The story opens with six of the Lac-Megantic victims talking about the derailment : a young girl asks an older woman if she knows the men responsible for the disaster. The older woman tells her that she doesn't because "They laid their plans hundreds of thousands of kilometers from our town..."
One morning in 2012 the mayor of Nantes had two men from the railway company visit his office. They inform him that from now on there will be only one man on the oil trains passing through - the train will be a "one-man crew". The mayor is stunned that only one man will be on a train with "hundreds of tank cars full of explosive". They tell him that the minister has already approved such a crew. The mayor asks what will happen if the brakes fail? Their response is that there is an automatic device called a "dead man's switch" which will stop the train. Nantes mayor doubts the train will stop on the rotten rails.
The story moves far from Nantes to the "great, glorious prairie of North Dakota, home to many Indigenous peoples. They were forced from their land by the U.S. government who broke the treaties. Beneath the vast, fertile plains and the wide, open sky, was "black gold" - oil in the Bakken shale. An estimated thirty to forty billion barrels.
Instead of buffalo, "17,000 monsters of iron and steel", oil rigs filled the land. The oil was extracted by fracking, in which many toxins are injected into the shale to force out the oil and gas. The fresh air has been contaminated with benzene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and hydrogen sulfide, while the water is contaminated with selenium and lead.
It is on June 30, 2013, in North Dakota that the Lac-Megantic story begins. Canadian Pacific Railway controls the shipping in of drilling equipment and the transport out of crude oil to refineries and ports in North Dakota. In 2013, 140,000 tank cars transported oil out of state. On June 30, 2013, 250 DOT-407 tanker trucks travel to New Town, to fill 75 DOT-111 tank cars, part of CP Train No. 606-282. The DOT-111 tank cars are too fragile to transport the oil which has been classified as 1267 Class 3, PGI - the most dangerous and most explosive. They are used though because they are cheap to rent. Instead, the cargo's rating is deliberately altered to PG III, as safe oil, non-explosive. Train No. 606-282 leaves on June 30th for the Irving Refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, a journey of over three thousand kilometers.
On July 1, CP invoices Irving Oil for Train 606-282. On July 5th, the train arrives in Cote-Saint-Luc, Montreal where Montreal, Maine and Atlantic takes over. It is renamed MMA-002. MMA has been flagged by various transportation agencies in both the U.S. and Canada as having a poor safety record. In the MMA office in Farnham, Quebec, Engine 5017 is put on as the lead on the train despite having serious problems. The train is inspected by Transport Canada and given permission to continue on. Tom Harding is the lone driver on MMA-002 to Lac-Megantic. From there, an American driver will take the train to New Brunswick.
It is on June 30, 2013, in North Dakota that the Lac-Megantic story begins. Canadian Pacific Railway controls the shipping in of drilling equipment and the transport out of crude oil to refineries and ports in North Dakota. In 2013, 140,000 tank cars transported oil out of state. On June 30, 2013, 250 DOT-407 tanker trucks travel to New Town, to fill 75 DOT-111 tank cars, part of CP Train No. 606-282. The DOT-111 tank cars are too fragile to transport the oil which has been classified as 1267 Class 3, PGI - the most dangerous and most explosive. They are used though because they are cheap to rent. Instead, the cargo's rating is deliberately altered to PG III, as safe oil, non-explosive. Train No. 606-282 leaves on June 30th for the Irving Refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, a journey of over three thousand kilometers.
On July 1, CP invoices Irving Oil for Train 606-282. On July 5th, the train arrives in Cote-Saint-Luc, Montreal where Montreal, Maine and Atlantic takes over. It is renamed MMA-002. MMA has been flagged by various transportation agencies in both the U.S. and Canada as having a poor safety record. In the MMA office in Farnham, Quebec, Engine 5017 is put on as the lead on the train despite having serious problems. The train is inspected by Transport Canada and given permission to continue on. Tom Harding is the lone driver on MMA-002 to Lac-Megantic. From there, an American driver will take the train to New Brunswick.
Despite contacting MMA about the ongoing engine problems, Harding is told to continue on. The train arrives at the West Siding Switch at 11:04 PM on July 5th. Engine 5017 is left running unattended with seven brakes applied by Tom Harding. When his taxi arrives, the driver notes to Tom that the 5017 engine is "spitting oil". At 11:38 PM, 911 is called to report a train fire. The Quebec Provincial Police call the MMA Control Centre at 11:50PM and are told that the train contains tanker cars of oil. The firefighters arrive and put out the fire but also shut down Engine 5017. By doing this the air supply to the air supply to the engine's pneumatic brakes is cut and eventually the remaining air escapes. The other four engines on the train had been shut off and had no brakes. The stage is now set for the disaster that will claim forty-seven lives and devastate the town and the lives of the people of Lac-Megantic.
Discussion
A Train In The Night is an informative graphic nonfiction account of the Lac-Megantic railway disaster. Saint-Cerny employs a victim of the disaster as narrator, an older woman who explains to a young child-victim the events leading up to the tragedy and identifying those really responsible. The events begin thousands of miles away, in the oil-rich shales of North Dakota. Saint-Cerny who arrived in Lac-Megantic five days after what she calls "Night Zero", was determined to seek out the truth, after discrepancies began to appear in reports about the accident. As she writes in her piece, Megantic, the sad telling of a capitalist story" at the back of the book,
"From the start the only official explanation was a simplistic one: The disaster was blamed on the error of just one man, alone in the mountains, who was alleged to have applied an insufficient number of brakes when parking his train. And from the start I decided that this time I would uncover the truth: Who had made it possible for one man, by himself, a single employee on the bottom rung of the hierarchy, to be allowed to leave the keys on the seat of a locomotive hauling seventy-two bombs along defective track and to leave it running all night?"
A Train In The Night is an informative graphic nonfiction account of the Lac-Megantic railway disaster. Saint-Cerny employs a victim of the disaster as narrator, an older woman who explains to a young child-victim the events leading up to the tragedy and identifying those really responsible. The events begin thousands of miles away, in the oil-rich shales of North Dakota. Saint-Cerny who arrived in Lac-Megantic five days after what she calls "Night Zero", was determined to seek out the truth, after discrepancies began to appear in reports about the accident. As she writes in her piece, Megantic, the sad telling of a capitalist story" at the back of the book,
"From the start the only official explanation was a simplistic one: The disaster was blamed on the error of just one man, alone in the mountains, who was alleged to have applied an insufficient number of brakes when parking his train. And from the start I decided that this time I would uncover the truth: Who had made it possible for one man, by himself, a single employee on the bottom rung of the hierarchy, to be allowed to leave the keys on the seat of a locomotive hauling seventy-two bombs along defective track and to leave it running all night?"
What Saint-Cerny uncovered is a trail of greed and corruption in the railway and oil industry, pushed by investors and shareholders and enabled by officials and ministers within the U.S. and Canadian governments. From the fracking industry that has poisoned the soil and water in North Dakota to the deliberate actions of CP and MMA and many other rail companies to prioritize profits over worker safety and environmental protections, Lac-Megantic was an accident waiting to happen.
A Train In the Night sets out the story in two parts: The First Heartbreak and The Second Heartbreak. In The First Heartbreak the stage initially with the situation in Nantes and the mayor doing his due diligence in checking to see if MMA and CP were sanctioned to use the one man crew on an oil train travelling on rotted rails. The decisions that will result in the deaths of forty-seven people in Lac-Megantic were made thousands of miles away and began decades and even centuries before. From stripping Indigenous peoples of the rights to their land to access the mineral rights below that land, to modern-day fracking in North Dakota, to the hostile takeover of CP Rail where sky-high dividends and profits were possible as a result of cuts to the workforce and safety measures, each play their part. Readers then follow CP Train 606-282 with its hazardous cargo of oil to Lac-Megantic, Quebec. At each step of the journey, Saint-Cerny informs her readers on the safety rules breached, and how any employee who questioned those breaches was simply told to move along.
In The Second Heartbreak, Saint-Cerny exposes the events after the derailment, an expose of corruption, greed and complicity, of lies. and broken laws. It is about the false narrative of the derailment, the miscarriage of justice in blaming one individual who had no recourse to do otherwise, and the successful efforts of the Canadian government to thwart any kind of inquiry or investigation into the tragedy. Saint-Cerny doesn't shrink from naming names, from the unrepentant MMA CEO Edward Burkhardt, to the Canadian Ministers of Transport Denis Lebel (2011-2013) and John Baird (2008-2013), to Hunter Harrison CEO of CP Rail (2012 - 2017) Canadian astronaut and Minister of Transport (2015-2021) who blocked both federal and public inquiries into the disaster.
The author also shows how Milton Freedman's "Shock Strategy" was implemented in the town of Lac-Megantic, by "consultants" shown as birds, whose goal is to remake the town without any real changes to prevent the recurrence of another derailment. This is done while highlighting the voices of the people who simply want what's left of their town back.
Quesnel's illustrations are visceral: for example, the shock of the explosion is done in red, with the images of four of the victims killed by the explosion shown first against a peaceful blue background and in subsequent pages blacked out first on a white page, then against a deep red background with the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue at the bottom. Marc Garneau and John Baird, Canadian government ministers who enable the removal or reduction of significant safety and environmental protections are portrayed behind a bleeding Maple Leaf. And, in another comic panel, Lady Justice is shown decapitated with a black crow on top, signifying the thwarting of justice in the court trial in which a victim is tried rather than the true perpetrators of the disaster.
Quesnel's illustrations are visceral: for example, the shock of the explosion is done in red, with the images of four of the victims killed by the explosion shown first against a peaceful blue background and in subsequent pages blacked out first on a white page, then against a deep red background with the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue at the bottom. Marc Garneau and John Baird, Canadian government ministers who enable the removal or reduction of significant safety and environmental protections are portrayed behind a bleeding Maple Leaf. And, in another comic panel, Lady Justice is shown decapitated with a black crow on top, signifying the thwarting of justice in the court trial in which a victim is tried rather than the true perpetrators of the disaster.
The names and ages of the forty-seven victims are also listed on a separate page for readers to know their names. There is also a section at the back titled Documentary Fragments which explores the inspiration for some of artist Christian Quesnel's artwork.
A Train In The Night is informative and timely considering the recent event in East Palestine, Ohio. As Saint-Cerny points out in her short piece at the back of this graphic nonfiction, "Digging up the truth is one of the few weapons..." that can be used to prevent future tragedies.
Book Details:
A Train In The Night: The Tragedy of Lac-Megantic by Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny and Christian Quesnel
Toronto: Between The Lines 2022
87 pp.
A Train In The Night: The Tragedy of Lac-Megantic by Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny and Christian Quesnel
Toronto: Between The Lines 2022
87 pp.
No comments:
Post a Comment