Ruminations

‘We know them all’: Devastated town mourns ‘friends, brothers, sisters’ lost in tragic train explosion

Graeme Hamilton | 13/07/10 | Last Updated: 13/07/11 12:02 PM ET

Geneviève Breton believed to be a victim in the Lac-Mégantic train disaster. Four days after the disaster, families have accepted that they will never see their loved ones again.

Facebook Geneviève Breton believed to be a victim in the Lac-Mégantic train disaster. Four days after the disaster, families have accepted that they will never see their loved ones again.

Courtesy of the Turcotte family Elodie Turcotte, 18, is among the victims in the Lac-Mégantic train tragedy.

Élodie Turcotte was studying to be a beautician and had started her summer job at the Musi-Café a few weeks earlier. She was working behind the bar and had just texted her boyfriend to say she was almost done.

Geneviève Breton was attending teachers’ college but had not abandoned her dream of a singing career. When she got off work at 9 p.m. she headed across the street to join friends and listen to the live music.

Guy Bolduc had been having a blast singing and playing guitar alongside his old friend Yvon Picard. He headed to the bar for a beer when they broke before their final set while Mr. Picard went out for a smoke.

Diane Bizier worked on the assembly line at the Masonite International door factory in town, and on Friday nights she could often be found with friends at the bar that was the town’s prime nightspot.

Handout Gaetan Lafontaine and his wife Joannie Turmel are both missing and believed to be victims in the Lac-Megantic train disaster.

Ms. Bizier’s niece, Joannie Turmel was at the Musi-Café too, as a 40^th birthday celebration for her sister-in-law continued even after the guest of honour had left.

Handout Marie-JoÎlle Faucher is believed to be a victim in the Lac-Megantic train disaster.

Ms. Turmel’s husband, Gaétan Lafontaine, was at the party, as was another sister-in-law, Karine Lafontaine. Marie-Joëlle Faucher, a secretary at Mr. Lafontaine’s construction company, was also there.

In a flash, at 1:14 a.m. Saturday, the celebrations, the music and the dreams ended when a runaway train hauling crude oil jumped the tracks and exploded metres from the Musi-Café. In a town of 6,000 where just about everyone knows each other, 60 residents missing and presumed dead is an unimaginable toll.

“We know them all. For us, they are faces, they are not just names,” Richard Turcotte, Élodie’s father, said in an interview. “They are not just people — they are friends, they are brothers, they are sisters. It’s our daughter.”

Four days after the disaster, families have accepted that they will never see their loved ones again. But the pain of loss is compounded by the fact that victims were so badly burned, the recovery and identification of remains is a slow process.

STEEVE DUGUAY/AFP/Getty Images Scorched oil tankers remain on July 10, 2013 at the train derailment site in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

“We can’t even take her in our arms and tell her we love her,” Élodie’s mother, Christine Poulin, said, sitting in their kitchen where a graduation portrait of her daughter sits on the counter next to a bouquet of flowers. “It’s hard.”

Handout Karine Lafontaine is believed to be a victim in the Lac-Megantic train disaster.

Their daughter, 18, graduated from high school in 2012 and bought a second-hand Hyundai Accent with the money she saved from her part-time job. She would have started her second year at college in Sherbrooke in August.

“She had the wind in her sails,” Ms. Poulin said. A weekend earlier she had gone to a rock festival in nearby Beauce, camping with friends. “You know, 18 years old is a beautiful age,” her mother said.
A little before 1 a.m. Saturday, she texted her boyfriend Miguel to say she was almost done work.

Then at 1:14, Miguel heard the explosion and raced toward downtown. He phoned Élodie’s parents, who live on the outskirts and were unaware anything was wrong. They spent the night hunting for their daughter. Ms. Poulin stood vigil at the hospital.

“She was waiting at the hospital for when the first injured arrive to see if our daughter was there,” Mr. Turcotte said. “Nobody ever arrived.”

Facebook Guy Bolduc is a singer believed to be among the victims in the Lac-Mégantic train disaster.

Ms. Breton had been about to leave the bar when disaster struck. A friend told her mother she had just gone to the bar to buy a bottle of water for the trip home. “She never came out,” her mother, Ginette Cameron, said in an interview.

Facebook Geneviève Breton believed to be a victim in the Lac-Mégantic train disaster.

Ms. Breton, 28, was something of a local celebrity, having appeared on TV’s Star Académie in 2009. She was studying to be an elementary school teacher at Université de Sherbrooke and was working in a jewellery store in downtown Lac-Mégantic for the summer. She had plans to record a CD this fall.
“Everybody loved her,” Ms. Cameron said. “She sang like an angel.”

Mr. Bolduc was well-known in Quebec musical circles. Mr. Picard, who barely managed to escape the fire, said Mr. Bolduc was like a brother. “The last words he said to me were, ‘Yvon, I really like playing with you . . . . We have so much fun together,’ ” Mr. Picard told TVA.

Sonia Héon, who occasionally sang with Mr. Bolduc when he played in Trois-Rivières, said Mr. Bolduc lived for music. “He would play back-up for people with less talent, but he didn’t care, because he was having fun.”

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz Raymond Lafontaine, who lost a son and two daughters-in-law, hugs Maud Verrault, who worked at the Music-Cafe Bar and lost friends and colleagues, at the refugee centre Monday, July 8, 2013 in Lac-Megantic, Que., after a train derailed igniting tanker cars carrying crude oil early Saturday.

Another fellow musician Richard Lachapelle paid tribute on a Facebook page in Mr. Bolduc’s memory: “An incredible guitarist, he raised us to the level of stars in his own way, although it never took more than one of his guitar solos to make us all look like beginners.”

Facebook Diane Bizier is believed to be a victim in the Lac-Magantic train disaster.

Billy Turcotte, 19, was nearing the end of his holidays back home before returning to work as a lineman in Alberta when the power went out in his downtown home and the sky lit up. He and his girlfriend escaped, but when he went to check on his mother, Ms. Bizier, he learned she had been at Musi-Café.

“I waited for my mother all night,” he said. “My mother is like a mother hen; she would have called me right away to let me know she was okay. There was no call.”

He has not only lost his “always smiling” mother; Élodie Turcotte and Ms. Turmel are cousins.
No family was harder hit by the disaster than the extended Lafontaine clan. Raymond Lafontaine, who built from nothing a local construction empire that employs 175, lost a son, two-daughters-in-law and an employee.

“I cannot tell you what my heart is feeling,” Mr. Lafontaine said in an interview. “The more you scratch, the more it hurts. As long as I am active and keep moving, I will be able to talk. But the day I stop, I am going to cry all the tears in my body.”

Labels: Disaster, Human Relations, Quebec