Sophie Kuijper Dickson

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI reporter

The MRC Pontiac’s council of mayors returned from a month-long summer break on Aug. 20, voting to accept the hiring of Andrea Lafleur as the MRC’s new finance director and to award a recycling contract.

Lafleur, the current director general of Otter Lake, will take over the position Sept. 2. It has been vacant since the departure of the MRC’s longtime director Annie Vaillancourt in May. 

“She brings about 15 years worth of director general experience from a municipality within the MRC, which is fantastic,” said MRC assistant director general Terry Lafleur, who bears no relation to Andrea and was not involved in the hiring process. 

He said the MRC reviewed around six candidates for the position before landing on Lafleur, whose experience and relationships developed over that time made her stand out.

 “She has that management experience we need because part of the finance job [is having] four individuals under them [ . . . ] there’s her accounting experience, plus knowing how to manage public funds,” he said. 

He said his experience working with Andrea during his tenure as Otter Lake municipal inspector, and then again as a mayor, makes him believe she will be a good candidate. 

“It’s a little bit different coming from a municipality to an MRC, we’re definitely more people in the building, but I have no doubt she’ll fit in,” he said.

Mayors award recycling contract 

Also at last Wednesday’s meeting, mayors voted to award a two-year recycling storage and transportation contract to Crush Waste Management, the company that now owns the former McGrimmon dump outside Shawville, at a value of $362,369.15 plus taxes. The contract begins Jan. 1, 2026 and ends Dec. 31. 2027. 

The contract will see the company provide the MRC with front-end loader containers and roll-off bins to hold collected recycling, as well collect and transport these bins to the sorting facility in Gatineau. 

MRC waste coordinator Nina Digioacchino said while certain municipalities conduct their own recycling collection service while others use a transfer site, all municipalities use the front-end loader and roll-off bins.

“All municipalities have a need for some front-end loader or rolloff container servicing whether for their transfer sites, common pad drops, or for schools,” she wrote in an email.

The contract, combined with the door-to-door collection contract awarded at June’s meeting to Location Martin-Lalonde Inc., means the MRC now has all of its recycling management needs taken care of and is ready to begin door-to-door collection in a handful of municipalities starting in January. 

Digioacchino said residents of certain municipalities will receive recycling bins in the coming weeks and months, but they are not to begin using them quite yet. 

“A letter has to go out to all the residents that are going to be receiving bins, to tell them ‘You will be receiving a bin, but don’t use it until Jan. 1, 2026,” she said in an interview. 

The province’s new producer-responsibility recycling program, started this year, saw non-profit Éco Entreprises Québec (EEQ) take over the sorting and sale of recyclable materials. The program covers all municipal costs associated with recycling collection.

“Although yes, the allocation of contracts are part of the MRC mandates, this will not incur costs to municipalities,” wrote Digioacchino. 

As for the possibility of an MRC composting contract, Digioacchino said the MRC cannot make it happen before Jan. 1 because it does not currently hold the competency to make decisions on composting contracts on behalf of municipalities. 

“We still legally need to wait a 90-day period before we have the competency
[ . . . ] and thus that would not leave the time for a tender document to publish,” she said. 

She said municipalities now have enough information to proceed with individual collection contracts for organic materials while the MRC negotiates a local composting platform. 

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI reporter

A 465-acre piece of land northeast of Ladysmith was officially designated as a dark sky preserve by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) earlier this month, making it the first place in the national capital region to receive this certification. 

This designation is given to areas or pieces of land where artificial lighting is very limited and strictly controlled, and where active measures are in place to educate the public about the importance of reducing light pollution. 

This moment has been a long time coming for Steve Durand, who began the process of applying for this designation for his land, which he calls LeTerrain, over five years ago. 

When he moved to the La Pêche property from Hudson, New York, about a decade ago to begin a new life off-grid, he was in awe of the enormity of the night sky. 

“My first few nights here, I was just blown away by the stars. I grew up in cities, so just the feeling I had seeing that [sky] was joyous and foreign and incredible,” Durand said. 

Since then he has been trying to find the best way to share the wilderness of his property with other people. 

“My idea when I first got here was basically getting revenue from sharing this great resource – the beautiful forests, sharing the trail network, just sharing, because I don’t know, what am I going to do alone here?”

Applying to become a dark sky preserve was one in a series of efforts he has been making to preserve wilderness and to help people reconnect with it.

First, he started with cabin rentals, then he tried to develop a seasonal membership model, and has since moved to renting out all cabins on the property to larger groups for retreat purposes. 

But early on in this process, he realized obtaining the dark sky designation would be key to highlighting what is unique to his completely undeveloped land. 

He created the non-profit organization called Earth and Sky Foundation with his brother and La Pêche councillor Claude Giroux, who was keen on making this designation happen. 

“We needed to get the municipality on board, because they have to really support it. [ . . . ] With the dark sky park comes working hand in hand with the RASC and the municipality moving forward for generations to keep light pollution down here,” Durand said. 

“So really, it’s a concrete protection of lighting, which is really protection of wilderness. I don’t know that there’s another way that a private individual or organization can create a protected zone recognized by the government, other than to create a dark sky park.”

Key to this designation is that the park be open to the public. For only $20, visitors to LeTerrain are granted access to the vast network of hiking trails that climb the many hills on Durand’s land, as well as night-time access if they wish to do some stargazing. 

“There’s a big awareness and education element in it,” Durand said, noting part of what he’s hoping to share with visitors is the awareness of how connected dark skies are with the protection of wilderness, and also just create a simple place for people to reconnect with nature.  

“It’s just creating a space to come, bring a chair, bring a hammock, and look up. That’s all you need. [ . . . ] People need help these days. They need to heal a little bit. They’ve been so disconnected from the wilderness, and I believe that that disconnect goes right down to a fundamental soul level.”

He has plans in the works to do an official launch of the dark sky park over Labour Day weekend, which will include a tour of the night sky guided by a local star-enthusiast, something he hopes to offer on a semi-regular basis.

“It’s one thing to just behold the stars, but it’s another thing to sort of, with a tour of the stars and the planets, you kind of place yourself within it in a relative sort of sense, in the universe, which is a kind of a profound thing I was never able to do before coming here.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI reporter

MRC Pontiac is nearing the end of its work developing a climate action plan for the region that could be used as a guide to help local municipalities adapt to climate change. 

The end product will offer municipalities strategies for both how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions they produce, as well as for to protect their residences from the impacts of climate change. 

Kari Richardson, environment manager with the MRC, has been working with a consulting firm for over a year to develop this action plan. She says she expects it will be done by the end of 2025. 

“[It’s] to improve [municipalities’] public security and safety policies, or change their regulations with regards to flood plains. I mean, obviously there’s provincial legislation for those things, but [it’s] just to, at the municipal level, be thinking about some of those things as well,” Richardson said. 

This spring the consulting firm met with a small group of leaders from various local sectors to better understand priority areas of concern this plan should work to address. 

Based on those workshops, it was determined that local infrastructure, transportation, renewable energy, waste management, civil security and emergency management, urban planning and green infrastructure, local economy and local food, and governance and mobilization were the key areas on which this action plan should focus. 

The firm then developed a public survey, which closed last week, to better understand what tangible actions within those priority areas residents wanted to see included in a local climate adaptation plan, and there will be additional public consultations done before the plan is finalized. 

“Our job is to be a support to the local municipalities, [and] help them help their residents,” Richardson said. “What is the technical support they need to make sure the public is safe, and to make sure their municipal infrastructures are maintained? That’s really what it’s about.”

Rural communities more vulnerable, report finds

A report published by the federal government in 2023 found Canadians living in rural and remote communities are more vulnerable to climate change and encounter more challenges when trying to adapt to mitigate its impacts. 

The synthesis report, titled “Canada in a Changing Climate,” looks at research published since 2017 that offers insight into what impacts climate change is having on Canadians, and how governments are doing when it comes to adaptation. 

“Compared with urban areas, rural and remote communities – including those located in northern Canada – experience higher risks to health, safety and well-being from critical infrastructure decline or failure,” the report found. “This is due to their geographic isolation, reliance on limited access points into and out of their communities, and limited access to services.”

The report also highlighted that rural economies, often dependent on industries such as agriculture and natural resource extraction, are more sensitive to a changing climate, “as they rely on favourable weather conditions and are vulnerable to extreme weather.” 

The report emphasizes municipal governments are those that will be most effective in developing and implementing action plans to help protect residents from these threats. 

It said that while many municipalities across the country have been developing adaptation plans, the implementation of these plans is slow, and even more so in rural communities.

One significant barrier to effective adaptation, according to the report, beyond a lack of financial resources, is a lack of human resources capacity, “often more evident in communities and organizations that are most vulnerable to climate change risks, including in rural, northern and Indigenous communities.”

Richardson said the MRC was given the green light to use some of a previous round of FRR funding from the province’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to hire consultants to develop this plan, and has been working with MRC Papineau and MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais to do so. 

While each MRC will have its own plan that reflects the unique challenges on its territory, teaming up with neighbouring counties made the plans’ development more cost-efficient, according to Richardson. 

She said because the MRC got moving on this work before the province had announced funding specifically for the purpose of developing plans like these, the MRC will be able to use the $1 million or so it has since received to support the implementation of the adaptation plan, which Richardson said is often the more costly work.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI reporter

On the evening of Sunday, Aug. 3, Chichester resident Sean Poirier got the phone call of every parent’s nightmares.
His 21-year-old son Cole Poirier was on the line, screaming in pain and calling for help.

“He told me he was hurt really bad on his four-wheeler,” Sean said. “It was a very hard conversation because I can’t hear him because the service is very spotty. He said ‘Fort William’ but I couldn’t get any more information about what happened.”

Sean jumped in his car and raced to the old Fort William hotel on the Ottawa Rier, in Sheenboro. When he got there, he saw no sign of his son, so continued driving the roads until he arrived at the scene of the accident.

According to the Sûreté du Québec report, Cole and an oncoming vehicle collided with each other on chemin Perrault as they were rounding a bend in the road.

Sean said the accident damaged the car and sent Cole flying into the ditch. Police say the driver of the car suffered minor injuries.

“When I came around the corner, the first thing I saw was a smashed up car,” Sean said. “I’m shouting, ‘Where’s my son?’ and they pointed down the road. I ran down there and I saw him in the ditch.”

Sean said when he finally reached his son, only 15 minutes after he had first gotten his call just after 6 p.m., he found him lying amidst the jagged leftovers of the brush that had once lined the road, which had been cut down to a mat of sharp, stumpy spears.

“I don’t know how he landed where he did. God was looking after him. He landed in a spot where he couldn’t even put his hands down to pick himself up because there were spikes,” Sean said.

“I saw him, and I saw his foot. His leg was turned around like a rope and the bones were sticking out six, seven inches everywhere. And there was a huge blood pool. It was just the worst site.”

Sean noticed Cole was shirtless, and then realized his son had used his own shirt as a makeshift tourniquet to tie off his leg above the injury in an attempt to prevent further blood loss. Taking Cole’s lead, Sean removed his own belt to do the same.

“I wouldn’t have put the belt on him if I didn’t see that shirt on him. I never would have even thought about it,” Sean said, expressing awe at his son’s instinct, and ability, to perform critical first aid on himself in that way after having been thrown some 30 feet into the ditch.

Sean said an ambulance arrived he figures about 30 minutes after he first got the call from Cole. He knows Cole called 9-1-1 immediately after the accident, before even calling his own father, and then called 9-1-1 again after the call to his father.

The second call to 9-1-1 lasted about 16 minutes, according to Cole’s phone records.

The ambulance rushed Cole to the Pembroke Hospital, and according to Sean, on its way there was stopped by the police heading to the scene of the accident, who wanted to verify Cole’s ID. This, for Sean, is just one of several points of frustration he has with the emergency response to Cole’s accident.

Dispatching challenges

Sean’s other greater frustration is that no fire department was ever dispatched to the accident, when he knows many of the firefighters in the Pontiac Ouest department live in the area where the accident happened.

“A lot of the volunteers, they live in Chichester, Sheenboro, they’re all there and they’re all questioning why they weren’t dispatched,” Sean said.

“They have the training to control the site and put that strap around his leg. The fire department is usually first on scene. It wasn’t a four-wheeler that went off the road, it was a collision. The air bags in the car went off,” he continued, listing reasons he believes having firefighters respond to the scene would have helped.

“It was lucky the outcome came out as it is. He’s alive. But I’d like to look into this for some other future kid that this happens to down the road, and nobody shows up,” Sean said.

Glynn Fleury is chief of the Pontiac Ouest fire department that should have been dispatched to the call. Following Cole’s accident, he called his dispatcher at the MRC des Collines to understand why his department was not deployed.

What he learned was that his firefighters were not dispatched because Cole called 9-1-1 with his Ontario cellphone number.

“When Cole dialed 9-1-1 to ask for an ambulance, he was obviously using an Ontario dispatcher, because of his 6-1-3 area code,” Fleury said. “It doesn’t matter if you dial for fire, ambulance, police, if you have a 6-1-3 cellphone, you’re going to Ontario first.”

Fleury said when Cole dialed 9-1-1, he asked for an ambulance, so the Ontario dispatcher transferred the call to a Quebec ambulance dispatcher in Gatineau, not to the fire department dispatcher in MRC des Collines.

“Our protocol is we’re dispatched to a fuel spill, a fire, an airbag deployment, injuries, a high speed crash on the 148.” He said if the call had been transferred to MRC de Collines dispatchers, his department would have been automatically called in, given that the airbags in the car had been activated.

“Mostly 90 per cent of the people [in the Sheenboro area] have Ontario area codes, and it’s stressful because when you dial 9-1-1 for a fire, you get an Ontario dispatcher that transfers the information to Quebec, and that’s where the delay is, for about 10 minutes.”

Fleury said firefighters have level two First-Aid certifications, but are not first responders.

“If we would have got called, the only thing we could do is comfort the young lad and wait for an ambulance, but we don’t have the capabilities or equipment to even put him on a backboard.”

Fleury advised residents to get themselves an 8-1-9 number.

“You’ve got to realize, when you’re dialing 9-1-1, automatically ask for Quebec.”

Doctors say Cole saved his own life

Sean said once at the hospital, a doctor told Cole he had saved his own life – that if he hadn’t attached his shirt around his leg in the way he had, he would have been dead before the ambulance got there.

This truth, for Sean, is both difficult to look in the eyes, because it indicates how close he was to losing his son, but is also a point of immense pride for him, evidence of his son’s ability to keep himself alive.

Cole was put into an induced coma in Pembroke, to help manage the pain and make it possible for doctors to get a proper look at his injury. He was soon sent to a hospital in Ottawa, where doctors made the decision to amputate his right leg, below the knee.

Sean says when Cole woke up, groggy from his coma, he couldn’t yet talk, so he was given a pencil and notepad.

“The first thing he writes is, ‘How’s my leg?’ And we had to tell him then,” Sean said. “He just closed his eyes, you could see all his tears coming out, it was horrible.”

Sean describes Cole as an outdoorsman. He works a construction job in Pembroke where he is well loved, and spends much of his time helping his dad maintain his property in Nichabau. He said the long recovery from this accident will be difficult.

He is currently working with a lawyer, who is trying to help ensure Cole has access to proper insurance and medical care he needs to heal. He said police said an investigation into the incident will be difficult, as it happened on a dirt road, and the vehicle tracks were not preserved.

While the journey to recovery will be a long one for Cole, Sean said he wanted to share his story to offer a lesson in the importance of wearing a helmet, and the dangers associated with the lack of cell phone coverage in the area.

“It’s just for people to be aware, and maybe they can complain about it. ‘Hey there’s a lot of accidents, there’s no cell service,’” Sean said.

“And about the importance of wearing a helmet. If he didn’t wear a helmet he would be dead. Helmets save lives.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI reporter

The body of a Quyon man who has been missing in the Ottawa River since the evening of July 27 has been recovered after an extensive police search. 

According to an update from MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais police, the man was located by Sûreté du Québec divers at around 12.45 p.m. today, July 29.

“It took police a good hour to get the victim to shore, at which point he was confirmed dead,” said police spokesperson Josée Forest. 

Police are not releasing his name at this time. 

According to a Monday morning press release from the police, the 53-year-old man jumped into the water from his pontoon boat around 5:30 p.m. on Sunday evening to try to help a woman who appeared to be in distress near Mohr Island, a couple of kilometres downriver of Quyon.

The woman was rescued by another person and is doing well, Forest said Monday.

The man, however, was not wearing a life jacket, so sank underwater.

She said an intensive search was quickly launched by boaters and firefighters from Pontiac and Ottawa, and that the Ottawa Police searched the area well into the night. Police from the MRC des Collines and the Sûreté du Québec continued the search on July 28 and 29. 

Forest said a coroner’s inquest will be conducted to establish the cause and circumstances of the drowning, but that for now, the evidence indicates the death was accidental.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI reporter

Last week, just over a month after sharing the news that Quyon’s Maison de la Famille had lost its biggest funder, the social service centre’s four board directors provided an update on their efforts to secure the new funding needed to keep the centre’s doors open long-term.

“At our last meeting, we had no idea. We had to really dig and find out how bad things are or how good things are, and so we did. And I’m not going to lie. It was dire,” board director Shannon Purcell told those in attendance at the July 29 public meeting. “We didn’t sink. And I’m not going to lie, we could have.”

In June the directors shared that the centre’s former director general had failed to secure the $200,000 two-year grant from the province’s Ministère de la Famille that has historically been used to pay salaries, and that as a result, the board had to let go of the family centre’s employees.

Since then, two of the employees have been volunteering their time to keep the centre’s doors open.

Purcell said she and the board’s three other members – Hollie Leach, Carolyn Kenney and Ashley Carson – have been working non-stop to get the family centre’s financial and administrative files in order so the non-profit can eventually re-apply for the grant, but that they are not sure when that will be.

Purcell shared the board has successfully reopened communication channels with the ministry, and is looking at setting up a meeting to discuss next steps.

“[It’s] to discuss where we go from here. Yes we didn’t get the funding for this year, but what can we do,” Purcell said, noting Pontiac MNA André Fortin has been helping them navigate the ministry’s demands.

“One of our reasons why we didn’t get our money is that part of our roof needs to be replaced [ . . . ] There’s a little bit leaking, so that was a problem,” Leach said, noting they’re looking for local support to get this fixed.

Board members said the non-profit still had the basic funding needed to keep running its programs, including the snowsuit fund, the playgroup, as well as the back-to-school program, 25 per cent of which is covered by United Way.

The regular $20,000 or so that the United Way usually provides in general funding, not tied to any programs, was not renewed this year.

“Considering the loss of the funding from the ministry, our board decided it was too risky to invest and then maybe see the community centre closed,” explained United Way representative Émilie Charron Pilotte at the community meeting.

Hoping to raise $100K

The family centre board is working hard to find additional funding sources to continue paying the operational costs of keeping the building open.

Longtime family centre employee Louann Gibeault said, however, that paying any salaries would depend on the board being able to meet its fundraising target of $100,000, which she admitted was unlikely. Gibeault has been volunteering her time to keep the centre running since she was laid off in late April.

Since beginning fundraising just over a month ago, the family centre has collected about $10,000 in community donations. This amount has since been used to pay off old bills.

“The funding we’ve made so far from our fundraisers have pretty much paid 90 per cent of our expenses and bills and things that needed to be paid and up to date,” Gibeault said, emphasizing how grateful she was for the support the community has shown so far.

She said the centre does not expect to live off donations in the long-term, but this support is needed immediately to keep its doors open while the board works to re-establish more significant funders.

“People are helping. The community is helping. We’re going to get there, we will, we just need all of the support,” Gibeault said.

An additional $3,000 donation from the Quyon Lions Club has made it possible for the board to cover the family centre’s operating expenses for three months, while it works to stabilize itself.

An accountant is working on reviewing the non-profit’s finances, and preparing a financial statement for an audit to be done.

Directors said this will be ready in about a month, and the results will be presented at their next annual general meeting, which they are planning to host in September.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson.- LJI reporter

A powerful thunderstorm left thousands of Pontiac residents in the dark last week and into the weekend after it tore through the region on the evening of Thursday, July 24, bringing with it a downpour and strong winds. 

The municipalities of Pontiac, Bristol, Clarendon, Portage du Fort and Shawville were hardest hit, with around 5,000 homes without power immediately following the storm, thanks to the many downed trees and power lines across the region. Some 21,000 homes across the Outaouais were also hit with power outages caused by the storm. 

It wasn’t until Friday evening, and for some, Saturday morning, that most power was restored to Pontiac homes. 

“It was pretty widespread,” said Clarendon mayor Edward Walsh on Friday morning, noting his crews were out all night to clear fallen trees from the roads and from peoples properties. “The Shawville area seemed to have taken it hard.” 

Shawville mayor Bill McCleary said Hydro-Québec restored power to the Pontiac Hospital in the early hours of Friday morning, and that the town’s emergency generator was used to power the town’s well and water tower, but not its springs. 

“The springs are the town’s main drinking water source, and we use the well when the springs can’t keep up, so now we’re just on the well,” he said, adding residents should have plenty of water. On Friday morning the municipality had yet to lift the boil water advisory it had had in place since July 18 which, combined with the power outage, meant many residents did not have access to drinkable water.

The advisory was however lifted around 1 p.m. on Friday, which the municipality was unable to communicate with residents by way of its regular notification and emergency communications system because it did not have the power needed to run the internet at its town hall. 

‘It’s coming up here more’

Clarendon resident Wally Whelen was among those considering themselves lucky in the storm’s aftermath. 

He and his wife were in Renfrew when the storm touched down at their home on Radford Road, but when he finally got back on Thursday evening, he was shocked to see the wind had snapped the hydro pole on his property, which he found laying on the ground. 

A large branch had also broken off the tree in front of his house and was laying across the power line connecting his home to the grid, slowly pulling down the hydro pole across the road. 

“It’s hard to know what’s going on. Is it all this environmental stuff and that that’s causing this or what?” he wondered, looking up at his broken tree on Friday afternoon. 

“It’s getting more and more. It seems like that,” he said, referring to what he has noticed to be an increased frequency of severe storms in the area. “You heard about this, it used to be down in the states. But now it’s coming up here more.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI Reporter

The Municipality of Pontiac has received $210,000 from MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais to finance some much needed maintenance it has planned for its Luskville and Quyon parks this summer.

The money was awarded at the MRC’s most recent council meeting on May 21. It is part of the province’s FRR stream 3 of funding made available for MRCs to disperse for projects that promote regional development.

“Each municipality will have $210,000 for one major project,” MRC des Collines warden Marc Carrière said, explaining how the provincial funding is distributed through his MRC.

“The main goal is [to improve] the quality of life of the citizens, so we were quite happy when Pontiac submitted this project [for the funding].”

Pontiac mayor Roger Larose said while the municipality was originally hoping for $250,000, the funding will still make it possible for the municipality to roll out the first phase of upgrades to some key infrastructure in both parks.

In Luskville, the municipality will use it to install a dog park, so dogs are no longer roaming free across the ball field, which Larose said was causing problems; to move the existing pétanque courts to where the ice rink currently stands; and hopefully to move the ice rink’s location to the yard next to the Paroisse Saint-Dominique in the village of Luskville, where it will be more accessible to the kids who attend the elementary school across the street.

“If everything goes good it should be moved. We’re not quite done the deal yet but so far it’s looking good,” Larose said.

Luskville park upgrades will also include insulating the current service building so the washrooms can be used year-round.

In Quyon, planned upgrades include installing a net around the ballfield and a shelter for players not on the pitch, as well as sprucing up the washrooms to tie them over until the municipality can find money for more substantial upgrades.

“I don’t want to waste a pile of money on buildings we’re not sure if we’re going to keep or not, but at the same time we need to have decent washrooms,” Larose said.

“It’s just to make sure everything is working good for now, and from there we’re going to go get more money next year.”

He said four summer students will start working for the municipality and will be spending a big portion of their time working on the parks.

Waiting on government grant

As for phases two and three of upgrades to both parks, the plans for which were first presented to the public at consultations hosted by the municipality this spring, Larose said there are minor delays.

“We were going to apply for the [provincial] grant, but the government didn’t renew the grant right away, so we’ve got to wait until they come back with the grant,” he said, regarding the news that the government would not be investing in the Plan québécois des infrastructures (PQI) that funds projects like the Municipality of Pontiac’s until 2026.

The municipality has committed to borrowing $300,000 by way of a borrowing bylaw to be able to apply for the grant, once it becomes available.

In the meantime, the municipality is taking a little more time to finalize plans for phases two and three of the park upgrades.

“We still have some changes to make, we didn’t really finalize nothing yet. Even last week we were talking to people who came up with new [ideas],” he said.

“But that’s not a big change there, it won’t take long.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI Reporter

A year and a half after the Pontiac user committee re-established itself in the region with the mandate of advocating for better health services for this corner of the Outaouais, it’s finding its services are still little known to residents. 

“We definitely need people to know that we’re there for them, for their complaints,” said committee president Jennifer Larose. “They can call us and we can get them help.”

The seven-member committee returned to the Pontiac in Nov. 2023, after a six-year hiatus. Its purpose is to work with the three resident committees in the region to ensure proper living conditions for people living in long-term care facilities and advocate, more generally, for the rights of all who access health and social services administered by local healthcare authority CISSSO. 

Quebec law upholds 12 key rights for users of its health and social services network, which include the right to receive services in English, and the right to lodge a complaint. Part of the committee’s mandate is to ensure these rights are being respected, but it relies on complaints from users of the services to fulfill this mandate.

“Now we’re back, and we want to make sure that we put a face to the names, so people can know there’s help out there,” Larose said. “We’re not just there for the complaints but we’re also there to help people [navigate the system].” 

The committee’s secretary treasurer Bruno St-Cyr travels to Gatineau a few times a year to meet with the presidents of other Outaouais user committees to compare notes and push CISSSO administrators to take action on certain key challenges. 

“If we have any issues, any problems or concerns in Pontiac, we can address that to the committee there,” St-Cyr said. “And sometimes we have the visit of Mr. Bilodeau, who is the director general of the Outaouais.” 

He said the committee’s current concerns include the quality of the food served to people in hospitals and in long-term care homes, something the Pontiac user committee has already expressed to CISSSO; the lack of occupational therapists and psychologists in the Pontiac; and the need for more wheelchairs in hospitals across the region. 

“We don’t have power, but we can influence or guide certain conversations to address the critical holes we see in services being provided,” St-Cyr said.

Anybody wishing to register a complaint or concern with the user committee can reach it by calling 819-647-3553 extension 252537.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI Reporter

The Pontiac Forest Products Producers Board is on a lifeline, its management shared at its most recent AGM, pointing to the dwindling numbers of local producers paying levies to the organization and the decrease in wood being pulled out of the bush as factors making it impossible for the marketing board to break even year over year.

“We are kind of in a financial pickle,” said the board’s general manager Cash Allard at the annual gathering at St. Paul’s Anglican Church hall in Shawville on Apr. 16.

“This year we may be okay, we might make a few dollars, but we do anticipate going negatively each year, until we get a mill in the area.”

The board, which currently has 77 members, helps local loggers harvesting private lots in the Pontiac get their wood to market at the best price possible.

In exchange, members pay the board a levy on the wood they sell, which helps the board keep its lights on and pay the salaries of the general manager and office manager Stephanie Mayhew working to support the producers.

While membership is up by 10 people since 2023, it’s down from 91 in 2021, and according to Allard, still far from the membership levels the board needs to break even.

“To break even at the marketing board, without getting any assistance from anyone else, we would need to sell 45,000 tonnes more, and that’s a lot,” Allard said, describing a more than 50 per cent increase in production from the 80,000 tonnes produced this year.

“Five years ago we were only 25,000 tonnes away from that mar. When Smurfit-Stone was here, we were way over.”

He said at a bare minimum, the board needs to increase its membership by 10 producers in the next year which, at an average of 1,000 tonnes of wood per producer, would bring in additional $20,000 in levy fees for the board.

This, according to local producer Matt Dagg, is no easy feat. The precarious nature of the local industry means lenders are less inclined to finance large equipment purchases, which makes it challenging for new producers to get into logging.

As you mention forestry in this area, any financial assistance you could get, they don’t touch it [ . . . ] because of the fact that it’s a risky business,” Dagg said.

Allard said on top of this, to qualify as a producer, loggers need to own at least four hectares of bush, which makes it difficult to bring in producers from elsewhere.

To make ends meet for the time being, the board passed a resolution to put a pause on collecting the rolling fund contribution from producers, which is 25 cents per cubic meter sold, and putting that fee instead towards financing its own operation.

“So we’re not increasing the levy but instead we’re going to redistribute it from the rolling fund and put it towards our budget,” Allard explained, noting the board’s rolling fund, which currently sits at about $200,000, can’t be touched. “It will equate to about $20,000 and that will help cover costs.”

Allard was clear that this is a band-aid solution, and does not mean the board is in the clear.

Allard said producers rely on the temporarily closed Resolute Mill in Maniwaki, which he said is now owned by Domtar, for softwood sales; on Louisiana-Pacific (LP) where producers sell panel wood; and on Domtar’s mill in Windsor, Que. where producers sell hardwood pulp thanks to a subsidy program from Quebec’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests which helps pay for costs of getting the wood to Windsor.

“If we lose Domtar, for example, the MRNF trucking subsidy program, that would put a lot of pressure on us,” Allard said. “And then of course, if LP and Domtar were to disappear, we would have to make a hard decision.”

Considering a merger

Also at last week’s AGM the board passed a resolution committing itself to begin exploring what a partnership or collaboration might look like with other local forestry organizations, including other Outaouais wood marketing boards and the Groupement forestier du Pontiac.

This came after a conversation about the potential future necessity to merge with other boards, to consolidate resources and ensure the Pontiac board isn’t simply absorbed into its neighbours’ boards in the case that it goes bankrupt.

“In the interest of all the Pontiac producers we want the marketing board to stay in the Pontiac, but right now, without a mill, and some kind of investor coming into the area, there’s a good chance within five years we’ll really have to consider shutting our doors,” Allard said.

“[Merging] doesn’t necessarily mean we would lose representation in the Pontiac, but if we wait until we’re bankrupt, we have no power.”

Pontiac warden Jane Toller, also in attendance at the meeting, urged the board to not move too hastily.

“Just from what I’ve heard, if you could work with the Groupement, and just have your own board here in the Pontiac . . . I just think that the whole circumstances of this whole MRC are so different from everything else. Forestry built the Pontiac and we hope for some good news fairly soon,” she said, alluding to progress she said she has made on bringing a solution to the pulp and biomass hole in the local market.

Dagg, one of the youngest loggers at the meeting, said he supports looking into some form of collaboration.

“Basically if we don’t do something, by the time my kid is ready to work, there’s going to be no board to work with,” he said. “I think doing what you’re saying and talking to the other boards, it can’t be a bad thing.”

Mayhew, office manager and board secretary, emphasized passing this motion was a critical step in showing the province that the board was doing what it could to survive.

“We have to show the régie this time that we are trying to stay here, or stay afloat,” she said. “Whatever that ‘afloat’ is going to be.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Outaouais’ healthcare authority announced Thursday it would be cutting 727 permanent positions across the region in response to the province’s demand it balance its budget by the end of the end of this month.

Dr. Marc Bilodeau, president and CEO of the Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’Outaouais (CISSSO), said in a press conference this would include the elimination of 127 currently staffed positions, 25 of which are management positions, as well as 600 vacant positions.

The majority of the cuts are to administrative positions, but also affect around 30 clinical positions, including nurses, psychologists and social workers.

Alain Smolynecky, president of STTSSSO-CSN, the union representing 77 of the 127 employees who will be losing their jobs, confirmed four of these jobs are in the Pontiac region – a nurse and three administrative assistants. He also said of the 600 vacant positions being cut across the region, two are at the Pontiac Hospital, both nurse’s aide positions.

These cuts are the latest in CISSSO’s efforts to reduce its planned spending by an amount of $90 million, its share of the cuts Santé Québec mandated last fall for all healthcare networks across the province in an attempt to tackle its $1.5 billion deficit.

Dr. Bilodeau previously assured spending cuts would not affect jobs, but on Thursday, which he admitted was his hardest day in the position since he stepped into it last March, he said job cuts were unavoidable, as salaries represent 70 per cent of the network’s expenses.

“While this decision is difficult, it is necessary to assure the sustainability of our services, and optimize the use of public funds,” Bilodeau said, assuring cuts would not affect healthcare services as all clinical employees would be offered another job elsewhere in the network as part of a restructuring of the workforce Bilodeau says will save money.

“The intent is to be able to offer them other roles in more critical positions where we have vacancies,” he later told THE EQUITY.

“The current posture costs me a lot, because if I don’t have enough people working evening and weekend shifts, I need to pay people overtime to fill those vacancies, which costs me way more than if I have regular personnel throughout the 24/7 cycle.”

Other cost-saving measures have included the elimination of 231 temporary assignment positions and the reassigning of many of the people in those positions to more critical roles, as well as a reduction in hours dedicated to providing home care.

“It’s clear that about 50 per cent of our surplus over our allocated [spending] amount was going towards home care,” Bilodeau said Thursday, noting the high demand for in-home care is a direct consequence of the fact that the region is lacking long-term care beds.

He said CISSSO has evaluated homecare being provided across the network and “assured the amount of help being given was corresponding to the need.”

“There’s a difference between the need and the demand [ . . . ] Finding these gaps is what enabled us to reduce some of the services being given.”

Admin positions take biggest hit

As for the administrative roles being cut, Bilodeau said he is confident they were surplus.

“What we know is our administrative ratio, which can be compared with other organizations in the province, was a bit higher than the average,” he said. “So this shows that we had some room to maneuver, and we were able to reduce our administrative ratio without impacting care negatively.” 

But Smolynecky said it is not possible these cuts will not touch frontline care.

“It’s false because most of the people in administrative positions are in support of nurses. So by cutting those people, nurses will have to go back to doing more paperwork and will have less time to take care of people,” he said.

“In health systems, everybody is a piece in the chain. Everybody needs the other one. If we cut in cleaning, we’ll have more viruses, more bacteria, more sick people. The nurse needs people to fix the equipment. We all have to work together.”

Smolynecky doesn’t buy Bilodeau’s argument that CISSSO’s higher ratio of administrative workers to nurses justifies cutting back on the network’s administrative jobs.

“That’s the point-form given to him by Santé Québec. In fact, we have less nurses in the Outaouais per thousand habitants than all other regions of Quebec,” he said.

“Because we have less nurses and still have the same amount of cases and paperwork to do, they had less time to provide health care. So that’s the reason why we had more administrative people, to reduce the paperwork to the nurses and doctors, to help them have more time to take care of people.”

Smolynecky highlighted the fact that CISSSO is underfunded by about $200 million annually, as found by a study produced by the University of Quebec in the Outaouais.

“It doesn’t make sense that we have to cut $90 million from the $200 million we don’t receive.”

Jean Pigeon, spokesperson for the healthcare advocacy group SOS Outaouais, echoed this point, one he has been making since the founding of the group last year.

“This announcement, presented as an optimization measure, is in reality a symptom of chronic underfunding that is dangerously undermining our healthcare network,” Pigeon wrote in a statement following Thursday’s news.

Bilodeau said he agrees the Outaouais has been historically underfunded, and said the network is working on “having a bigger piece of the pie in order to avoid having inequitable distribution of healthcare in the province.”

Despite this long-term ambition, he said Thursday’s cuts only get CISSSO two-thirds of the way to the $90 million it needs to save before Quebec tables its new budget at the end of this month, and so further cuts and restructuring will be needed to recuperate the remaining $30 million.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

It was a rollercoaster of a week for Pontiac producers working in agriculture and forestry industries, as they watched the longstanding trade agreements that have enabled relatively smooth selling of their products to the U.S. take a serious beating.

In one week, U.S. President Donald Trump implemented the long-threatened 25 per cent tariffs on goods entering the U.S. from Canada, exempted the auto industry from these tariffs and, soon after, walked back almost all tariffs, pausing them until Apr. 2.

Then, on Friday, he promised 250 per cent tariffs on Canadian lumber and dairy products entering his country, a threat that has since been walked back by his commerce secretary, who clarified these tariffs would be applied on Apr. 2, along with the rest of the paused tariff package.

For many producers in two key Pontiac industries, it’s not yet clear how this trade war will affect their livelihoods.

But in agriculture, where the margins are already slim, and in forestry, which has long been suffering in the Pontiac due to the closure of several local mills, producers have limited abilities to absorb added financial pressures.

On Thursday, near the end of the tumultuous week, Clarendon beef farmer Steve Hamilton put a call in to his buyer at Cargill, where he sells 80 per cent of his cattle. There, it’s processed and much of it sold to the U.S..

“The price that he gave me was roughly 10 per cent lower than it would have been two weeks ago,” he said, figuring the tariffs are certainly affecting it. “I knew there were going to be effects, but we still don’t know long term [what the impacts will be.]”

But the price Hamilton can get for his product is only one half of what he’s watching. Equally concerning are his input costs.

“It doesn’t matter what it is, from parts to anything that we need to buy, it’s costing more than a few years ago,” Hamilton said, suggesting there is little wiggle room for any additional costs to running the farm, thanks to tariffs.

But Hamilton has hope, both that the profound codependence of American and Canadian sides of the beef industry will encourage reconciliation before too much damage is done, and that the increasing precarity of the international market will encourage producers, and lawmakers, to support a more robust and sustainable local beef market.

Hamilton processes and sells the remaining 20 per cent of his cattle locally. He used to do so through the Shawville abattoir which he, as one of the producers on the board created to govern the co-op, is now working to reopen.

He said part of what he would like to see to make this business successful is the easing of interprovincial trade barriers that prevent him from selling beef processed in a Quebec abattoir to Ontario markets.

The restrictions, he explained, will seriously limit the abattoir’s ability to serve customers right across the river.

“The small [abattoirs], like we’re trying to get going here, obviously have the benefits of [supporting] food security locally,” Hamilton said, pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of the inclination to support local during times of economic crisis.

“Obviously, in any crisis there’s opportunities and things you have to look for,” he said, suggesting the current trade war offers a ripe opportunity for policymakers and farmers to double down on putting the infrastructure in place that can better support a local food economy.

“But it doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It is quite likely going to be tougher years again.”

Precarity for private wood producers

Cash Allard is the general manager for the Pontiac Forest Products Producers Board, which helps about 90 private producers to get their product to market and advocates for support needed to keep the local forestry industry alive.

He said while it’s not yet clear how tariffs will impact Pontiac’s private forestry industry, the nature of its current precarity means it’s vulnerable to any shift in the industry.

Allard said producers rely on the temporarily closed Resolute Mill in Maniwaki, which he said is now owned by Domtar, for softwood sales; on Louisiana-Pacific (LP) where producers sell panel wood; and on Domtar’s mill in Windsor, Que. where producers sell hardwood pulp.

“Tariffs could affect everything. Softwood’s going to get hit, there could be more levies on the hardwood, the fuel might go up, and if it does, it just makes it harder and harder for us,” Allard said.

Of particular concern for him is the future of the subsidy program from Quebec’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests, which since Sept. 2023 has been critical to enabling Pontiac producers to transport hardwood to the Domtar mill in Windsor, and is set to expire at the end of this month.

Allard is worried an economic recession will be the nail in the coffin of a program central to Pontiac’s industry.

“If the subsidy program doesn’t get announced again . . . if as an effect of Canadians not spending money, the government is doing slashing so they don’t get too much overhead, they could slash this program which would mean we lose our hardwood pulp market,” Allard said.

Of further concern is the potential of limitations on softwood markets, to accommodate a slow in sales to the U.S..

“For these mills to set up limitations could literally destroy the Pontiac’s industry,” Allard said Thursday, before President Trump announced a plan to slap the lumber industry with 250 per cent tariffs on Friday.

“We don’t even know the consequences. There’s a lot of people just talking right now, and we don’t know what’s been hit yet.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

A conversation amongst farmers questioning the request they adapt their practices to protect threatened grassland birds dominated a presentation about climate-friendly agricultural practices given at the Little Red Wagon Winery last Wednesday evening.

The event, co-organized by the Pontiac and Gatineau chambers of commerce, saw cattle farmers from across the Outaouais pack the venue to hear from agronomist Nathalie Côté on best practices for reducing methane gas produced by their animals and for supporting on-farm biodiversity.

Côté, herself a cattle producer who works with Les Producteurs de bovins du Québec, highlighted that 10 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in Quebec are produced by the agricultural industry.

“We have some responsibility in the agricultural sector to take steps to reduce our GHGs,” she said to the crowd, making the case that the reduction of emissions from agricultural practices is a convenient consequence of increasing on-farm efficiency, and framing her presentation in terms of the latter.

She discussed various techniques for increasing farm efficiency so as to produce more meat in less time, with fewer inputs, including ways to optimize feed to reduce methane produced by the animal and tips for improving livestock efficiency through genetics and strategic culling.

It’s thanks to practices like these and others that Canada’s beef industry has been able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent between 2014 and 2021, according to a 2024 report published by the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. The roundtable figures the industry is responsible for 2.4 per cent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and has committed to reducing this contribution by a third before 2030.

But it was when Côté’s presentation turned to discussing some of the ways in which farmers can support biodiversity on their agricultural land that attendees started asking questions, the first of which came from Clarendon farmer Ron Hodgins.

“When did these wild birds become so important? [ . . . ] What is the purpose of a Bobolink?” he asked, following several slides highlighting precautions being taken by Quebec farmers to limit disturbance of the Eastern Meadowlark and the Bobolink, grassland birds which for over a decade have been considered “threatened” by Environment Canada, only one stop short of “endangered”.

Governments and conservation groups are concerned for these birds’ survival, as increased agricultural activity in their nesting grounds over the last half century has caused a decrease in their populations.

An Environment Canada report published in 2019 found that since 1970, the population of grassland birds has decreased 67 per cent.

Farmers are being encouraged to modify hay production practices during the weeks the bird is nesting in their hayfields between April and July, a period that usually, and inconveniently, coincides with the most effective time to harvest their hay.

The precautions shared by Côté included slowing mowing speed to 10 kilometres an hour or less, or mowing a hayfield from its center to its perimeter, rather than the reverse, so the birds are able to get out of the way.

“Before 2020, I never talked about birds to my producers,” Côté said, in answer to Hodgins’ question, adding she saw governments start paying more attention to biodiversity efforts in the last five or so years.

At the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, 200 countries committed to protecting 30 per cent of their country’s land and freshwater ecosystems by the year 2030. Quebec’s Ministry of Environment committed to this target a year earlier.

“All those new orientations of the government gets us aware that [ . . . ] our production can do more for biodiversity. So it’s a positive thing for our production,” Côté emphasized.

But Hodgins expressed what he found to be a contradiction between the first part of her presentation, which encouraged practices such as cutting hay early to optimize its nutritional content, and the second part, which encouraged delaying hay cutting to protect grassland birds.

“We’re slowing down our haycutting procedure so they can fly out of the field. Well that’s not saving the environment and methane, and we’re burning more fuel to get that crop off,” he said. “One hand’s not working with the other.”

‘Everybody’s got to do a little bit’

For Victor Drury, who runs a 295-head cow-calf production with his father in La Pêche, supporting on-farm biodiversity is not his priority, but neither is it at odds with his regular production methods.

He works with the Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) program, which pays him for every acre he sets aside to use for grazing or hay later in the season.

“They’ll pay you for the reduced quality of your hay, if you’re cutting it for hay, or the later pasture, if it’s not as vegetative,” Drury explained, noting setting aside certain land fits well within the rotational grazing he already practices.

“That just happens to promote biodiversity. Now, that’s not my goal. My goal is to raise cattle and feed my family,” he said. “The advantage of doing this particular program is it doesn’t cost me anything, and I happen to be doing this other benefit that people seem to think is valuable.”

Blake Draper is the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais representative for Les Producteurs de bovins du Québec. He also works with ALUS to protect certain parts of his land.

“As far as what I’m doing, I’m just allowing [the birds] a little more room to work, And, birds eat insects,” he pointed out, following Côté’s presentation. “I figure everybody’s got to do a little bit.”

Stanley Christensen is a cattle farmer from Lac-Sainte-Marie in the Gatineau Valley, and also the Outaouais-Laurentides representative for Les Producteurs de bovins du Québec.

During the conversation about why farmers should care to change their practices in favour of supporting biodiversity, he said he believes making efforts to do so is critical to maintaining the trust of the general public that farmers are, as they have always been, caretakers of the land.

“We’ve got to find ways of averaging things out and showing that we are good citizens, we are taking care of the environment, and that we are of benefit to all of Canadian society by using things like this,” Christensen said.

“So I push as hard as I can to try to develop these programs, and find a way to benefit producers. And if we do get compensation per acre, that’s part of it, but the first thing is to convince society that we’re doing a good job taking care of the future of Canada.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

A new kind of support is now available to farmers across Canada who may be struggling with their mental health – a crisis line that can be called at any hour of the day, 365 days a year.

The free service, accessible by dialing 1-866-FARMS-01, is completely confidential and available in both English and French.

It is being run by the Canadian Centre for Agricultural wellbeing thanks to a three-year, $1.5 million investment from crown corporation Farm Credit Canada, and is for farmers, their family members, farm employees, and spouses and dependents of farm employees, 16 years or older, who are either in crisis or just need to talk to somebody about how they are doing.

The service’s website lists everything from financial stress and succession challenges to feelings of burnout and isolation as just some of the reasons calling the phone line might help.

Callers will be connected with a mental health professional who has received a special training to support members of the agricultural community. They will listen, offer coping strategies, and connect the caller with other forms of support, if needed.

While this phone line, launched earlier this month, is not yet a well-known resource in the Pontiac community, it’s being received as a welcome upgrade to the ag-specific mental health support already available to Pontiac farmers. 

Audrey Arcand is a Pontiac-based farm wellness worker with Écoute Agricole, a non-profit that offers mental health services to farmers across the Laurentians and the Outaouais, including in the Pontiac.

She said while her organization offers the benefit of being able to meet with farmers in person and support them over the course of longer periods of time, the team she works with cannot be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We only work regular nine to five [hours], Monday to Friday, usually. But we are definitely not a crisis call line,” she said. “When people need to reach us outside of our hours, it’s important for them to have a place where they can call, and I think a place that is adapted to their reality, and their special needs.”

The need for a crisis line in the Outaouais is particularly heightened, according to Arcand, who explained there is no general suicide helpline in the region. She said people who call the province-wide option – 1-866-APPELLE – will be redirected to the provincial 8-1-1 health line, where they might encounter longer wait times.

“For a person in a crisis state, [that’s] not the best option,” she said.

Gema Villavicencio, owner of Pure Conscience farm in Bristol and vice-president of the Pontiac chapter of Quebec’s union of agricultural producers (UPA), said she believes there are many in the Pontiac farming community who could benefit from this kind of industry-specific mental health support.

“It’s a different reality. I think not everybody understands the reality of a farmer,” she said, noting one of the challenges to be the relatively isolated nature of the work. “We all go through the winter blues, especially around this time of the year.”

Despite what Villavicencio describes to be a fairly common experience of isolation, numbers from Écoute Agricole’s 2023-2024 annual report show not many farmers in the region are benefiting from the mental health support offered by the organization.

Of the 367 agricultural producers in MRC Pontiac, only 10 were supported by the organization in the 2023-2024 reporting year. Another 13 producers in the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais also sought help from the organization.

Half of the people helped were referred by someone else, while the other half reached out themselves.
Arcand emphasized how critical it is that the support be provided by professionals who are well acquainted with the realities of being a farmer.

“In the case of a crisis, there are many aspects to take care of. It’s the farm that’s at risk sometimes,” she said.

“For someone to get help, especially in a crisis situation, the whole farm needs to be taken care of, because they’re not going to call if they’re not sure their animals will also be taken care of.”

Villavicencio said she was happy to learn of another form of support being offered to farmers.

“It’s very complementary to what Écoute Agricole is doing. We just need to make it more known.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Pontiac’s mayors and MRC staff have been receiving questions from residents about when the province’s new flood maps will be released, and what the implications of these maps will be for people who own property in or near a flood zone.

“We’ve been getting so many calls from people wondering about the maps,” said Kari Richardson, environment manager for the MRC Pontiac. She said the release of draft maps in the Montreal area last summer caused a stir of anxieties around what the maps would look like in the Pontiac.

But the update, from her end, is that there is no update, and the release of the draft maps for this region is expected sometime this summer.

“[The province] is doing a systematic update by region and, as they can, they’re publishing new maps,” she said.

“We’re still months out, and then there will be a public consultation period for those maps,” she said.

For several years now, the Quebec government has been working to overhaul and modernize the mapping of flood zones across the province.

The new maps will update which areas are considered to be at risk of flooding, will change how the flood risk information is presented, and will include new regulations to be implemented by municipalities around how land in flood zones can be used.

“For resilient land use planning, Quebec, like many jurisdictions around the world, will determine flood zones using information on past floods and on the possible evolution of anticipated floods up to the end of the century,” Josée Guimond, a spokesperson for the province’s environment ministry, wrote in an email to THE EQUITY.

“The calculation of future floods is based on simulation tools and greenhouse gas emission projection scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Guimond said it’s estimated the new flood maps will cover between 30 and 40 per cent more ground than the current maps, and that the number of homes that fall within these expanded zones could grow from 22,000 to just over 77,000.

She emphasized this estimate will likely be revised downwards as new knowledge becomes available from the mapping work, and that the number of dwellings affected in a given area will vary according to its occupancy density.

Richardson said the City of Gatineau lead the charge on developing the new maps for the Pontiac region, with contributions from the MRC, but that these maps still need to be approved by the Ministry of Environment before they’re adopted as the new flood zones.

She said if the maps Gatineau submitted are approved, they will offer a far more accurate account of how flooding occurs across the territory. This, she says, is a welcome update to the current maps, which were developed based on the floods of 2017 and 2019, as well as on flood levels indicated the MRC’s current land use plan.

“Because [the current maps] take into consideration several things, that’s why it’s a little bit broad [ . . .]They’re not quite as detailed, which they will be in the coming versions.”

The maps were originally expected to be released last spring, but to date, only maps for the Greater Montreal area have been published.

New regulations for different risk zones

The updated maps will present flooding data in two new ways. First, the assessment of risk in each flood zone will be presented differently. Rather than describing a zone’s likelihood of flooding as a one in twenty year or one in one hundred year chance, a framing of flood probability that is often misunderstood, the new maps will present four different categories of flood zone: very high, high, medium, or low risk.

These categories will detail not only the probability a property will flood, but also the depth at which it will likely flood.

Depending on which category a property falls in, different regulations will apply.

Under the proposed regulations, property owners in all categories can replace a roof, change windows, and do interior renovations. Those who end up in the very high risk category would not be allowed to build a new house or rebuild one that has been destroyed, if the damages cost more than 50 per cent of what it would cost to replace the building. Renovations to make the home more flood resistant, however, would be possible.

Property owners who find themselves in the high-risk category would also not be allowed to erect new buildings, but would be allowed to rebuild after a flood.

Last fall, the province held consultations on these draft regulations, which are now being reviewed, and according to the province, are set to be released this spring, ahead of the maps.

‘A wait-and-see game’

Fort Coulonge mayor Christine Francoeur says she feels the process of rolling out these flood maps has taken too long.

“It’s true that as a municipality we’re very concerned about that,” she said. “We lost 24 houses [in recent floods] – one of them was just a few months ago declared to be destroyed.”

She is anxious to learn what her municipality will be allowed to do with these 24 lots, which the province bought from homeowners and resold to the municipality for the price of one dollar.

“We have the [sewage and water] infrastructure right there. If we can’t rebuild on those lots, it’s wasted for us,” she said.

She’s also been hearing from residents who’ve experienced flooding but haven’t lost their homes, who are anxious about what they will be allowed to do with their property going forward.

“There are a lot of questions going on and nobody’s got the answers yet. It’s just a wait-and-see game,” Francoeur said.

“I feel for the people in town because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Personally I think it’s taking too long for this flood zone map to come out. It just makes people more and more anxious.”

Pontiac MNA André Fortin says he’s just as in the dark as Pontiac residents when it comes to the details of these maps, and echoed Francoeur’s concerns with how these new maps will affect residents’ properties.

“Will it mean they’ll have trouble insuring their home? Will it mean they’ll have trouble selling their home? Will it mean the areas that have been developed will get a greater area in flood maps?” he said.

“It’s almost like there’s a tornado coming through town, but we’re speculating because we don’t know the extent of damage it’s going to cause.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

“They’re obscene,” said Shawville resident Mary McDowell Wood, describing the new large, wheeled garbage bins the town is asking residents to use to get their trash to the curb.

“It’s my height, my weight. Do you think I fill this every week? Half a plastic bag every week is my garbage,” she laughs, attributing her low trash footprint to her backyard composter and her rigorous recycling habits.

The size of the new bins is of concern to her for two reasons. First, she says there are many people in town who, like her, live alone and with limited mobility. She gets help from her neighbour to get her trash to the end of her laneway, but she’s worried for those who don’t have this kind of support.

Beyond this, she believes the large bins will encourage people to send more trash to the landfill.

In fact, quite the opposite, says Shawville councillor Richard Armitage, also chair of the town’s environment and waste management committee.

He said he realizes the bins, which Shawville distributed to residents over the last month, may seem large now, while the town is still collecting garbage every week, but their rollout is one of the first steps in moving the town towards a rotating collection system that will pick up garbage and recycling on alternating weeks, while picking up compost every week.

Half an hour north, Otter Lake has also soft-launched a new garbage policy this month that requires the use of clear plastic bags instead of black garbage bags for all household waste that isn’t compostable or recyclable. Robin Zacharias, councillor and member of the town’s waste committee, said the policy is designed to promote the proper sorting of garbage, recycling and compost.

While both Armitage and Zacharias acknowledged the transition to new sorting systems may take time, they were adamant their towns’ new policies were critical steps in reducing the amount of garbage they each send to landfill and would eventually save taxpayers on their annual waste management bill.

Trucking garbage costs municipalities $300 per tonne, while compost costs about $200 per tonne, and recycling is free. Separating trash at the source will save taxpayers money down the road.

Armitage explained that when MRC Pontiac switched from using Shawville’s McGrimmon Cartage transfer station to Litchfield’s FilloGreen processing centre last year, Shawville had to buy a new truck to get its garbage to the new location. It’s this new truck, Armitage said, that is now leading the town’s transition to a more efficient and less wasteful collection system.

Shawville’s vision is to use the one garbage truck to collect garbage, recycling and compost. To do this efficiently, residents need to dispose of each type of waste in specific bins that the truck’s arm can grab and dump into its appropriate chamber.

Getting residents using the new garbage bins is the first step in this process. Armitage said the bins need to be of the large size so they can hold two weeks’ worth of garbage, which they’ll need to do once the town reduces garbage collection to every other week.

Eventually, Shawville will also be giving out new recycling bins of equal size, paid for by the Quebec government, as well as smaller sidewalk compost bins, all compatible with the town’s new truck.

Armitage figures 30 per cent of the town’s total garbage is from food waste. He said the goal is to use weekly compost collection to reduce the amount of garbage sent to landfill.

Trash-parency in Otter Lake

In Otter Lake, where residents take all household waste to a transfer station, the municipality is trying a different approach to encouraging proper sorting of compost and recycling from garbage.

A bylaw passed at Otter Lake’s December council meeting requires residents to use clear plastic bags to dispose of all non-recyclable, non-compostable garbage. There is no limit on the number of bags that can be disposed of, and each bag can contain one smaller black shopping bag for items residents would like to keep private.

“This year will be a transition year,” assured Zacharias, explaining the municipality will use the next year or so to help residents adjust to this new garbage policy.

“We’re not doing this just to be difficult,” he said. “It’s good for [residents’] tax dollars. It’s good for the environment. And the [Lachute] landfill site is filling up. To the extent that we reduce the garbage, it will extend the life of the dump.”

After residents drop off their waste at the transfer station, their garbage gets trucked to the FilloGreen sorting centre at the Pontiac Industrial Park in Litchfield, from where it is then transported over 200 kilometres, along with all of MRC Pontiac’s other garbage, to the Lachute landfill near Montreal, which is running out of space.
Zacharias said the clear-bag policy is one of the last steps in the town’s efforts to reduce the amount of garbage it’s sending to Lachute.

Before implementing this latest policy, the municipality had to ensure it had established effective systems for disposing of compost, recycling, and other materials like electronics at its transfer station.

The municipality began rethinking its garbage strategy in 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused a surge in year-round residents and as a result, a spike in garbage costs.

One of the first steps was to find a place to dispose of its compost, so it could encourage residents to separate heavy food waste from the garbage being sent to landfill. It organized for Alleyn and Cawood to transport its compost to a processing site in Kazabazua.

Last summer, Otter Lake handed out kitchen counter compost bins to make it easier for residents to keep their food waste out of the garbage bin, and increased the number of compost collection bins at the transfer station so each day had a fresh bin. And all of this, Zacharias says, has paid off.

The municipality’s compost tonnage has increased from 350 kilograms in August of 2024, to 550 kilograms in December, when the population was half what it was in the summer months, a clear indication for Zacharias that the town is getting on board with keeping food waste out of the garbage.

“Now we’re saying, ‘We want you to sort your garbage. We want to make sure there’s no compost in the garbage, and there’s no recycling in the garbage’,” Zacharias said.

Shawville and Otter Lake are not alone in their efforts to reduce their garbage tonnage.

A report produced by MRC Pontiac in 2024 found the total garbage tonnage from all 18 of the county’s municipalities decreased from 5813 tonnes in 2021 to 5288 tonnes in 2023. These numbers do not include the MRC’s total recycling tonnage which, over the same three years, increased from 1143 tonnes to 1236 tonnes.

Municipalities across the county have been working to contribute to this effort. Between 2021 and 2023, the municipalities of Shawville, Clarendon, Mansfield, and Rapides des Joachims all reduced their garbage output by at least 50 kilograms per person, per year.

For Armitage, this is a trend he hopes to continue.

“But the ratepayers need to be patient with us while we do this,” Armitage said, noting it will be sometime next year before all three collection systems are in place.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Pontiac’s Liberal Member of Parliament Sophie Chatel announced Jan. 15 she is throwing her support behind former central banker Mark Carney in his bid to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party.

“His exceptional mind, character, and record of leadership are what Canada needs and draw a sharp contrast with the empty slogans, mean-spirited political games, and simplistic solutions, devoid of scientific rigor, that have taken hold of the Conservative Party,” Chatel’s statement read.

Her Wednesday announcement came less than a week after she suggested, in a phone call with THE EQUITY, that she was still considering multiple candidates but would be looking for somebody with a strong economic vision.

On Friday of last week, Chatel said after some reflection and receiving about 50 emails from constituents, she decided to endorse Carney.

“For me and for many Liberals in the riding, Carney brings a renewed sense of hope,” Chatel said. She cited an email she received from a constituent who described Carney as an iron fist in a velvet glove. Chatel said she agrees with this description.

“That means you need somebody who is solid, but has the diplomacy to work the network and negotiate smoothly, but with determination, and ready to defend Canadian interest and sovereignty,” Chatel said. “That’s exactly what Mark Carney is.”

Chatel pointed to Carney’s handling of the 2008 financial recession as governor of the Bank of Canada and to his work as governor of the Bank of England through Brexit as examples of his success in managing economic crises.

She said she’s also worked with Carney in developing motions for various parliamentary committees.

“In finance committee I presented a motion on sustainable finance, and I worked on a similar one in the environment committee, and so we were in touch on that and we had a long discussion about how to lever the global investment pool that is ready to be invested in clean energy and other industries that will help the country decarbonize,” Chatel said.

Carney launched his leadership campaign at an Edmonton hockey rink on Thursday, a few days before both former Liberal finance minister Chrystia Freeland and Liberal House leader Karina Gould launched their bids over the weekend.

At his campaign launch event, Carney made a point of distancing himself from the governing Liberal Party.

“I know I’m not the only Liberal in Canada who believes that the Prime Minister and his team let their attention wander from the economy too often,” he said.

When asked whether she felt this was a fair assessment of the party she represents, Chatel dodged the question.

“It was a time where you needed to step up to prevent our economy from collapsing, when the covid crisis happened. So I do believe that the government had to spend in order to preserve the economic infrastructure from collapsing,” she said.

“But I do believe it’s important to focus now on the economy, and really restore fiscal prudence in the government.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Outaouais’ public health and social services network (CISSSO) will be cutting 196 temporary assignment positions in the coming weeks, Le Droit reported Friday.

The organization insists these cuts will not affect healthcare services, nor make much of a dent in the $90 million it needs to cut to balance its budget by March, but are a necessary first step in reorganizing staffing structures to be more efficient.

There are 2,000 temporary assignments across the healthcare network, used to fill vacancies caused by maternity leaves, sick leaves, or empty positions while a hiring process is underway. They fill all job categories including nurses, technicians, maintenance staff and sanitation staff.

Mathieu Marsolais, director of communications for CISSSO, said of the 196 positions, the majority are orderlies, maintenance workers, sanitation staff, technical employees, and administrative employees.

“It was really, one by one, really analyzing it to make sure that we were able to stop some assignments without compromising the services,” Marsolais told THE EQUITY. He could not confirm how many of these assignments were in the Pontiac.

“I don’t think there will be a lot of impact because we’re keeping 90 per cent of the assignments running. It was an essential first step in a broader process of analysing our staffing structures which will take several months,” he said, emphasizing the main objective was not saving costs.

He said many of those whose position has been cut will be reassigned to one of the many other vacant positions across the network, but this will not be the case for all. Some people, however, will end up on a recall list and likely see a significant reduction of work over the next months.

In the fall CISSSO learned it, along with regional healthcare networks across the province, would have to balance their budgets by March of this year to meet new budget demands from the province’s healthcare authority, Santé Québec.

For CISSSO, this means cutting its projected spending by $90 million, or 6 per cent of its annual budget, in the next two months. While the organization has yet to provide many concrete details about how it plans to find this money back, Marsolais said the cuts to the assignment positions are not part of this project.

“Because the majority of staff will be reassigned, the actual savings won’t be that much, so we’re not counting on that measure to save money,” Marsolais said.

But Karine D’Auteuil, president of the local nurses union, Syndicat des professionnelles en soins de l’Outaouais, sees this as a cost saving measure.

“It’s absurd to see how the government treats the healthcare system like an accounting book,” she said in a French interview with THE EQUITY.

Her union represents about 10 people who will be affected by these cuts. She said the news came as a shock given that Outaouais’ healthcare network is already underfunded by about $200 million every year, according to a study produced by the University of Quebec in the Outaouais.

“These people, the hours that they’re working, their not surplus hours [ . . . ] It’s utopian to think that this will have any impact on the care of the population.”

Jean Pigeon, spokesperson for healthcare advocacy group SOS Outaouais, echoed d’Auteuil’s frustration with the systemic underfunding of the region’s healthcare network.

“We understand that the CISSS de l’Outaouais is forced to meet an obligation imposed by the provincial government, but this measure illustrates once again the scale of the challenges facing our region. With imposed cuts of $90 million and chronic underfunding estimated at $200 million annually, these decisions further weaken a region already in dire straits,” Pigeon wrote in a press release.

The coalition called on the Quebec government to act on a motion unanimously adopted in the National Assembly in Oct. 2019 that recognized the funding inequities faced in the Outaouais region.

“We are pointing the finger at the government, which continues to ignore the crying needs of our healthcare network,” Pigeon added. “This lack of action to correct funding inequities is a missed opportunity to improve accessibility and security of care for Outaouais citizens.”

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.