LJI reporter

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Residents of the Municipality of Pontiac can now book on-demand public transit with a few simple clicks.
Outaouais transit provider Transcollines has partnered with Taxi Loyal to offer rides within the municipality that can be reserved online, through a mobile app, or by phone, at least two hours and as much as 30 days ahead of the desired pick-up time.

For a cost of $5, a wheel-chair accessible taxi van will then pick up the rider at one of the dozens of stops along Highway 148 between Quyon and Aylmer, including several in Quyon’s village centre, and drop them off at their destination of choice within the municipality, or at one of a handful of stops in the Gatineau area.

Rides can be booked weekdays between 6.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m.

Chantal Mainville, communications manager for Transcollines, has said the first year of the service will act as a pilot to help the transit provider learn more about transit needs in the municipality.

“We’re going to test the hours, observe how people are going to use it, and what the most popular stops are going to be,” she said, noting the service will evolve over time to reflect these usage patterns.

Transcollines, the same organization that currently operates the fixed 910 bus line that travels from Allumette Island to Gatineau and back every weekday, has been offering on-demand transit in the municipalities of Chelsea, La Pêche, Val-des-Monts and Cantley since Nov. 2022.

The Municipality of Pontiac is the last of the five municipalities in the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais to receive the service.

“The challenge here is the size of the municipality, the way we are made. It’s not like Chelsea or La Pêche that are more dense. So that’s why it took us a long time to figure out how to provide it,” said Roger Larose, mayor of the Municipality of Pontiac.

“First we had to find the company to work with us, and that was a challenge to find a company who wanted to do the Pontiac.”

The new service was officially launched at a press conference held at the municipality’s town hall in Luskville on Tuesday morning.

“I think it’s going to help the people that don’t have a car, or who don’t like to drive, or who are too old. It’s going to give them a way to get out into the municipality, to visit people, to go shopping,” Larose said.

“We’ve got kids that have got to go to college and all that stuff. It’s going to help the students as well as the older people.”

Mainville noted the organization is planning for the 910 bus to eventually offer on-demand services when it’s not running the fixed line, and hopes to bring more taxis to serve the municipality down the road.

As for the possible expansion of on-demand transit into MRC Pontiac, Mainville said Transcollines plans to post a call for tenders in the new year to find a provider who will be able to roll out the service here.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

For weeks, local businesses, community groups and individuals across the Pontiac have been finding ways to give back to their neighbours who may need a little more support making ends meet through the holiday season.

The people facilitating this generosity, whether it be those raising money for snowsuits, collecting gifts for children, or preparing special holiday meals for those who could use a little lift, all say the need for this generosity is greater than ever.

Megan Coleman has been leading the Angel Tree Pontiac initiative for several years now and said she’s seen a jump in the number of kids signed up each year.

“I have 83 children this year, there were 72 last year, and 56 the year before that,” Coleman said, noting the requests come in from Quyon to Fort Coulonge.

“I do find they’re asking for more essential stuff. All the people with babies, they need diapers, they need wipes. It’s not necessarily fancy things they’re asking for, they do tend to ask for a lot of the basic things.”

Through the Angel Tree program, families register their children to receive a gift. Each child gets an angel with their wishlist hung on a tree at either the Giant Tiger or Canadian Tire in Shawville, as well as at Pontiac High School.

People also donate money to the program, which Coleman uses to buy other essentials, like underwear, socks, hygiene products, and school snacks that will help families in need make it through the two weeks when their kids are home from school. Requests for these types of items, she says, have become more frequent this year and last.

The Maison de la Famille de Quyon is also organizing an Angel Tree program in partnership with the Quyon Legion. Together the organizations collect financial donations from each sponsorship which are then divided evenly to purchase gifts for every angel.

Maison de la Famille director general Sara McCann says while the organization has an ongoing list of families who benefit from its various programs, including the snowsuit fund and the back-to-school program, it still receives more requests for support every year through community referrals.

“Last year we had 25 children on the program, this year we’re expecting it to be more,” McCann said, noting that, like Coleman, she’s seen more and more people adding everyday items to their Christmas wishlists, such as lunch snacks and personal hygiene products.

“The daily necessities is what they have on their wishlist,” McCann said.

While McCann’s list for the snowsuit fund is more or less steady year over year, this is not the case at the Maison de la Famille du Pontiac in Fort Coulonge.

“Every year the number of people who call in for a snowsuit just keeps jumping,” said Nadine Duval, who’s been running the program for four years, noting this year she has about 100 requests so far from families across the Pontiac.

She said the organization receives financial donations from the community throughout the year which makes it possible for her to buy the needed snowsuits. After Christmas she plans to publish a thank you to all the people who have donated to the snowsuit fund, to express her gratitude to the critical support provided by the community.

The community’s generosity is not lost on Coleman, either, who was happy to see the businesses and community groups show up once again to support Pontiac children.

“Every year I’m blown away by the amount of financial donors, gifts under the trees, and the local businesses who will message me personally and say, ‘Hey, I have a cheque for you,’” Coleman said.

She noted sponsorships for the Angel Tree program will close Dec. 15, and that there are still about a dozen angels needing sponsorship at Canadian Tire, and half a dozen at Giant Tiger.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Mavis Kluke is not afraid of dying.

“The moment that I take my last breath, it means nothing to me, because I’m assuming, at that time, I will be unconscious,” Kluke told THE EQUITY, sitting at a table in the Campbell’s Bay Golden Age Club, in the basement under Bouffe Pontiac.

“It’s the struggle before I get to that point that I would not like, because I’ve seen people who should have had an easier passing from their life.”

Through the many years Kluke has spent working in long term care homes, she’s seen the many shapes the end of a life can take.

“To me, it was very heartbreaking to watch all of these older people who are feeling useless and sick and could not be alleviated of their pain,” Kluke said.

“I always say, if I cannot pick up the spoon with the macaroni in it, one of my favourite foods, and put it in my mouth, then I want that needle.”

By “needle” Kluke is referring to medical assistance in dying (MAID), a process in which a medical practitioner, at a patient’s request, administers medication that brings about that person’s death.

It’s not a choice Kluke takes lightly. She knows that if diagnosed with a terminal illness, she would prefer a medically assisted death to the prolonged suffering the illness might cause.

“I was all for it, not just because I would think it would be the right thing for me if I was ill, but because [it would enable] the families to give their elderly family members some dignity as they passed.”

On Thursday afternoon, Kluke, both the treasurer and secretary of the Golden Age Club, was nearing the end of tidying up the club after hosting the second of two sessions about end-of-life care when she took a break to share all of this with THE EQUITY.

The workshop, which brought a group of about 20 participants together on the afternoons of Nov. 22 and Nov. 28, was organized by the Connexions Resource Centre and facilitated by therapist and grief counselor Manon Lafrenière.

Over the course of the two afternoons, Lafrenière both shared information about the three options for end-of-life care in Canada – palliative care, palliative care with sedation, and medical assistance in dying (MAID) – and invited participants to reflect on and share anxieties and discomforts with what it means to die.

Shelley Heaphy, Connexions’ community engagement and outreach coordinator for the Pontiac, said the organization decided to organize this two-day workshop after hosting two separate information sessions on the same subject at low-income seniors’ residences in the area and seeing a desire for more information about end-of-life-care in the region.

“But we didn’t want it to just be [an opportunity to] get the information and then go home with it,” Heaphy said. “We wanted to be able to answer questions, and just talk to other people who have these feelings, who are going through something similar, and to have the space to do it.”

It’s for this reason Connexions invited Manon Lafrenière to facilitate the workshop.

Lafrenière is one of 34 people in Quebec who have received a special training to help people understand whether or not they’re interested in MAID, and support them through all aspects of the process of applying for it, including everything from filling out the paperwork to having difficult conversations with their families.

In the first session, she invited participants to share what they believed dying to be.

“Misconceptions [about end-of-life care] come from your own personal fears, or your own false beliefs, so that’s why I talk about, ‘What is death?’, and, ‘How do you talk about death with your family members, including kids and grandkids?’”

In the workshop, she also offered critical information about the three options for end-of-life care.

“In all three of them, you have to have your diagnoses of an incurable disease, and it could be physical or mental,” she said.

Palliative care, she explained, involves being administered medication to help relieve pain and suffering near the end of your life, when treatment of an illness will no longer improve its condition.

Palliative sedation, she said, is offered “when it gets to a point where they can’t control or ease the pain.” In this option, a medical professional administers a medication that puts you to sleep. Lafrenière noted this is not a coma. “Medication just puts you to sleep, but does not harm the heart. The heart will stop when it’s ready to stop.”

The final option is MAID, medical assistance in dying, which has been legal in Canada since 2016, and requires a patient meets several criteria to be eligible.

“First thing, when you get your diagnoses and you’re interested in MAID, ask your doctor about MAID right then and there,” Lafrenière said. “The doctor won’t talk about it, they’re not allowed to mention it, but if you ask questions they will answer, and if your doctor is not in agreement with MAID, then find a doctor who is.”

She said therapists such as herself are qualified to help people through this process of learning about and applying MAID, and can be found through the Association québécoise pour le droit de mourir dans la dignité (AQDMD).

She said she often hears from people who feel frustrated that nobody they encounter in the healthcare system talks about end of life care, including MAID.

“It’s not right. People should know about these things so that they are able to make the proper decisions and understand what’s going on,” Lafrenière said.

For her part, Kluke said she was keen to host the workshop at the Campbell’s Bay club because the conversation was one from which she thought many in her extended community could benefit, especially those of an older generation who might be more closed to the idea of MAID because of their religious beliefs.

“I thought it was something other people should be aware of,” she said, noting even she, somebody who’s spent significant time thinking about what it means to die, learned a great deal about the process of applying for MAID and also picked up some useful strategies for talking about death with her family.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

The race for the Conservative Party candidate for the Pontiac-Kitigan Zibi riding in the next federal election finally closed its doors to new entries on Nov. 13, with a total of six people having thrown their name in the hat to be considered for the job.

Brian Goodman, Michel Gauthier, Terrence Watters, Mark Buzan, Brian Nolan, and Jean-Nicolas de Bellefeuille each confirmed they’re hoping to receive the party’s nomination, however Watters did not respond to The Equity’s questions by publication deadline, so his answers will be published in next week’s issue.

Below are brief summaries of each candidate, based on responses they submitted by email. THE EQUITY has yet to obtain official confirmation from the Conservative Party of Canada that these candidates have indeed been accepted into the nomination race.
Residents of the riding who wish to vote at the nomination meeting, the date and time of which have yet to be publicly confirmed, must be a registered member of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Michel Gauthier

Michel Gauthier, originally from Maniwaki, currently lives in the town of Bois-Franc, 15 kilometres north of Maniwaki. He ran as the Conservative Party candidate for the Pontiac-Kitigan Zibi riding in the 2021 federal election, and spent 10 years working for the Gatineau Liberal Association, both as president and as head of communications for then MNA Stéphanie Vallée. Prior to this, he spent two decades working as a journalist in Gatineau covering political news at municipal, provincial and federal levels.
He said his choice to run for the Conservative Party is a question of values.

“I am a fiscal conservative and I am member and candidate for the CPC because this party is the only one that takes into account the sound financial management of the country before making decisions whose effects can then extend over decades,” he wrote in an email.

“I also completely agree with Mr. Poilievre’s common sense approach.One of the most striking examples is the proposal to cut the GST when buying a new home.”

He said the top three subjects he’s campaigning on are his belief that the construction of the nuclear waste disposal facility at Chalk River should not continue until studies on alternative sites have been done; a review of the federal government’s teleworking policy with the ambition of making employment with the federal public service accessible to people living in rural communities; and pushing for the construction of a Gatineau tramway, which he said is an important project for the west of the city, but municipal officials will have to understand that it will require urban densification to justify the costs, not moratoria on housing development.

Jean-Nicolas de Bellefeuille

Jean-Nicolas de Bellefeuille grew up in Val-des-Monts, and says his close proximity to nature as a child showed him “how deeply nature embodies freedom.”
“It’s a perspective that guides my approach to policies – aiming for sustainable practices that protect our environment while ensuring that future generations can enjoy the same sense of freedom and connection to the land.”

He is in his second term as a councillor for the municipality of Cantley, and spent four of his seven years in that job as president of the municipal Urban Planning Advisory Committee, both experiences which he says have equipped him with “a deep understanding of the machinery of government and a steadfast commitment to public service and ethical governance.”

In his email response to THE EQUITY, he explained his work with the urban planning committee “taught him the critical importance of balancing growth with environmental stewardship, a principle that is increasingly vital at the federal level as we address national challenges such as housing, infrastructure development and climate change.”

He’s chosen to run for the Conservative Party “because its values align closely with his own vision for Canada’s future – one grounded in fiscal responsibility, individual freedom, and the efficiency of small government.”

The top three policy changes he is campaigning on are reducing taxes, which he believes are too high and therefore putting “undue strain on hard working Canadians”; building homes by cutting red tape and incentivizing development; and preserving natural heritage by expanding parks and protected areas.

“I’m committed to advocating for the purchase of additional forest land for parks, ensuring these green spaces are available for generations to come.”

Mark Buzan

Mark Buzan is originally from southwestern Ontario but currently resides in the Plateau, in Gatineau, and has lived in the Outaouais since 1997. His political career began in the late 90s when he worked as the Legislative Assistant to then-MP Jason Kenney, who went on to become Minister of Immigration under Stephen Harper and more recently, Premier of Alberta. In 1998, Buzan was also a candidate for the Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), a provincial political party that shut down in 2012. Finally, for over two decades Buzan has worked as a party organizer in the Outaouais for what he calls the conservative movement, most recently as the executive vice-president for the Conservative Party of Quebec.

“My conservative values drive me to advocate for policies that empower small businesses, reduce unnecessary government interference, and restore integrity, efficiency, and honesty to our governance,” Buzan wrote to THE EQUITY, explaining his decision to run for the Conservative Party.

He said his political priorities include reducing the high cost of living for Canadians, which he believes is caused by excessive government spending and the creation of federal taxes such as the carbon tax and capital gains tax. He also said he would work to cut back regulations preventing small business and resource development in the Pontiac-Kitigan Zibi riding, in an effort to create “a thriving local economy,” and support policies that incentivize municipalities to issue more permits for housing construction, in line with Pierre Poilievre’s commitment for bonuses on municipalities that meet their targets, this in an effort to support younger people wishing to establish roots in the region.

Brian Nolan

Brian Nolan was raised in Quebec City. He moved to Ottawa when he was 20, where he finished his studies in computer science, and has now lived in Chelsea, Que. for over 30 years.

Nolan cites his 25 years in the public service, his 15 years owning an IT consulting company and three years co-owning a Spoon Frozen Yogurt lounge in the ByWard market as experiences that played important parts in the development of his political senses, each in different ways giving him an understanding of the operations of the federal government.

In his email to THE EQUITY, he said his experience working in the public service, for example, “taught [him] the importance of transparent and accountable governance and gave me valuable insights into the complexities of policy making.”

He also said his role as vice-president and president of the Des Collines de l’Outaouais Minor Hockey Association strengthened his ties with the community, allowing him to “promote youth development and support local families.”

Nolan said he’s running to represent the Conservative Party because he believes in “the importance of fiscal responsibility, individual freedom, and the power of local communities to address local issues,” he wrote. “In short, I chose to run as a Conservative because I believe in balanced progress that respects tradition, supports hard-working Canadians, and fosters self-reliance and opportunity.”

Nolan said he would prioritize local economic development and support for small businesses, improving housing accessibility, and improving the quality of life for seniors through policies that “no longer treat them as an afterthought,” but that “ensure they enjoy their golden years with dignity, financial security, and access to world-class health care.”

Brian Goodman

Brian Goodman currently lives in Chelsea, Que., but is originally from the small town of Stonewall, Man.. He moved to the Ottawa-Gatineau area in 2008, after several years in Saskatchewan.

His political experience includes working for the Minister of Justice, Don Morgan, in the Saskatchewan Party government in 2007, as well as for Saskatchewan Conservative MP Ray Boughen on Parliament Hill. He also cites his time working with the federal government in various capacities, most recently with Canada’s export credit agency, Export Development Canada, and the dozen or so political campaigns he’s worked on in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec as critical to his political career.

“I’ve essentially been around politics and government from all angles for 15 years and would argue that very few people have the experience, knowledge, or network that I do in Ottawa,” he wrote.

In his email to THE EQUITY, Goodman said he’s running for this riding’s Conservative seat because “it pains [him] to watch the Liberals/NDP drive our country (and young people especially) ever deeper into debt, while letting housing and cost of living get out of control.”

“Conservatives are the only party that prioritizes the economy and since I work in trade, their focus on productivity and competitiveness is particularly appealing to me,” he wrote. “Closer to home, I know that Conservatives are much more in tune with rural communities.”

He said the top three policy issues he would focus on would be “economic opportunities for people in rural parts of the riding, and on competitiveness [and] productivity issues more broadly; housing and cost of living issues for both urban and rural parts of the riding; and protecting the environment of the riding, including Gatineau Park, the Ottawa River, and beyond.”

Terrence Watters

Terrence Watters did not respond to THE EQUITY’s emailed questions. However, the real estate broker and former casino manager was the candidate for the Conservative Party of Quebec in the 2022 provincial election. More can be learned about his policy priorities by visiting https://theequity.ca/candidates-take-questions-at-forum/ and https://theequity.ca/candidates-clash-at-the-winery-conversation-with-the-candidates-hosted-by-the-equity/.

Update: Nov. 27, 2024  Since this article was first published, THE EQUITY has learned that Terrence Watters has decided not to run, and Mark Buzan’s application is under review.

Five biodiversity hotspots already identified for protection in the Pontiac

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

A new Indigenous-led conservation initiative in the Outaouais is working to protect 30 per cent of the region’s land and freshwater ecosystems by the year 2030.

Leaders from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation’s natural resources and wildlife office will be working to bring together different levels of government with local environmental organizations to create a roadmap for how, and where, to create conservation areas to best protect the biodiversity across the First Nation’s traditional territory.

Currently, about 10 per cent of land in the Outaouais is protected, 7 per cent less than the global total. To meet its target, the project needs to triple the amount of protected land in this region.

This goal is in line with the 30 by 30 commitment made globally by 200 countries, including Canada, at the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal. Quebec’s Ministry of Environment committed to this target a year earlier.

Jonathan Cote is the coordinator for Kitigan Zibi’s Land Guardians program, and the spokesperson for this project.

“It’s to not sit back and wait for the government or NGOs to start the process. It’s saying, ‘Well, we have a table that we can all sit at so let’s all come together and sit at the same table,’” Cote said.

The First Nation’s Land Guardians will guide the field studies being done to understand what biodiversity exists in the region and will offer a leading voice in discussions around how to protect it.
“As Guardians we provide the technical support these projects need,” Cote said. “We’re in the middle of building more capacity to hire more guardians that can go out onto the land and share the traditional knowledge aspect of it as well.”

Cote explained the project’s name – Kidjìmàniàn – means “our canoe”, and can be translated as “paddling the same canoe,” a name fitting for a project that requires a high degree of teamwork and strategizing to reach a target now just over five years away.

“If we look at our region in the Outaouais it’s very populated. There’s a lot of private property, so that’s why it’s important to get everybody at the table,” he said.

Many of the key players who will need to be at the table for this target to be attained gathered in Kitigan Zibi to launch the project on Oct. 17. The group was also celebrating the awarding of $2 million by Environment and Climate Change Canada to the project, financial support for the first phase of the initiative secured by Pontiac-Kitigan Zibi MP Sophie Chatel.

In attendance was Pontiac warden Jane Toller, representing the MRC Pontiac, one of the five MRCs that will be partners in this initiative.

“The reason I’m excited about this project is that I think it’s very important for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to work together,” Toller said. “We can learn a lot about protecting the land from them because they are the keepers of the Earth, so to work together on this, I find it very exciting.”
The first phase of the project will involve community consultations and education sessions to bring the public on board with the project’s goals, completing an in-depth biodiversity assessment to identify which areas need to be conserved, and designing a plan to conserve the chosen areas.

Five Pontiac locations already earmarked for conservation

Some of this work is already well underway. Warden Toller said the MRC’s council of mayors received a presentation from Erik Higgins, the manager of Kitigan Zibi’s natural resources and wildlife office, at a recent plenary meeting.

Higgins said Kitigan Zibi’s Land Guardians and a team of botanists conducted preliminary species inventories across the region over the summer. The work resulted in the identification of nine biodiversity hotspots across the Outaouais, five of which are in the Pontiac.

They include the Waltham escarpment, a piece of land on Allumette Island, and three other locations along the Ottawa River where rare plant species were detected. Higgins said all five Pontiac areas are on public lands.

“This makes [conservation] easier in the sense that no one lives there, but then there are other rights, for example forestry rights, that could be impacted.”

All nine areas were recently submitted to the Quebec government’s call for proposals for protected areas.

“Our goal was really to do all the mapping and have the conversations before proposing areas, but because of the call for projects we felt that if we missed that opportunity we might not get a second one,” Higgins said, explaining the province will review them, evaluate them against its own development objectives, and then submit them to a public consultation period.

“When you look at 30 per cent in the Outaouais, what we’ve proposed is a drop in the bucket, and so that’s why we’re hoping to do a more in-depth analysis to look at where some larger protected areas could be.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Davidson resident Jean-Marc Soucie was about a decade into his 34-year career as a Hydro Quebec lineman (and later, supervisor) when he learned what it was like to be on the receiving end of a damaging storm, rather than the guy who comes in to restore order afterwards.

He was living in Aylmer at the time, when a bad storm damaged his house and car, and destroyed his swimming pool. It was at least 48 hours before he was able to return to his home.

“Then I found out what it was to be a victim of all of these storms, so I understand what the people go through because I went through it,” Soucie said.

“But it’s nothing compared to what them people in the Carolinas are living right now. Some people have lost everything. Their house. Their clothes. Their food. They’ve even lost their relatives that drowned. It’s pretty bad over there.”

Soucie was one in a small group of Pontiac men who spent the first three-or-so weeks of October in North Carolina, working to bring power back to the approximately three million people who were without electricity following Hurricane Helene.

The others included his brothers Claude Soucie, Denis Soucie, and Lawrence Gagnon.

Jean-Marc Soucie spent his career doing storm cleanup across eastern Canada and the United States. After retiring in 2012, Soucie was invited to join a workforce of semi-retired hydro technicians employed by Holland Power Services who get called in to do massive hydro restoration projects after high-intensity storms wreak havoc.

The first place Soucie was sent was North Carolina, to clean up damage caused by Tropical Storm Michael in Oct. 2016. As the job was wrapping up, the company asked for volunteers to go straight to the Bahamas for another job.

“So I put my hand up after my wife gave me the okay, and I went to the Bahamas, so we were gone 25 days,” Soucie chuckled. “That’s when I said, ‘You know, I like this gig.’”

Now, Soucie is the general manager for the company’s Iroquois division – one of five it has across eastern Canada.

On this most recent trip to North Carolina, Soucie and a crew of 760 workers with Holland Power Services were called in a day before the hurricane hit, and spent the night waiting out the storm in the hotel.

“We didn’t know what to expect. We were listening to the news, and watching our phones and all of that,” Soucie said. “And then everything went black because we didn’t have any more power. Communication was out because quite a few telecom towers were out. So we woke up the next morning to see all the damage that the hurricane had caused, and then as the days went on, we found out how bad it was.”

Holland Power Service’s vice-president of operations Steve Hansen was also working in North Carolina this month.

“In this case we were seeing things like a 150-foot tall, full-size oak tree, complete with its root ball, that’s knocked down an entire line,” he said, describing the damage crews woke up to the morning after the storm. “There were whole sections of road that were missing.”

Soucie and the group of 118 employees he was responsible for were working mostly in the North Carolina mountains, in both Asheville and Hendersonville – challenging terrain that didn’t make the already difficult work any easier.

“The worst thing that happened is the communications were down. We had a hard time finding where we needed to go, because we rely on our phones to go to addresses,” Soucie said, noting the washed out roads and fallen trees didn’t make getting around any easier.

While in the field, workers were warned to beware of a certain kind of rattlesnake, a dangerous red-headed spider, and ticks, a task Soucie said became more anxiety-inducing when evening would fall, making it harder to see where he was stepping.

Hansen said beyond the obstacles created by the destroyed landscape, the unfamiliar climate often adds an additional challenge to the long work days.

“Coming from a Canadian climate into the Carolinas, the heat and humidity are very high,” he said.
The men worked 16-hour days starting at 6 a.m. At the end of their shift, they would all gather under a tent for a hot buffet-style meal provided by the host utility company, and then usually be in bed by 10 p.m..

Soucie said work was always on the mind, even when he wasn’t actually on the job.

“You have to try to help the people the best you can and the best way we can do that is to put the power back on so they can have something as close to a normal life as it can be.”

In one location where his crew was working, only four of the town’s 64 homes were left standing after the flooding had receded.

Soucie added that in his particular area, 111 people had drowned and 1,000 people were still unaccounted for by the time he was leaving.

“You’re astonished by it and you feel hopeless because you wish you could help in other ways but you don’t have the equipment to do it,” he said.

Hansen said the frequency and intensity of storms varies from year to year, based on all of the climatic factors including the warmth of the ocean, whether it’s an El Nino year, and what the gulf currents are doing.

“But this year has certainly been predicted to be a higher than normal year for number of storms that make landfall, and thus far that is proving to be true, sadly,” he said. “As the climate shifts we are seeing a different set of challenges than when the company was formed a number of years ago.”

Hansen noted the workers do not receive any kind of trauma training, but do receive benefits and access to a call line if they need to process some of the devastation they are bearing witness to.
Soucie, however, said his preferred way of unwinding once he gets home is fairly simple.

“You try to get a good night’s sleep, and have a good beer,” he said.