Lac-Mégantic casualties include Quebec town’s history

Libraries in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta have had to deal with natural and explosions over the past few weeks.  Southern Alberta libraries and now yesterday some libraries in Toronto have experienced once in a lifetime floods. The people of Lac-Megantic in Quebec has suffered unimaginable destruction and loss of life with the train tanker explosion, and its library and archives were casualties.

Our thoughts are with you in the library community as you deal with your losses.

The explosions that followed a train derailment in Quebec destroyed Lac-Mégantic’s library which house precious archival documents.

 

Jacques Gallant / Toronto Star

Diane Roy says the loss of the library is not at all comparable to the loss of human life, but it's devastating for Lac-Meganitc nonetheless.

By: Jacques Gallant Staff Reporter, Published on Mon Jul 08 2013

 

Diane Roy was very much looking forward to the fall. The chair of the board of Lac-Mégantic’s only library was in the final stages of preparing to move the library’s 60,000 books and precious archival documents from the two-floor location downtown to a bigger facility, where the townspeople would have easier access to the documented history of their community.

 

It was the result of nearly five years of negotiations and countless grant applications. Everything was in place, and Roy was pleased. But then on Saturday, a train carrying crude oil derailed downtown, causing massive explosions that obliterated many buildings, including the library.

On that day, Lac-Mégantic’s history literally went up in smoke.

  

Sitting on the back porch of her home Monday, Roy fought back tears as she described the archives that had been housed at the library: baptism records that came over with colonists from France in the 17th century, local politicians’ correspondence, and documents related to the various social clubs in town.

 

But there was one archival collection particularly dear to her heart.“For the longest time, I kept at my home letters my uncle had written to my grandmother when he was a prisoner of war during World War II,” said Roy, 65, her voice breaking. “But then, just recently, I brought them to the library so my uncle’s grandchildren would be able to view them whenever they wished. I was actually scared they might get destroyed in a fire if I kept them in my house.”

 

Roy first found out about the explosion early Saturday morning when her 85-year-old mother was among the evacuees moved uptown. Her mother lived near the library.

“As soon as she called me to say what happened, I remember thinking ‘My God, the library’s gone.’“

Roy said the loss of the library is of course not at all comparable to the death of a loved one, but a devastating loss to Lac-Mégantic nonetheless.
 

She was involved in getting the town its very first library, which opened on Frontenac St. downtown in 1991, after lobbying the municipal government for more than two years.

“It was only supposed to be a temporary location, and we ended up staying there for 22 years,” she said, laughing.
 

In the late ‘90s, the library began a major campaign to collect archival records from residents, believing that the documents should remain in Lac-Mégantic, and not carted off to a storage facility in the nearby city of Sherbrooke.
 

“Everyone was always very eager to help out because so many people wanted a library here,” said Roy, who mentioned the library had three employees and 45 volunteers.
 

Roy said she no longer believes the library will be able to open at the new location on time in November, “unless the community really comes together to help out, which is very possible.”

The books should be covered by the insurance, said Roy, but nothing will bring back the archives.

“We lost a huge part of our history, what helped people here better understand their own community,” she said. “It’s nothing short of tragic.”