National Post (National Edition)
‘Nobody wants to buy here now’
RESIDENTS OF FLOOD-RAVAGED TRAILER PARK SCRAMBLE FOR ANSWERS, COMPENSATION
Once mostly farmland, this island suburb off Montreal’s north shore is now home to some of Quebec’s most expensive homes. It is here where a mansion with a 28-car garage listed for $27 million in 2010, and where former premier Pauline Marois and her husband sold their waterfront château for $6.5 million in 2013.
Crops have been replaced by fairways on much of the island, including at the prestigious Mount Royal Golf Club, ranked one of the country’s top courses.
But just a few minutes down the road from the gated estates and manicured greens, residents of a 50-year-old trailer park inhabit a different world. They may enjoy a view of Lake of Two Mountains at the end of their street, but they cannot drink the water from their taps. And after this spring’s floods battered the park, some residents are questioning whether it makes sense to remain on the low-lying plain.
More than six weeks after the waters began receding, signs of the flood remain.
Daniel Soucy is camping in a tent next to his trailer home which, like a few others, has a red poster firefighters placed on the window to warn it is not fit for habitation. The pillars holding it above the ground now lean. “It was a houseboat,” he said. “I was one of the hardest hit.”
Problems here began well before flooding forced people from the 90 homes in the neighbourhood. (Most residents own their trailers and rent lots from the man who owns the land.)
The community has been living under a boil-water advisory since 2013, when the Montreal public health authority concluded there was a risk of sewage contaminating drinking water because of frequent breaks in the aging underground pipes.
Last winter, water pressure reduced to a trickle following a pipe break that took months to repair. A new treatment plant has mostly eliminated the stench of sewage that used to fill the air, but it sometimes returns after heavy rains. Ponds form on the potholed roads, and residents say electricity is so unreliable contractors bring their own generators when they come to do repairs.
Robert Legault, the property owner, sent a notice to residents after the flood assuring them the drinking water meets provincial standards. “My water is not contaminated. It is drinkable,” he said in an interview.
But Julie Couture, a toxicologist with the Montreal public health department, said the boil order remains because a pipe could break at any moment. “There is still no guarantee of safety,” she said.
For Marc Patry and Louise Landry, the flood was the final straw. They had watched conditions deteriorate over the 11 years since retiring to the park, but when an international Christian relief agency came by offering cleanup help “in responding to this disaster,” it felt like they had been transported to the Third World.
Inside their home, water jugs clutter the floor, some from the Île Bizard borough for washing their produce, some purchased for drinking. “If we could sell the house tomorrow morning, we would sell it. But nobody wants to buy here now,” Landry said.
Because the province declared a state of emergency, damage from this year’s flooding will be compensated. But the couple worries about the next flood, and whether low-income residents will be able to rebuild if compensation is not provided.
They have written the city asking it to find another location on Île Bizard, away from the flood plain, to move the trailers. But the borough has refused.
Borough Mayor Normand Marinacci said many residents are happy to stay where they are, even if there is a risk of flooding. The borough is changing its bylaw to allow the trailers to be raised an additional 20 centimetres off the ground, which he said would protect them during the next flood.
“We have no other alternative but to keep people there if they want to stay there,” Marinacci said. “If they don’t want to stay there, then they’ll have to find a place to go. We’re not in a situation where we as a borough can do something for them. … It’s not the will of the borough to move those citizens somewhere else and have two parks.”
The development initially provided temporary housing for workers building Expo 67 but, after the fair ended, it evolved into some of the most affordable waterfront property in Montreal.
Marinacci recognizes that the trailers stand out in what has become an upscale suburb. He calls the park “a historical mistake” but says he is stuck with it. Some of the residents take pride in their homes, sprucing them up with flowers and landscaping; other areas look like a slum, with junk piled up in yards.
“As mayor of the borough, I try to push the owner to give them good services. And I try to say to the people, ‘get yourselves together and make an effort to make it clean, to make it nice’,” Marinacci said.
Claudette Lavigne said she has grown accustomed to the problems since moving to the trailer park in 2013: a washing machine that takes half an hour to fill, water that has to be boiled, a landlord who doesn’t return calls. But she is not ready to pack it in.
“Where are they going to put us? In the woods?” she asked. “I’ll live for today and see what happens tomorrow.”