubs in the MRC and a lot of rural areas and small communities, so it’s very complex and it’s hard to put an efficient [public transportation] project in place,” Thibault said. “There are certain municipalities, like Cowansville, where it’s possible to live without a car, but it’s complicated. We do have weekday on-demand bus service, but it’s not adapted to everyone’s schedule.”

“It’s very hard to live without a car in Sutton, or even in Cowansville,” Berthiaume countered. “I met a couple who was trying to function without a car in Cowansville and they just couldn’t –  they had to give in. We aren’t expecting service every 10 minutes, but it has to be better than what we have now. We’re in a climate emergency and we can’t wait 10 years.”

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

A Université de Sherbrooke (UdeS) study has shed light on what appear to be patterns of elder abuse in private seniors’ residences in Longueuil.

The study was led by UdeS social work professor and holder of the Research Chair on Mistreatment of Older Adults Mélanie Couture. Working with a local residents’ rights group in Longueuil, researchers spoke directly with residents of several private seniors’ residences and with caregivers to learn more about their own experiences of elder abuse.

Studies that consult elderly residents of care homes directly about their experiences are relatively rare, researchers found. “Our review of scientific literature around the world has demonstrated a glaring lack of data on mistreatment even though we hear about cases from stakeholders and also in the media,” Couture said.

The interviews “demonstrate[d] that mistreatment is expressed through omitted or inadequate care, unfulfilled commitments, non-recognition of residents’ needs as well as retaliation on the part of managers when they dare to complain,” the university said in a statement. Researchers also found that complaint procedures were often long, multilayered and hard to follow.

Although the full results haven’t been published, Couture said she and her colleagues wanted to publicize their findings as soon as possible, to shed light on a public health problem.

The study found patterns of “actions which cause harm, inactions which cause harm, and incidents of financial abuse” where residents were charged for care that wasn’t done. “This isn’t just a question of replacing one employee and solving all the problems,” said Couture.

Couture explained that the residents’ group and community organizations began laying the groundwork for the study as early as 2017, but the interviews took place in 2021 and 2022, shortly after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, as residents of private seniors’ homes bore the brunt of the labour shortage and the housing crisis. “The housing crisis brought in an element of nonchalance [because seniors were less likely to be able to find another place to live if they were unsatisfied.] The pandemic and the housing crisis didn’t help, but there was increased public awareness,” she said. She added that “very good private seniors’ residences do exist” but the housing shortage and rising costs make finding a good residence an arduous task for many seniors. She said stricter enforcement of existing regulations and improved government support for nonprofit and co-op seniors’ home projects may help prevent abuse in the long term.

Couture said she hopes the study and the wider public conversation about ill-treatment in seniors’ residences will lead more care home residents with concerns about their treatment or living conditions to file complaints or get a caregiver, health care professional or family member to complain on their behalf. Since 2021, each CISSS or CIUSSS has had a local complaints commissioner and a complaint assistance line (1 877 767-2227.). Complaints can also be made to the provincial citizens’ ombudsman in their capacity as health and social services patient ombudsman (1 800 463-5070) or the bilingual elder abuse helpline (1-888-489-2287).

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The formal transfer of the territory of Bromont from the Haute-Yamaska local health network to the La Pommeraie network is “a little signature that makes a big difference,” according to veteran Councillor Claire Mailhot, the municipality’s point person on community services.

The transfer was made official on April 17 after more than six years of discussion and nearly 14 years of waiting – ever since the town of Bromont joined Brome-Missisquoi in 2010. “When we changed MRCs, all the files followed, except for public health,” Mailhot explained. This has had several knock-on effects, from confusing public health data during the COVID-19 pandemic to patients in Brome-Missisquoi being placed on a waiting list for a family doctor in Haute-Yamaska and then manually transferred, she said. She hoped the reorganization would lead to more complete health data, better resource allocation between the two health networks, and ideally to longer opening hours and the assignment of a new doctor to the local CLSC. “Also, if you’re waiting for a family doctor, you’ll now be on the right list.”

“We [in Bromont] have always been linked with Brome-Missisquoi-Perkins hospital, and this will formalize that fact,” Mailhot added.

Community services such as food aid, which are managed by volunteer action centres in collaboration with the public health network, will also be easier to manage, she said.

She said Bromont has been working with the La Pommeraie network on many key files since 2019. “Why did [the transfer] take so long? That’s above our pay grade, but we’ve been waiting for it for a long time.”

Health officials also believe the switch will lead to better data and improved personnel allocation practices. Nancy Corriveau, a spokesperson for the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS, told the BCN that the transfer was “good news.”

“Bromont data will be officially integrated into the RLS de la Pommeraie allowing access to data more representative of local reality, which will allow us to better distribute financial and human resources. Population portraits and the needs of the population of the RLS de la Pommeraie (including Bromont) will thus be more easily accessible,” she said in a brief email. Patients “will be directed to the Cowansville sector, where for the most part they were already in the habit of going for services.”

Brome-Missisquoi MNA Isabelle Charest explained in a Facebook post that the shift “will ensure better administrative organization of health services throughout the territory and better meet the needs of the population of Bromont and the RLS de la Pommeraie.”

The reorganization “aims to allow people currently waiting for a family doctor to transfer their request to the territory of La Pommeraie; improves the planning of medical staff in the targeted territories; and ensures an adjustment of the surveillance and evaluation databases of the public health directorate so that the data reflects the real state of the population by territory,” Charest wrote.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

A Massey-Vanier High School student and her mother are filing a complaint with the Quebec human rights commission, the Commission pour les droits de la personne et de la jeunesse (CDPJ) over what they say is a pattern of racially motivated bullying and the school’s failure to stop it.

Jade, 14, and her mother, Michelle, have requested that media not publish their full names or faces. They say that after enduring more than a year of harassment from fellow students, much of it racially motivated, Jade was put on a different schedule – leaving classes several minutes earlier than her peers, spending recess and lunch periods in an isolation room and checking in at the isolation room between classes – to ostensibly protect her from harassment. They say this approach singles out Jade – one of few Asian students in the English sector – isolates her from her friends and puts her at risk of further bullying, while doing little or nothing to confront or discourage the bullies.

“Things have been thrown at her and she has been subjected to racist and homophobic jokes,” said Michelle at a press conference organized by the Centre for Research and Action on Race Relations (CRARR), which is supporting the family through the CDPJ complaints process. “My daughter has complained and told them to stop, but there’s always a new kid coming up with a new way to harass her. It is severe, repetitive and explicit.”

They also say the school’s approach, which began in February, has led to micromanagement of Jade’s behaviour and cut her off from her friends. “The school decided the best thing for me is to put me in a room…but there’s always someone watching everything I do,” Jade, near tears, told the press conference. “They don’t like it when I socialize…but it’s [the other students’] problem, not mine. Please don’t take my friends away from me.”

Michelle said she had called, phoned and emailed the school repeatedly and sent a registered letter to the Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) to try to end the isolation room approach. “They have modified it a little, but she still has to report to the room between classes.”

She worried that the school was “setting [Jade] up for failure” by isolating her and blaming or questioning her when she complains. “She’s the one being punished for who she is, she blames herself, and my concern is next time it happens, she won’t complain. They are increasing her risk of being taken advantage of in all kinds of relationships.” She’s also concerned her daughter will decide to drop out of high school. “This is a pipeline to prison or a mental hospital.”

“While racist bullying is violent, the school’s punitive practice of segregating her…and surveilling her every move is far more destructive,” Michelle said.

She said that although some of the alleged bullies have been disciplined, she felt the school needed to do more to “make the [perpetrators] more aware that bullying is not OK.”

Michelle also called on Education Minister Bernard Drainville, himself the father of a young Asian adoptee, to investigate the school’s anti-bullying policies.

“It’s never a punishment”

ETSB spokesperson Holly Bailey said the school board was unable to comment on the family’s specific case for privacy reasons. Emmanuelle Gaudet, director of complementary services at the school board, said students are sometimes put on modified schedules or “sheltered” recess or lunch when teachers believe they might be “overstimulated” by being in a crowd of other students. “It’s never a punishment, but it’s sometimes misunderstood as a punishment,” Gaudet said. “Sometimes [a parent or student] will say they don’t need it anymore, and then realize they do need it when the student becomes disorganized.”

The ETSB anti-bullying policy encourages students and parents to report bullying to a trusted school staff member without delay. Gaudet said staff who witness bullying take a range of approaches depending on the context. “There is no one-size-fits-all instruction manual…sometimes it’s better to address it head-on and sometimes it’s better to approach it in a less confrontational way.” She encouraged parents who believe their child is being bullied to contact their teacher or vice principal, and take the matter to the principal if the situation doesn’t improve. Families can take their case to the ETSB or to the student ombudsman if the situation doesn’t improve, she said.

CDPJ spokesperson Halimatou Bah told the BCN that the agency does not have data on how often it receives complaints related to bullying in schools. She said the CDPJ analyzes each complaint to decide whether to intervene or refer the complainant to other resources. If the commission intervenes, it will speak to all parties and guide them through a mediation process. If mediation is unsuccessful, it will propose corrective measures; if the measures aren’t implemented, the CDPJ may work with the complainant to take the target of the complaint to court.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

More than six months after a fire destroyed an apartment building in Waterloo and left 11 people homeless, the municipality held a ceremony to honour people, businesses and community organizations who pitched in to help the evacuees.

Yves Parenteau, Pierre-Paul Foisy, Marcel Croteau and MNA Isabelle Charest were honoured along with the staff of the Centre d’action bénévole aux 4 Vents, Construction POP Inc., the Paroisse St-Bernardin Catholic parish, Coup de pouce, Comptoir familial de Waterloo and the Office municipal d’habitation Haute-Yamaska–Rouville. Waterloo fire chief Patrick Gallagher hosted the ceremony.

Parenteau, a construction site foreman who lives in Saint-Tite in the Mauricie region and was visiting family in the Townships, was one of the first people to notice the fire on the morning of Nov. 12. “I was on my way to get a coffee and I noticed the facade [of the building] was on fire. There was a stopped car in front of me, and the driver said they were calling the fire department. I ran out to let people know about the fire. There was a person at the third-floor window who asked me what was going on. I told them to wake up their neighbours and bring them out the back. In the space of two or three minutes, the fire was 12 feet high.”

Most of the residents left the building safely thanks to quick thinking from Parenteau and from their neighbour; one person was rescued minutes later by firefighters.

“I guess my training [as a construction site foreman] helped with giving orders and that sort of thing,” Parenteau said. “The adrenaline rush makes you able to do all kinds of things.”

Foisy is a local youth soccer booster who lives near the building that burned down. His children attend the same school as two young boys who lost their home in the fire. He let the boys move in with him and started a GoFundMe to assist survivors which raised $4,500. “I’m proud to be part of the generosity that our community has shown,” he said. “I want my kids to see what generosity is.”

Croteau, owner of the Chaussures Pop shoe store, was recognized for donating winter boots to fire survivors. Charest, the local Red Cross, the CAB aux 4 Vents and the other honorees were recognized for the support they provided to survivors in the days and weeks after the fire.

“There are people who came out of that building with nothing, who were barefoot,” Parenteau said. “It takes people to help, to donate boots and storage space and things like that. It was beautiful to see that there are still generous people in the world.

Criminal origins

Isabelle Viens is the food security support worker at the CAB aux 4 Vents. She has been working with survivors since shortly after the fire. “In the first few days, people were in shock; there was a lot of pain and uncertainty. Some people lost a lot of weight from the shock. There are still some [survivors] who come to get food from the centre’s [communal] fridge, but things are getting better.” 

City spokesperson Marilynn Guay Racicot said in a statement that the six families who lost their homes have since been relocated. However, Foisy, who knows several survivors, raised concerns that the building was one of the most affordable in the area. “People there were paying $500 or $600 [per month], and now everything is $1,000, $1,100, $1,500.” He said a new apartment building was being built on the same site, and he worried the new rents would be out of reach for the survivors.

The cause of the fire is still being investigated. Sûreté du Québec spokesperson Jean Ruel said the fire had apparent “criminal origins.” Ruel said the police force had no suspects and could not provide details about the cause of the fire, but that more information may come to light in the coming weeks and months.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Staff and volunteers at the Centre d’action bénévole (CAB) de Cowansville can’t wait to get cooking. On May 3, the CAB will officially break ground on a long-awaited expansion. The annex will double the size of the centre, which is currently squeezed into a former church presbytery on Rue Principale.

The centre currently operates a food bank, transport services for seniors who need help getting to medical appointments and errands, a phone outreach program for people unable to leave their homes, programs for caregivers and new immigrants, and income tax services. It provides services in both official languages to residents of Cowansville and surrounding municipalities.

Nathalia Guerrero Velez, expansion project manager at the CAB Cowansville, told the BCN the planned annex, which has been in the works since the centre bought land adjacent to the presbytery in 2020, would allow for an expanded food bank and a community kitchen with a cold room, storage space and space for meal preparation. A wheelchair-accessible multipurpose event space will also be added.

“We have no space of our own other than a small office; we have been providing food bank services out of a shopping centre basement,” Guerrero Velez said. “Once we have the new facilities, we’ll be able to move the food bank and everything will be easier.” She said the multipurpose space will be used for events and expanded programming for seniors. “We know we have a lot of isolated older people in the community, and we’d like to give them a nice space to come and eat,” she said. 

Guerrero Velez estimates that the expansion will cost $765,000. Through grants from various levels of government and an online fundraiser, the CAB has raised about two-thirds of that amount – $542,000. The CAB is counting on funding from nonprofits and individual community members to raise the rest.

She said the CAB is moving forward with construction despite the fact not all the money has been raised because there is unprecedented demand for food aid, much of it hidden. “We are seeing an unprecedented growth of need [for food services]. People who have jobs, even families where both parents work, are coming to us for help. We need to keep responding to people’s food needs right here in Cowansville. Anyone you know could be in need of food aid – it could be your neighbour.”

If all goes well, the kitchen, expanded food bank and multipurpose room should be operational by November. Guerrero Velez said she is confident the centre will raise the necessary funds through community support. “The community has been so generous already that we feel we can count on them to help us,” Guerrero Velez said. 

To donate to the CAB Cowansville expansion project, visit cabcowansville.com/je-veux-donner or contact the centre directly.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Employees and visitors to the town hall in Bedford Township will have a lot more space to move around this time next year, thanks to a provincial government grant allowing for the construction of a new town hall and municipal garage.

“This financial assistance is excellent news for Bedford Township. I am convinced that this new, more modern municipal office will provide a better adapted work environment in addition to contributing to the well-being of staff. In addition, the community space and the city council room will benefit the entire population,” said Brome-Missisquoi MNA Isabelle Charest at the funding announcement on April 2.

The $2.15-million grant from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs will cover the bulk of the project; the remaining $600,000 will be covered by the proceeds from a recent sale of town land, Mayor Gilles St-Jean told the BCN. “There will be no increase to the tax bill this year or next,” he said. “By the time it’s built, it will be already paid for.”

The new building will be built on vacant town-owned land adjacent to the current town hall, which will be repurposed as the garage. In addition to larger offices for town staff, it will contain the town archives, an expanded council room, a covered porch, a community kitchen and showers; there will be an adjacent parking lot with two charging stations for electric vehicles. A large generator will keep it running when the power goes out, so it can double as an emergency warming centre. 

“We’ve been working on this for many years, but there was never a subsidy program we were eligible for until now,” St-Jean said. “All of the other programs we were hoping to apply for, [the applicant] needed to be in debt, and we weren’t. We’ve been asking for this for a long time.” Several years ago, he said, the town bought an old house and had it torn down to clear land for the project.

St-Jean said a larger town hall was needed to accommodate the growing number of staff members in the town of 658 people and allow more people to comfortably attend council meetings. “For years, we had one director general who handled everything; now we have two people and that doesn’t work. We need to hire an assistant, but we haven’t gotten there yet – the receptionist and the director general share one office and the building inspector works out of the council room. When we get an assistant director general, we have no place to put their office,” he said. He noted that the new council chamber would seat up to 80 people, up from the current 20, and include a separate room for in-camera sessions, so that citizens attending council meetings would no longer have to wait outside during in-camera deliberations.

St-Jean said construction on the new town hall began last week, and completion is expected as early as December 2024.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Repairing the damage done to a Bromont marsh by a botched public works intervention will take time, Mayor Louis Villeneuve and director general Francis Dorion warned at the April 2 council meeting.

In mid-March, a group of local birdwatchers informed city officials that several acres of marshland in the Parc Scientifique de Bromont nature reserve had been drained. The city concluded that the draining was caused by damage from a botched intervention to repair a beaver dam.

“That was a major error, and we are in favour of transparency – we want to explain what happened and the measures of mitigation and restoration we want to put in place in collaboration with our partners,” Dorion said.

He explained that in early November 2023, due to heavy rain, water levels rose in the marsh and water started to overflow onto adjacent agricultural and industrial land. To attempt to lower the water level, employees in the city’s public works department breached a beaver dam over the Ruisseau Dozois and a second dam in the marsh. “Was it urgent to act? Clearly not. Was it necessary to do something eventually? Yes, things couldn’t stay like that.”

Dorion explained that the employees had legally used a rented excavator for a similar intervention the same day near Lake Bromont, “but on a nature reserve, the rules are different.”

He said the town learned about the situation about three weeks ago from members of the Club d’ornithologues de Brome-Missisquoi, and officials went to the scene to verify what the birdwatchers said. The dam breach in the marsh, they confirmed, had essentially “emptied” the marsh.

He said the city was looking at the decision-making process and the information and onsite observations that informed the decision-making process. “We’re not going to conduct a public trial of [individual employees.]”

He said measures would be taken to make sure similar blunders never happened again. “We want to restore the situation as soon as we can,” he said. “The earlier we do it, the less [long-term] damage there will be.”  The city is working with the Quebec environment ministry, the MRC Brome-Missisquoi, the Club des ornithologues and beaver management specialists Gestion Nordik to “repair” the dams and manage water flow, he added, noting that “certain engineering evaluations” were necessary before a solution could be put in place. “We are ready to intervene and ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

The MRC Brome-Missisquoi is providing “technical support regarding the solution envisaged for the restoration of the marsh, as well as support for the city with ministry stakeholders,” spokesperson Mariève Lebrun said.

Ghizlane Behdaoui, a spokesperson for Quebec’s Ministry of Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks (MELCCFP), told the BCN that the ministry carried out an inspection on March 28 and the results of the inspection are currently being analyzed. On April 2, MELCCFP personnel met with city officials and stakeholders to “present a description of the incident, the state of the situation and the regulatory framework,” she said. “Nothing is off the table to ensure compliance with applicable regulations.”

The MELCCFP “supports the city of Bromont in evaluating the proposed corrective measures with the aim of limiting impacts on the environment and wildlife,” Behdaoui said. “The ministry is currently analyzing a restoration proposal sent by the city.”

No one from the municipality was available to respond to detailed follow-up questions before press time.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

For more than 100 years, from its construction as a Methodist church in 1877 until its last service in 2014, Calvary United Church in Sutton was a community hub and a place of worship. In 2014, local artist Brigite Normandin and her partner Peter Reindler bought the building and turned it into a workshop and art gallery, Galerie Art Plus. 

On April 2, Normandin announced that she planned to close the gallery. The church building has been bought by the Town of Sutton, which plans to use the ground floor for a community daycare and the upper floor for an exhibition space.

Normandin said she and Reindler “fell in love” with the church building when they visited it before buying it in 2013, and always felt they were the “temporary guardians” of the place.

“I wanted to have an art gallery in the chapel…and produce [shows by] local artists, and use the upper floor as my workshop,” Normandin said. The gallery went on to host a succession of shows by local contemporary artists. In recent months, Normandin said she struggled to balance the responsibilities of being a professional artist, gallery owner and caregiver to family members. “I spent the last 10 years taking care of the artists, and now I need to take care of me,” she said. “When the town showed an interest in buying the church, I thought, ‘Yes, they’ll be able to keep making it shine.’ That made it an easier decision, but I was brokenhearted all the same.”

Normandin said she hoped the exhibition space, now in the hands of the municipality, would “continue to promote arts and culture in the area and in the life of Sutton and the Townships.”

Sutton Mayor Robert Benoit confirmed the city had bought the church building, the value of which he estimated at $750,000, from Normandin and Reindler for $425,000, with the formal handover planned for May 15. “Ideally, we want the building to be used 365 days a year,” he said. The ground floor was slated to be the new home of the community daycare centre, the Jardin d’Enfants de Sutton, currently at the aging Centre Communautaire John-Sleeth. The upper floor is expected to become a community hall, a multipurpose event space and “a place to spread the visual arts,” continuing the legacy of Galerie Art Plus. Arts Sutton, also currently based at the Centre John-Sleeth, may hold activities there, Benoit said.

Benoit said the church in the village centre was “part of Sutton’s brand.”

“We didn’t want it to become a bed-and-breakfast or a bitcoin [mining centre] or any of the other scenarios you can imagine if it went on the private market,” he said. “It’s a magnificent place and we absolutely need to keep it accessible to the public.”

Benoit said the municipality had done a “review” of the building several years ago, and estimated that it needed about $250,000 in repairs and upgrades before the daycare centre could be moved there. He said the repairs would be financed by the proceeds from the recent sale of some land in the Mont-Sutton area to the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Benoit said the daycare centre could be moved from the Centre John-Sleeth to the church building as early as September.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Three Farnham Elementary School students with epilepsy and their families and classmates raised nearly $300 for Épilepsie Montérégie with a cupcake sale on Epilepsy Awareness Day, March 26.

Epilepsy is a chronic brain condition characterized by seizures, which affects about 300,000 people in Canada and as many as 50 million people around the world. People with epilepsy can experience seizures – sudden, temporary, bursts of electrical activity in the brain which can lead to jerking movements or loss of situational awareness – triggered by sleep deprivation, low blood sugar, flashing lights or other environmental factors.

Lilianne de la Ronde, a Grade 4 student at Farnham Elementary, was diagnosed with epilepsy after suffering a seizure in class late last year.

“I came from outside to inside and I was having a hard time breathing – that’s not unusual, but it was kind of hardcore. I thought it was my asthma but then my stomach started feeling weird – not like I was going to vomit but like a feeling I hadn’t felt before.” She got up to tell her teacher she didn’t feel well, and fell down. “I was kind of in the moon,” she remembered.

Lilianne’s classmate, Keira Trahan, and a Grade 6 student at the school, Kassandra Sanschagrin, also have epilepsy. Keira and Kassandra helped Lilianne process her experience. “I told them that I felt like I couldn’t speak or move [during and right after the seizure],” Lilianne said. “They said it was normal, because it takes a lot of energy and when it’s over you don’t have any energy left.”

When a person has a seizure, Lilianne explained, there’s “not a whole lot you can do,” except for moving sharp or dangerous objects out of the way and making sure the person doesn’t hit their head. An ambulance should be called if the person is having a seizure for the first time or if it lasts for more than five minutes.

Lilianne’s mom, Julie Guay, said her first seizure was a “very scary experience,”  but that she is learning to live with the condition and manage it with medication. She has to be very careful when skiing or skating – both of which she enjoys – but can otherwise do “pretty much anything anyone else can do.”

The Epilepsy Awareness Day initiative at Farnham Elementary School was the brainchild of “three kids with epilepsy and their moms,” and school staff eagerly got on board, allowing Lilianne, Keira and Kassandra to use the school kitchens to make cupcakes for sale, and to miss a bit of class time to speak to their fellow students about epilepsy. They raised $274 for epilepsy research, and perhaps more importantly, spoke to nearly 100 students about epilepsy and seizure safety. 

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

On April 2, Cowansville commuters got their first taste of something many people in larger cities take for granted – taking a city bus to work.

The MRC Brome-Missisquoi and the Ville de Cowansville, with funding from the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs, have launched a public transport pilot project that will see a city bus circulating on a loop covering a wide swath of downtown Cowansville. Brome-Missisquoi-Perkins Hospital, Massey-Vanier High School and several parks and supermarkets are along the bus route.

Bus service is on the hour from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. and from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. with two additional departures at 3:30 and 4:30 p.m, Monday to Friday. The $4 fare can be paid in cash on the bus or with tickets bought from the MRC office at 749, rue Principale. Children under 14 accompanied by an adult ride free. A full schedule and a route map are available on the MRC website (mrcbm.qc.ca/actualites/projet-pilote-en-transport-a-cowansville; in French only.) Seats do not need to be reserved in advance, although riders are advised to be at their bus stop at least five minutes before the bus is scheduled to arrive, to ensure they don’t miss their bus.

For Mayor Sylvie Beauregard, the transit pilot project offers “an accessible, sustainable and efficient transportation solution that meets the mobility needs of the community.”

Khalil El Fatmi is the transport services co-ordinator at the MRC Brome-Missisquoi. He said the MRC wanted to provide “more complete rush-hour service” for commuters in Cowansville, complementing the existing on-demand transit service. “It won’t just benefit people in Cowansville – because Cowansville is the central point for the MRC, it will benefit people from around the region.”

The route and the schedule, he said, were designed to accommodate “workers, students, older people … and anyone who wants an alternative” to driving everywhere. The main challenge for the project, according to El Fatmi, is making sure people know it exists. “Naturally, if we want people to use the service, we need to talk about it and make sure people know it’s there.”

The pilot project will run until Oct. 1. The MRC would not provide specific ridership targets. However, El Fatmi said if the project was successful, it could be expanded, with a second loop potentially added.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Several acres of marshland in the Parc scientifique de Bromont nature reserve have been inadvertently drained as a result of city employees carrying out unauthorized work to dismantle a beaver dam, city officials and conservation groups have said.

“The water was overflowing onto industrial land outside the conservation area. So [the employees] created a breach. But unfortunately, this is not the intervention they should have made, and no one within the general management and the city council was aware of this,” Bromont director general Francis Dorion, who was not available to speak to the BCN before the Easter holiday, told Radio-Canada. Local birdwatchers brought the damage to the attention of city officials early last week.

“No one at the city is happy about this,” said Dorion, adding that the city “will do everything possible” to repair the damage.

He said the municipality had the legal right to dismantle beaver dams that threaten human safety or property, but “additional analysis” should have been done before the decision to dismantle the dam was made.

“It’s a deplorable situation, but we don’t want to cast blame,” said Mélanie Lelièvre, president of the local conservation nonprofit Appalachian Corridor, who learned about the damage to the marsh from media reports. “We know the city is on the case – it’s human error and we know they’re looking into it.”

Lelièvre explained that the marsh, which covers about three acres of the 200-hectare park, represents a small but ecologically important part of the reserve. “It’s a really important natural milieu, where we find a lot of plants and animals. There are tortoises and least bitterns [a wetland bird; a rare, tiny member of the heron family].”

According to Parks Canada, beavers create wetlands by building dams and allowing water to pool in ponds. When water builds up to the point where it threatens human activity, tools such as Morency cubes – metal cages which redirect water flow – can help control water levels while keeping dams largely intact, Lelièvre said. In general, Lelièvre said, wetlands “do us a lot of favours ecologically.” Wetlands filter pollutants, reduce erosion and act as natural sponges, absorbing water in wet weather or high tide and retaining it during drought. In light of climate change, she said they are “more important than ever.”

Lelièvre said water levels in the marsh should return to normal over time if the weather co-operates, but that the medium- and longer-term consequences of the breach, if there are any, would not be known for some time. “If we get normal rain in the next few weeks, the water level should be back to where it was, or close to it, but if there’s no precipitation, that will complicate things. If we get the water level back to normal, there should not be consequences for the area as a whole – we should still have a proper nesting area [for birds]. We don’t know about the impact for the amphibians and reptiles who spend the winter in the surrounding mud – did they have the time to dig deeper or find another place? We don’t have the data yet, so we don’t know.”

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

A representative of the human resources department of the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS has said the agency is “worried” about the possible impact of the ongoing housing shortage on public sector recruitment.

Marc-Antoine Rouillard, assistant director of human resources at the CIUSSS, was reacting to a report by the provincewide nonprofit Place aux Jeunes suggesting that hundreds of young professionals living in cities have had to decline job offers in the regions after they were unable to find appropriate housing close enough to work. Private and nonprofit sector employers in Brome-Missisquoi have also raised concerns about the impact of housing on recruitment.

“Like all major industries, we’re worried by it. We haven’t felt a major impact yet; it’s not a brake on recruitment at this time, but it is starting to be a concern,” said Marc-Antoine Rouillard.

Rouillard said the agency hires about 3,200 people each year and is currently seeking to fill about 3,000 positions, both frontline health professionals and administrative roles. Once candidates from outside the region are hired, the CIUSSS works with community organizations “who help us help people get housing and bank accounts and daycare.” He said spending on community organizations to support the integration of new arrivals has quintupled – from $20,000 to $120,000 per year – since before the pandemic, as housing and daycare have become harder to find.  Finding housing is hardest in the Granby region, Rouillard said. “The inoccupancy rate is very low, and sometimes there are places available but there’s an issue of [affordability].”

Rouillard said the CIUSSS and its nonprofit partners are “super aware of the issues” and working together to attract and support new employees. “If ever [housing] becomes a serious obstacle, it will raise a whole host of additional challenges,” he added.

Housing is also one of many concerns for municipalities seeking staff. “Recruitment is always an issue in the municipal sector, and the housing shortage doesn’t help,” Pascal Smith, director general of the Ville de Sutton, told the BCN. He said one prospective employee hadn’t been able to take a job offer at the city because of a lack of housing; the housing shortage has also created difficult situations for employers. 

Over the past few years, the city has passed regulations allowing people to build additional outbuildings on their property, and tightened regulations on short-term rentals and building conversions, “to hopefully get more [housing] units back on the market.”

“Most of our personnel lives elsewhere. That doesn’t cause any major difficulties, but it does reduce my candidate pool [for certain roles]. There are still enough staff living here that we have our finger on the pulse of the city,” Smith said.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

About 100 English-speaking teens and young adults from around the province gathered at the Concordia Conference Centre on March 15 for the seventh annual Youth Forum organized by Y4Y, a Montreal-based organization that promotes civic participation, leadership and workplace readiness for members of the English-speaking community aged 16-30.

The geographic breakdown of attendees roughly reflected the larger English-speaking community – while the majority came from the greater Montreal area, others came from the Eastern Townships, Trois-Rivières, Quebec City and as far away as the Gaspé. At least one Bishop’s University student attended, as did a delegation of five youth committee members and two facilitators from Phelps Helps in Stanstead.

Y4Y board chair Madeleine Lawler, a recent graduate of law school at Université de Montréal, gave opening remarks, alluding to the difficult political climate for English speakers in the province in recent years. “Our approach to the issues has always been about providing a platform for English-speaking youth, building bridges and building community,” she said. “Today is not just about venting – it’s about brainstorming and collaborating. We’re all here to learn.”

Y4Y executive assistant Alex Pettem gave a brief overview of the demographic situation of the English-speaking community across the province, which itself challenged a number of stereotypes. The popular perception of the English-speaking community is older and whiter than the reality, he explained, pointing out that “English-speaking communities” make up about 1.2 million of Quebec’s eight million people. One anglophone Quebecer in three is an immigrant, one in four is a visible minority, and one in four is between the ages of 15 and 34.

Nearly three out of four young adults in the anglophone community consider themselves bilingual – “the highest bilingualism rate of any demographic in Canada,” Pettem said.

Despite this, he said, “linguistic insecurity” – anxiety or lack of confidence around language skills – is one of the most common barriers to employment for young anglophones, especially in rural Quebec. “Most of us are fairly bilingual, but we struggle to leverage that into better opportunities,” remarked Pettem’s colleague, Caleb Owusu-Acheaw.

After the opening presentations, participants took part in youth-led panel discussions about the education system, civic engagement and workforce readiness – all of which centred around education. Panelists called for an education system that accommodates different learning styles; places more value on vocational skills, financial literacy, civic engagement and entrepreneurship; and reinforces students’ French language skills in a more engaging and accessible way.

“Employers would be well served by looking at people’s skills and giving themselves a chance to improve their French on the job rather than rejecting them out of hand,” added Shekina Blackstock, a Montreal native who is studying political science at Bishop’s and improving her French.

“The language laws have caused a lot of anxiety for my family,” said panelist Abbigail Whitcher, 24, a Knowlton native now studying law at McGill. “Two of my brothers have decided to move to Saskatchewan [because of language politics]. Building a sense of belonging for English speakers is very important to me.”

Whitcher pointed out that English-speaking high school students face increased dropout rates compared to their francophone counterparts. “The fact that there’s a difference is telling… especially in smaller communities, where our youth have fewer opportunities.” She observed that while many English-speaking rural communities have extensive programming that caters to seniors, youth don’t always get the same support.

The Stanstead students emphasized the urban-rural divide between English-speaking communities and expressed concern that they weren’t necessarily being “pushed” in high school. “Youth are capable of a lot more than people think, even if you’re from a small town,” concluded Elizabeth, a Secondary 5 student at Alexander Galt Regional High School and Stanstead native who gave only her first name.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The Town of Brome Lake intends to call a public meeting on May 15 to address potential solutions to the housing shortage, director general Gilbert Arel told the BCN.

The information session, held in the evening at the Lac-Brome Community Centre, will address “the town’s housing strategy, housing issues and the long-term vision.” He emphasized that the meeting was intended more as a presentation about affordable housing than as a public consultation.

“Everywhere in Quebec we’re talking about affordable housing, and it’s a concept that is still not well understood,” said Arel, who defined affordable housing as “housing where the increases in cost don’t fluctuate with real estate speculation.”

He said affordable rental apartments “are what we’re missing in Brome Lake,” especially for seniors.

“We have an aging population and people want to stay in their town, but there’s nowhere for them to live after they sell their house – they have no choice but to go to Cowansville, Waterloo or Granby,” he said.  “We’re going to work on the next urban plan [over the next year] and the next step is to develop a housing strategy that will focus on our priority clienteles – seniors and young families.” 

Ongoing projects

In terms of ongoing affordable housing projects, Arel mentioned the conversion of the former Excelsoins seniors’ residence into apartments. “[The building at] 399 chemin de Knowlton has 30 rooms with a community kitchen, and it is affordable,” he said. “There are a few out-of-town workers who live there.” The other former Excelsoins building, at 401 chemin de Knowlton, has sat empty since the residence closed nearly two years ago. Arel said he expects the owners of the residence to submit a specific project permit, known by its French acronym PPCMOI, to the town’s urban planning consultative committee; the permit would allow them to renovate the building and create 40 apartments. “I don’t see how that’s going to be a problem – they [Excelsoins] had a long-term plan to convert the building into apartments.”

Another project, Les Jardins de Lac-Brome, intended to open in July 2024, has met with delays due to a disagreement between city officials and the project promoter, Benoit Laliberté, over construction permits, according to both parties. Laliberté “was supposed to build three buildings of eight units each, and he built one building with more than eight units,” Arel said. “When you receive a permit but you don’t follow it, that raises a lot of issues.” Laliberté initially agreed to an interview with the BCN but was unavailable to comment in detail at the appointed time.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The Autorité des marchés publics (AMP), the province’s public-sector financial regulator, has issued recommendations to the Canton of Potton after an investigation found that the municipality did not follow standard procedure related to the acquisition of a fire engine.

“The analysis showed that the quote linked to the municipality’s public call for tenders included technical requirements targeting particular products through the use of trademarks and model numbers,” the AMP said in a statement. “This way of doing things goes against the Municipal Code of Quebec, which stipulates that municipalities must describe their needs in terms of performance or functional requirements rather than in terms of descriptive characteristics.”

When AMP officials conducted checks, they were told the call for tenders “was inspired by quotes prepared by neighbouring municipalities” and that “describing its needs in terms of performance or functional requirements would have caused confusion among potential bidders,” according to the statement. The AMP concluded that the explanations provided by the municipality did not allow it to invoke an exception to the rules authorizing it to describe specific brands or models in its call for tenders.

The AMP also concluded that the call for tenders featured a “major irregularity” related to the guarantee of the fire engine, and the municipality should have declared the call for tenders noncompliant.

The agency recommended that the town council develop “efficient procedures” to ensure that future calls for tenders describe the products required “in terms of functional requirements” and that future decisions to refer to specific brand names and model numbers in calls for tenders are justified. It also recommended that employees undergo training on the conformity of calls for tenders and required the municipality to report back within 45 days, explaining what measures have been taken and the timeline for their implementation.

Potton Mayor Bruno Côté referred the BCN to an external public relations firm, Arsenal. An Arsenal representative declined an interview request on his behalf, but provided the BCN with a written statement which did not directly address the concerns raised by the AMP.

 “The municipality has as a priority to ensure the safety of its citizens and takes the necessary means. Pending the delivery of the new vehicle scheduled for 2025 (acquired in 2023), the municipality has acquired a second-hand fire truck which until recently belonged to the Town of Sutton. This decision-making was accelerated following a visual and auditory safety inspection of the accessible elements of the vehicle on Feb. 16, carried out by an inspector from the Société d’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ): the fire truck which was then in circulation no longer meets safety standards. Major defects have been reported, forcing it to be scrapped at very short notice. This responsible and temporary solution ensures that we maintain our capacity for action and intervention while limiting costs,” the statement said.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Tax time has arrived, and around the region, volunteer action centres (known as Centres d’action bénévole or CABs) are offering free bilingual tax preparation services for low-income taxpayers.

The clinics are coordinated through a long-established federal government program called the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program (CVITP). CVITP clinics offered by CABs are open to any individual taxpayer with a simple tax situation and an annual income of $35,000 or less; the threshold increases to $45,000 for a couple and goes up by an additional $2,500 for each dependent child listed on a return, explained Marie-Christine Laguë, community liaison agent at the CAB de Farnham, which has administered the program for many years. Self-employed people and those who are filing after a bankruptcy or filing on behalf of a deceased person are not eligible. Most clinics do accept people who have fallen a few years behind on their tax returns.

The CAB de Farnham provides services in Farnham, Sainte-Sabine, Sainte-Brigide and surrounding areas. The CAB de Bedford can help residents of Bedford, Philipsburg, Pike River, Stanbridge East, Stanbridge Station, Notre-Dame-de-Stanbridge and Stanbridge Station who have declared income of $25,000 or less ($32,000 or less for a couple filing jointly). People who use the service are asked to pay $10 to cover printing costs. The CAB de Cowansville can help residents of Cowansville, Frelighsburg, Brome Lake, Sutton and surrounding areas, and the CAB des 4 Vents in Waterloo offers services there. The CAB Haut-Saint-François in Cookshire, the CAB Magog and the CAB Rediker in Stanstead offer tax assistance to residents of those regions. Some centres, including the CAB Farnham, offer at-home service to people with mobility issues.

“We work with people who are employed, who are on social assistance or who receive a pension,” said Rosalie Beaudoin-Martin, service co-ordinator at the CAB des 4 Vents. “The program has remained the same for the last 37 or 38 years, and people are really grateful to have access to it.”

Those who want to file their taxes through the CVITP are encouraged to call their local CAB. Some centres have a walk-in system, others have a locked drop box where people can place their documents and others require appointments to drop off documents. Trained volunteers, many of whom are retired accountants or math teachers, review the documents, complete the participant’s federal and provincial tax returns online and call the participant back to sign a release and pick up their original documents.

At the CAB Cowansville, people can drop off their documents during business hours from Monday to Thursday. The service is even offered year-round. “Most people come during tax season, but there are always some who are late or who have fallen behind,” said CAB Cowansville interim director Sara Martinez.

“It’s important for us to offer services in French or English. We know it’s hard for unilingual anglophones, but we do a lot of recruitment of anglophone and bilingual volunteers to keep serving people on our territory,” she added.

To connect with a tax clinic in your area, visit the Canada Revenue Agency website (canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/community-volunteer-income-tax-program.html) or call your local CAB. The deadline to file your tax returns without late fees or interest is Tuesday, April 30.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Wine producers in the Brome-Missisquoi region are breathing a sigh of relief after federal agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay and minister responsible for economic development for the regions of Quebec Pascale St-Onge announced $177 million in funding for Canadian wineries through the Wine Sector Support Program (WSSP). The first edition of the program, launched as a pilot project in 2022, doled out $166 million to winemakers across the country, aimed at supporting individual winemakers who are working on projects to increase climate resilience, build production capacity or encourage tourism.

Support was given to 105 Quebec wineries through the first iteration of the program, including 25 in the Brome-Missisquoi region, according to Francis Chechile, a spokesperson for Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.

St-Onge made the funding announcement on March 4 at Vignoble Léon Courville in Brome Lake. “Although the Canadian wine industry has experienced considerable growth in recent years, it continues to face a series of pressures that impact its financial resilience and competitiveness. These pressures include rising input prices, labour shortages, climate-related limitations and severe weather events,” she said in a statement. “Quebec has a small, innovative and growing wine industry, and the province’s wineries continue to be at the forefront of current trends and evolving tastes. Today’s announcement recognizes the importance of investing in this thriving industry, as wine growers face complex challenges to maintain a competitive advantage and continue to support local economic growth.”

Rob Taylor is the director of policy and government relations for Wine Growers Canada. He said growers “appreciate the leadership and support” of elected officials from all parties as the wine sector navigates the impact of climate change.

He noted that Canadian-made wines enjoyed an exemption from domestic excise taxes until 2022, when the World Trade Organization ruled that the exemption constituted inappropriate state support; the government and growers then had to develop a more creative way to support the local wine industry amid cheaper, higher-volume, heavily subsidized European imports. The WSSP, which distributes funding based on the production volume of each winery as a percentage of the total production of the province, is the result of that brainstorming. “Some [wineries] have increased the capacity of their vats, others have looked into weather-resistant varietals or expanded their planting, or made climate adaptations to protect the vines – there have been a lot of innovations.”

Taylor said the program is particularly important in light of the unpredictable climatic conditions British Columbia and the Maritimes have experienced in recent years. “In British Columbia, for example, you had the heat dome [in 2021], then forest fires, then an ‘atmospheric river’ which led to flooding … then, last winter, there was a damaging deep freeze, then another summer of forest fires followed by the most recent and most severe deep freeze, which we aren’t accustomed to. Those are once in a century-type events and having them happen back-to-back in the span of three or four years was unexpected. [Climate change] is happening a lot faster and more dramatically than we expected, and we have to make sure we’re producing the right grape varieties and adapting.”

Growers can apply for WSSP funding between April 1 and May 1. More information is available on the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada website.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Bromont Mayor Louis Villeneuve has taken a new approach to fighting disinformation and incivility on social media. He’s inviting the trolls – and any other constituents who’d like to have a chat – to City Hall for coffee. Any Bromont resident who would like to book a 20-30-minute morning meeting with the mayor can sign up on the city’s website.

Record numbers of mayors and city officials around the province have resigned since the 2021 election. Many, including former Gatineau mayor France Bélisle and Pierre Tremblay, the mayor of Les Éboulements in the Charlevoix region, who stepped down last week, have cited personal attacks on social media as one of the factors pushing them toward the exit – a situation Villeneuve said he found “really sad.” Other mayors around the province have made headlines by leading online crusades against social media vitriol, reading mean tweets or launching video campaigns urging more respect for civil servants. Although city officials say Bromont has been spared the worst of social media troll campaigns and internal conflict, it’s not completely isolated from it. “There’s a lot of misinformation and incivility on social media, and that is pretty much everywhere,” said Villeneuve. “The pandemic has had an impact on people’s tolerance, and they want answers now. When someone is feeling a lot of pressure, there’s nothing like dialogue.”

The coffee events are an outgrowth of the Brunchs du Maire, which Villeneuve hosted alongside city councillors in 2022 and 2023. “We met a lot of people, but there would always be one or two who would take the floor because the others were shy.” The strict decorum and formality of council meetings isn’t an ideal forum for one-on-one conversations either, he added.  “I felt like sitting down with people and taking time to discuss the issues, one citizen to another.”

He said he is eager to hear what citizens have to say, correct misinformation at the source, and find out what residents are concerned about and whether they’re happy in the city.

The first three mornings set aside for the coffee meetings – March 21, April 4 and April 18 – are already fully booked. Villeneuve said there was no “filtering process” for participants beyond ensuring that they are residents of Bromont. Citizens who want to discuss specific issues can list them on the online signup sheet. Villeneuve said he is looking forward to debates but won’t accept overt rudeness. “I trust people. People can disagree with me. You need to be able to take criticism in politics, but I check out when people start being uncivil.” 

“I have seen people [on the sign-up sheet] who have been rough on me on social media. I don’t know these people and they don’t know me – we’re just operating based on perceptions. Let’s talk!”

Bromont residents interested in booking a one-on-one meeting with Mayor Louis Villeneuve can do so on the city website (bromont.net/administration-municipale/cafe-avec-maire). They must provide their full name, address and contact information.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The planned partial clearcut of a pine grove in Brigham has been put on hold due to adverse climatic conditions, Pierre Lefebvre, director general of the municipality, confirmed late last week.

Under a forestry management plan announced in February for a 21-hectare forest owned by the town, a 2.7-hectare pine grove was supposed to be mostly clearcut, and an adjacent forested area of a little less than one hectare was intended to be partially clearcut; “maintenance gardening” including the cutting of some dead, dying or dangerously positioned trees was supposed to be carried out along hiking trails in the rest of the forest. Some residents raised concerns about what they considered a lack of public consultation and a lack of a detailed reforestation plan. An online petition calling for a moratorium on the current forestry plan and for a wider public consultation has gathered 308 signatures as of this writing.

On Feb. 28, the day before the work was scheduled to begin, a public notice was posted on the town’s website to the effect that “the work that was scheduled in the coming days in the pine grove must be rescheduled in light of climatic conditions.”

Lefebvre later told the BCN that no new date had been determined for the beginning of work. “To avoid pointless damage and protect the wood, the soil needs to be either dry or frozen, and it’s neither one right now,” he said. “We’re having a hard winter for that.” Lefebvre said town officials would meet with forestry engineers to determine a new start date. “It will be sometime in the next few months; it could be in the fall. It depends on what the engineers tell us.” 

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Eastern Townships School Board chairperson Michael Murray has criticized Education Minister Bernard Drainville’s blanket ban on mobile phones in classrooms after hundreds of students were left without a way to directly contact their parents during an evacuation on Feb. 27.

That afternoon, students at Massey-Vanier High School in Cowansville were evacuated during classes after the school received a threatening phone call. Sûreté du Québec (SQ) officers were called, and conducted a thorough search of the building, which is jointly administered by the ETSB and the French-language Centre de services scolaire Val-des-Cerfs. As of this writing, the SQ has determined that “there was no threat in the building,” but the source of the call is still being investigated, according to SQ spokesperson Sgt. Valérie Beauchamp.

“We had a situation at Massey-Vanier and immediately, the social media buzz lit up,” Murray told the BCN. “Parents got messages from their friends saying, ‘What’s this I hear about a bomb threat at the school?’ In the meantime, the police evacuate the school and the students’ cell phones are in their lockers. Parents are trying to message their kids on social media and the kids can’t answer. That just generates additional panic. It really shows the folly of a blanket ban.”

In October 2023, Education Minister Bernard Drainville issued a directive banning mobile phones in daycare centres and elementary school, high school and vocational training centre classrooms, except for situations where phones are required for pedagogical reasons, to provide support for a student with disabilities or because of a student’s state of health. At the time, Drainville argued that the phone ban, which he first proposed in August 2023, “aims to create a climate more conducive to teaching and learning in order to promote the academic success of students.” The specifics of the ban’s enforcement were left to school boards, service centres and personnel. The ban took effect in January 2024.

“At some schools, students are told to leave their phones in their lockers. Some teachers have boxes at the back door of their classroom that you put your phone into. Some schools are allowing students to use them at recess and at others it is discouraged altogether,” Murray said. Students had no opportunity to go get their phones before the school was evacuated. “We had to respect the evacuation order – you stop what you’re doing and you go outside.”

Murray said the board intended to “bring the issue to the minister’s attention when the opportunity arises.” He added that the board has “larger issues to work on, trying to recover from the strike and coping with various other challenges.”

No one from the Ministry of Education was available to comment at press time.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Quebec’s controversial state secularism legislation, known as Bill 21, which forbids authority figures including police officers and public school teachers from wearing religious symbols while on the job, has been upheld by the province’s Court of Appeals, much to the dismay of many in the English-speaking community. The appeals court panel, made up of Judges Manon Savard, Yves-Marie Morrissette and Marie-France Bich, handed down their judgment on Feb. 29.

The judges found that the law was “valid with regard to the power-sharing principles set out in the Constitution Act, 1867, and did not contradict the law, nor any pre-Confederation principle having constitutional value.” They also found that the law did not infringe on the principle of equality of the sexes or the “educational rights” of the English-speaking community of Quebec, and its uses of the notwithstanding clause were not unconstitutional. They specified that the law banned visible religious symbols in public daycare centres and primary and secondary schools, but did not affect private schools, CEGEPs or universities, and did not prevent anyone from wearing a hijab, kippa, turban, cross or similar symbol outside of a professional context.

The panel overturned a previous Superior Court ruling which found that the law infringed on the constitutional right of the English-speaking community to govern its own schools.

Premier François Legault said the ruling represented “a great victory for the Quebec nation.”

“In 2019 we made the decision to forbid people in authority from wearing religious symbols [while exercising their functions] … as a guarantee that these people are neutral,” he said in a brief French-language video message posted on Facebook. “This is a principle that unites us. We’ll continue to use the parliamentary sovereignty [notwithstanding] clause as long as it takes for Canada to recognize the choices of the [Quebec] nation. I will always fight for our nation to make its own choices,” he said.

The English Montreal School Board was one of the organizations that contested the law in court, supported by the eight other English school boards in the province, including the Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB), and the Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA).

QESBA vice president Paolo Galati said he was surprised by the judgment. “The part where the judges say they feel the law does not infringe on our right to manage and control our schools – that’s where we don’t see eye to eye,” he said. “Also, we have an important teacher shortage in Quebec, and to oppose restrictions on who we can hire is counterproductive.”

ETSB board chair Michael Murray took exception to the Legault government’s broad interpretation of parliamentary sovereignty, which the ruling upheld. “They [the government] have argued that the legislature has the final say – there are no rights; there are only permissions which the legislature can modify or revoke at any time.” He added that as far as he knows, the board has never received a complaint from a parent uncomfortable with a teacher wearing a hijab, cross or kippa.

“We maintain that the bill infringes on our right to manage and control our own schools,” Galati said, adding that the QESBA board of directors would meet to discuss further steps, which may include an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Federal justice minister Arif Virani has indicated that the federal government will support any appeal.

The Quebec Community Groups Network said it was “profoundly disappointed” with the ruling. “We believe [English] schools should have the latitude to manage their own affairs, as is the case with minority-language schools in other provinces,” QCGN president Sylvia Martin-Laforge said.

“Every time this government doesn’t know what it’s doing, they invoke the notwithstanding clause,” she added. “It is a sad statement about the climate we live in that the government feels the only way it can engineer society the way it wants is to deprive minorities of their rights. [Professionals] who want to wear the kippa or the hijab will want to go somewhere else, for sure.”

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

A citizens’ group in Brigham is raising concerns about a planned partial clear-cut of a 21-hectare forest beloved by local hikers.

Under the plan, presented by private forestry management firm Groupement forestier des cantons (GFC) at the Feb. 6 council meeting, a 2.7-hectare swath of pine forest would be clear-cut and replanted, and another 0.8-hectare stretch would be partially cut. Some trees along the hiking trails further into the forest would also be cut for safety reasons.

Mayor Steven Neil explained that the municipality received a $71,000 grant to maintain the forest from a pandemic-era provincial government program, which was later boosted to $89,000.

“People wanted better access to the outdoors, because people couldn’t see each other inside. We got this grant, we put in signage, benches, swings and things like that and we said we would get a forestry expert in to do an evaluation to help improve the forest.” At a closed-door meeting, GFC presented four scenarios to councillors; the scenario which they eventually voted on at the public meeting involved cutting down a 2.7-hectare stretch of pine, the remains of a decades-old commercial pine plantation, and cutting additional dead or dying trees along existing trails that pose a risk to hikers.

“The pine plantation is at the end of its life and it’s going to be dangerous,” Neil argued. “We had to close the trails after a storm in January. The trees are falling down, dead, dying, you can’t help but see the devastation.” Neil said the pine plantation would undergo “not a clearcut, but close to a clearcut.” The municipality intends to reclaim the wood for sale, invest the profits in forest management and replant the area with new pine, spruce and maple trees, although a detailed reforestation plan is still in development. The rest of the forest will remain open for hikers while the clearcut is continuing, “wherever there is no machinery,” Neil said, and only dead and dying trees will be cut in the rest of the forest.  

“I don’t have a reforestation plan, because once we see what’s left [after the clearcut], then we’ll figure out what to do,” Neil said. “If that forest is not replanted, I’ll give up my seat as mayor.”

Biologist and activist Annie Larose heard about the planned partial clearcut from town councillor Stéphanie Martin-Gauthier, a hiking companion. “No one was aware of anything except for me and the councillors,” Larose said. She said the plan immediately raised three red flags – “the fact that there were no previous meetings or consultations, the fact that there is no replanting plan, and the effect it will have on the temperature, our resistance to storms and invasive species; if we cut everything down, we’ll give invasive species space to grow.” She started a Facebook group and an online petition and got a group of more than 20 residents together to attend the Feb. 6 meeting and show their opposition to the forestry plan. Martin-Gauthier, who voted against the proposal due to the lack of a detailed reforestation plan, now spearheads a citizens’ committee on the future of the trails.

“I found it super interesting that there were so many people at council,” Martin-Gauthier said. “If people mobilize, we need to listen to them.”

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

For most couples, moving in together is a financial puzzle – figuring out who pays for what and how to divide everyday expenses such as the cost of hydro, internet and groceries. For tens of thousands of social assistance recipients, it’s even more complicated.

A single person on social assistance who is judged to be able to work receives $807 per month to cover everyday expenses; a couple receives a total of $1,224 per month, paid into the account of one person. Advocates for the rights of people living in poverty argue that this system is a recipe for domestic violence and financial exploitation. They say the policy leads some couples to stay apart when they would otherwise move in together to avoid having their cheques cut and maintain financial independence, while others stay together when they would otherwise split, to keep one member of the couple from ending up penniless. If a recipient is found to be “cohabiting” with a person who earns more than $20,000 per year, they lose access to social assistance payments because their “spouse” is expected to cover all of their financial needs, explained Fiona Brivilicas, the co-coordinator of Action Plus Brome-Missisquoi, a local advocacy group for people living in poverty.

The situation becomes even more complicated when people living with relatives or roommates are mistakenly assumed to be “living in a couple,” which could result in their cheques being garnished going back as far as 15 years, noted Catherine Trâgnée, spokesperson for the Front commun des personnes assistées sociales (FCPAS), a social assistance recipients’ lobby group. “You have a sword over your head – ‘If I stay over too often at my friend’s house, is it going to be considered marital life?” 

Late last year, the FCPAS women’s committee launched a petition calling on the provincial government to do away with the “notion of marital life” and treat all social assistance recipients as individuals. The petition, sponsored by Québec Solidaire housing critic Andrés Fontecilla, is expected to be tabled at the National Assembly in mid-March. Trâgnée and her colleagues hope it will influence Social Solidarity Minister Chantal Rouleau, who is said to be working on a welfare reform bill. Last year, the province established a basic income program for people with certain disabilities (“severe constraints to employment”) who have been on social assistance for more than five-and-a-half years; people covered by the program receive payments regardless of their marital status or their spouse’s employment. Advocates argue that this program should be extended to all social assistance recipients.

“Our organization was formed in 1983 and we have been fighting for this [the end of “marital life] since the beginning,” Brivilicas said. “We need to modernize the law, because in our culture, we no longer do that – automatically support the [financial] needs of someone we’re living with.” She noted that social assistance cheques are also garnished if a recipient gets a gift worth more than $100 or earns more than $200 in a month through occasional work – a condition Liberal social solidarity critic Desirée McGraw is hoping to change through a new bill allowing recipients to earn up to $15,000 annually.  “We encourage people to be resourceful, but then we penalize that resourcefulness,” Brivilicas said.

She and her colleagues emphasize that “no one dreams of living on social assistance” but people with disabilities, parents of young children, people dealing with or recovering from addictions and people in rural areas without the resources to move around can find themselves trapped there. “No one prefers living in extreme poverty over a job, especially in Brome-Missisquoi, where there’s almost no transit. If you can’t afford a car, it’s hard to imagine going to work if you have no way to get to work.”

Fontecilla and Rouleau could not immediately be reached for comment.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Sûreté du Québec plans to assign three fewer patrol agents to the MRC Brome-Missisquoi aren’t sitting well with local elected officials.

Prefect Patrick Melchior said he first learned of plans for a “reshuffle” in December 2022, and has been in discussions with public safety minister François Bonnardel for more than a year, hoping the provincial government would reconsider.

“We received this announcement with incredulity, considering that the region’s population of [permanent residents], seasonal residents and tourists has grown significantly in the past few years,” said Melchior at a press conference in Cowansville on Feb. 19.

“The last time we had a needs assessment done was in 2007, when we had 10,000 fewer residents, fewer tourists and seasonal residents and 1,000 fewer crimes than today, and yet the study found that we needed 65 officers, including 53 patrol agents, which was what we had until last year,” he said. He argued that the region is seeing “a lot of problems that we didn’t have before” as a result of the housing crisis and economic downturn, including people experiencing homelessness and mental health crises.

“We were told that [the new plan] was based on statistics from 2010 to 2021, but even between 2020 and 2024, the situation has changed,” he said. Melchior added he sent a letter to Public Safety Minister François Bonnardel asking him to take into account more recent data.

The SQ plans to add two investigators (enquêteurs) to make up for the loss of the three patrol agents (patrouilleurs), but Melchior said he doesn’t believe that’s sufficient. “Police coverage is already insufficient because our territory is too big. Two or three years ago, we asked for more people, and now they’re taking them away,” he said. “Patrol agents are often the ones who work on crime prevention, helping people who need mental health or psychosocial support, cybercrime, all the things we need addressed.” He pointed out that the MRC pays $10.4 million to the SQ for its services, regardless of the number of officers assigned, equating to 71 per cent of the total cost of the service. “I feel like we’re putting a price on public safety – how much is our safety worth?”

Melchior said he feared that fewer patrol agents on the beat might lead to longer response times.

No one from the Ministry of Public Safety was available to comment at press time. SQ spokesperson Jean Ruel told the BCN that the SQ planned to “analyze the mayors’ declaration” before making a further statement.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Action Communautaire Lac-Brome (ACLB) and the Granby–Brome-Missisquoi–Haute-Yamaska chapter of the Société Alzheimer du Québec have expanded their offer of English-language support programs for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia patients and their families at the Centre Lac-Brome.

In addition to the twice-monthly Coffee Break support group program aimed at caregivers, the society now offers weekly respite and stimulation programs for adults with Alzheimer’s and similar cognitive impairments, which give caregivers a much-needed opportunity to rest and regroup.

On Mondays from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. qualified caregivers from the Société Alzheimer spend the day with patients “doing various cognitive and physical activities just to keep their brains active,” according to Caroline Hadlock, family and respite care adviser at the Société Alzheimer.

“During that time, they’re with us, they’re safe. They have lunch with us, they do their

activities, and then their caregiver comes and brings them home. But during that five hours, the caregiver is free to do what they want to do – go grocery shopping, take a nap, go skiing, whatever makes them feel good.” ACLB can also help organize transportation to and from the activity, if necessary.

“Caregivers are the people who are taking care of the individuals with the neurocognitive impairments. If the caregivers don’t have energy, if they don’t have a break, if they don’t have that time to recharge their batteries. It becomes very difficult to take care of someone. We prioritize taking care of our caregivers to make sure that they are able to continue taking care of their loved ones and to keep them at home for as long as possible,” Hadlock said.

The first five-hour activity session was held earlier this month, according to ACLB seniors’ outreach worker Marta Gubert Gomes. There are currently six participants, although the program can accommodate as many as nine. Participants must be members of the Alzheimer Society.

“This is a well-established program, already offered in Cowansville. The difference with the programs in Brome Lake is that they are offered by people who are bilingual or anglophone,” Hadlock said.  

Gubert Gomes added that the bilingual Coffee Break support program for caregivers on Monday afternoons is ongoing. The Coffee Break program offers a “safe space” for caregivers to talk about the ups and downs and the emotional toll of caring for a person with dementia. “As a caregiver, the best thing you can do is have a support network around you to make sure that you have a lot of people there to give you a hand, and not to be scared to ask for help when you need it,” Hadlock said. To learn more about respite care and support programs offered in the region by the Société Alzheimer du Québec, call 450 777-3363. To learn more about programs for adults 50 and older and caregivers offered by ACLB, contact Marta Gubert Gomes directly at 450-204-9423.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

The English Parents’ Committee Association of Quebec (EPCA-Quebec) is raising concerns after LEARN Quebec, a provincewide organization which provides online tutoring to English-speaking students, professional development for teachers and support for community learning centres in English public schools, was apparently left out of a $300-million post-strike catchup plan announced last week by Education Minister Bernard Drainville.

Although most of the funding was earmarked for schools, through school boards and service centres, $42 million was set aside for organizations providing tutoring, literacy support or dropout prevention services. LEARN did not receive funding; the BCN asked ministry officials whether other organizations specific to the English-speaking community received funding, but that information wasn’t immediately available on Monday.

“A lot of English public schools cover vast areas and staying after school isn’t a possibility for all students due to transportation issues,” said EPCA president Katherine Korakakis. “In-person learning is best, but if [online tutoring through] LEARN works, then they should get funding. … While acknowledging the government’s commitment to addressing the challenges faced by students, EPCA Quebec expresses concern about the omission of established educational entities, such as Learn Quebec, which has a proven track record of offering services to the English-speaking communities.”

“Despite the government’s plan and media coverage indicating increased funding for homework-help organizations, LEARN, which has been providing tutoring services to the English-speaking community of Quebec for over 19 years, was not included in this initiative,” said LEARN communications manager Carolina Toteda. “If additional funds were made available, we would gladly accept them to support more families and students in need.”

Toteda said her organization has yet to discuss further funding with the ministry. LEARN offered more than 37,000 tutoring sessions in the past year and has been forced to cap registration for its online tutoring program.

By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

People experiencing homelessness in Cowansville and Farnham will be able to come in from the cold at community warming centres for the second straight year.

The Cowansville centre is open on Monday and Thursday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on the otherwise unused lower floor of the Uniprix pharmacy on Albert St. The Farnham centre, at the community centre on Rue St-André Sud, is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. On nights where the wind chill falls below -20, both centres will be open overnight from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. “We would love to have places open five days a week with longer hours, but we have budgetary concerns, and we’re doing what we can,” said project co-ordinator Marie-Andrée Pomerleau.

Pomerleau is a project co-ordinator at the Maison des Jeunes de Farnham, one of more than 30 organizations that have worked together, through the Brome-Missisquoi Homelessness Committee, to get the shelters open.

“There’s a lot of hidden homelessness in Brome-Missisquoi – people who have been couchsurfing at friends’ houses or who are in precarious housing situations [or] have lost their housing due to the housing crisis. We need to ensure people’s safety as best we can. We decided to put [the warming centres] in place to support them because there are no other resources like this in the region.”

At the warming centres, which opened in early December, people in need hang out on the couch, stock up on snacks and handy winter supplies like socks, enjoy a hot coffee, speak with support workers onsite and get referrals to other services. People under the influence of alcohol will be allowed in the centres “unless the situation is completely unmanageable,” Pomerleau said.

Pomerleau said the people using the centre are from a cross-section of society. “We see both men and women, relatively few young adults and families – the one thing they have in common is that they are people in distress. They’re not, by definition, dangerous.”

She emphasized that homelessness can happen to anyone. “We say that everyone is two pieces of bad news away from homelessness – for example, if you lose your job and lose your apartment, one thing leads to another, and you can’t get your head out of water.” According to a 2022 census of the provincewide homeless population, substance abuse, loss of housing after a hospital or rehab stay and eviction were the three most common causes of homelessness in the Estrie region.

If you would like to contribute snacks, warm clothing or other supplies to the warming centres, send a message to the Haltes-Chaleur Farnham & Cowansville Facebook page.