Year in review: June
June saw major flooding in the Townships due to heavy rainfall in the late hours of Tuesday, June 9.
Compton and Coaticook were hit hard, with several families evacuated from their homes. Surrounding areas including Martinville, Waterville and North Hatley were also affected, causing road closures Wednesday, some of which required major work before reopening.
Compton Mayor Bernard Vanasse said this was no ordinary rain.
"This was the first time it's been this bad," Vanasse said, "This is rare."
Vanasse said the flooding happened so quickly that one Compton resident caught off guard required a rescue.
Earlier in the month, the Sentier Massawippi bike path, running from Ayer's Cliff to Stanstead suffered a major washout at kilometre 16 between Stanstead Road and Dubé Road in early April.
Not part of Vélo-Québec and therefore not maintained by municipalities and government subsidies like many other paths in the region, Sentier Massawippi is facing its biggest repair required to date. It was suspected the heavy snow melt during the warm Easter weekend was the cause of the washout. The culvert, still frozen over from the cold winter, left the water nowhere to go.
Fundraising efforts are ongoing to cover the costs of the repairs, estimated at roughly $40,000.
The Boutique Encore in Lennoxville, the secondhand store and social enterprise, closed its doors on June 20. The space it occupied at 178 Queen Street was vacated to allow for the expansion of the neighbouring health food store. The boutique's operators, the Lennoxville and District Women's Centre said that all hope is not lost for its future, but that they are stopping operations for the time being while a new location is sought. The Boutique Encore had been serving the local community since it first opened in November 2009.
On June 12, The Record reported that the Knowlton Development Corporation had laid off 90 employees. KDC president Mario Allaire explained the two main reasons for the layoffs were that production had slowed down, and the company had lost a contract with Glade air fresheners.
Employing about 700 people at the time, Allaire acknowledged that the staff level at the plant, located at 215 Knowlton Road, was at its lowest. "But levels always fluctuate," he added. "We had about 940 employees last year, and I'd say we have an average of 800 employees generally speaking."
In education news, Education Minister Francois Blais continued pushing the message that school board elections would be abolished, also laying the groundwork, through budgetary constraints, for the closure of schools operating below 50 per cent capacity, roughly half of the schools in the Eastern Townships School Board.
Adding insult to injury, Blais offered no mention of an alternative system of governance, or a plan for restructuring schools with low populations, said ETSB chairman Mike Murray.
In following weeks, Blais would remove those measures from the budget constraints.
Blais’ determination to restructure school board governance prompted the formation of the Election Systems study panel.
The Quebec English School Boards Association, the English Parents' Community Association, the Quebec Community Groups Network and the Quebec Federation of Home and School Associations each had a representative on the panel, which was chaired by former Liberal Member of Parliament Marlene Jennings.
The panel's mandate was to identify options for selecting school commissioners, seek out the views of English-speaking organizations and individuals on the various options and review past elections to make recommendations on how to improve the process.
Dubbed the Jennings report, upon its completion, it made a list of recommendations to maintain but improve universal suffrage to elect board commissioners.
The report was dismissed outright by the minister.
Frustrated by slow-moving collective agreement negotiations, over 300 teachers and support staff from the French and English sectors gathered for a demonstration on Portland Boulevard in Sherbrooke during rush hour on June 10.
Organized by the Syndicat de l'enseignement de l'Estrie, a regional teachers' union, president Benoit Houle said visibility was the goal of the demonstration.
The Appalachian Teachers' Association, accepted the invitation, as did Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers president Richard Goldfinch.
Goldfinch said negotiators for the teachers unions had at that point met with the education ministry 39 times to no avail. "Nothing is moving," he said. "We're ready to negotiate, they don't seem to have clear mandates," Goldfinch added, unaware at the time the negotiations would continue until December.
June marked the opening of the 40th season of the North Hatley Farmers’ Market, the 26th annual Friendship Day celebration in Lennoxville and the 21st Ayer’s Cliff Music fest.
New ventures in the Townships included the second year for the Ayer’s Cliff Rodeo, and the return of Foresta Lumina for a second year at the Coaticook gorge.
In municipal news, on June 17, it was reported that Sutton town council, during a special meeting, adopted contentious bylaws 254 and 256. The plot would thicken in following months, leading to a legal suit still in progress.
The Richmond area lost a giant in June with the death of 69-year-old David "Butch" Crack. A world renowned Holstein breeder and auctioneer, Crack was taken by melanoma after a back and forth battle with cancer over years. Remembered by his family and friends as a man who always made those around him feel special, from the lowliest farm hand to the local member of the National Assembly, Crack left a space in the community that will not soon be filled.
Veteran journalist and radio personality Bernard StLaurent, well-known for his ability to bridge linguistic barriers and distill political innuendo into terms the average person could understand, retired from the CBC in June. St-Laurent had worked as a journalist for the Sherbrooke Record early in his career.