BRENDA O’FARRELL
The Advocate
The usually quiet town of Très St. Rédempteur near the Ontario border was a beehive of activity at the end of May in the wake of a tornado touching down, cutting a swath of destruction in a matter of just a few moments.
“To have it gone in under 30 seconds – it’s emotional to say the very least,” said Julia Asselstine, whose old farmhouse suffered the most damage in the sudden swirl as the tornado whipped through her yard.
The front of the roof of her house, which she and her husband, Daniel Gelinas, had purchased in 2020, was ripped from the rafters, while the two large willow trees that framed the building on either side were splintered. The gazebo behind their house was destroyed, with sections of it strewn as far as across the street, while its lounge furniture was still visible, wedged high overhead in a nearby tree. The shed the couple had planned to take down, was left half standing, tattered and twisted by the violent winds.
Not far away, on Chemin du Petit Brûlé in Rigaud, members of the Carrière family who run Ferme Carra were picking up the pieces on their farm the day after the twister. The tornado destroyed a cement silo by the barn, damaging the steel silo that stood next to it.
“It passed between my house and the garage,” said Carmen Beauclair, who ran the dairy farm with her husband before their son took over the operation.
The winds also ripped a corner of the roof from their barn. No animals were hurt.
Next door, where Beauclair’s son lives, a piece of another neighbour’s chicken barn was sent through a cedar hedge like a projectile, piecing a side window of the house, damaging part of the living room. No injuries were reported.
Only a concrete slab remained of the chicken coop next door. The building housed 75 laying hens owned by the nearby Petit Brûlé – Ferme Écologique
It was believed that all the chickens were lost, said Marie-Pier Thellen, an animal supervisor for Petit Brûlé, who was at the scene the day after the tornado. But while workers picked up the debris, one chicken was found unharmed, but with feathers ruffled.
Environment Canada confirmed the tornado touched down at about 5:30 p.m. on May 27, generating wind speeds of about 155 kilometres per hour.
The meteorological agency said the twister cut a path 14 kilometres long, stretching from Très St. Rédempteur to Rigaud and Pointe Fortune. In all five properties, including a barn in Pointe Fortune, are believed to have been damaged.
According to a statement issued by Environment Canada, data collected by the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in London, Ont., the tornado was categorized as an EF-1, which falls on the lower end of the Enhanced Fujita Scale that is used to measure the severity of tornadoes.