Vol. 79/No. 26      July 27, 2015

The gathering took place a few hundred yards from the fenced-off center of the catastrophe, which two years later is only partially cleaned up and detoxified.

At noon a minute of silence was observed by the entire town followed by the tolling of the church bells 47 times — one for each of the victims. Family members who lost loved ones participated in the commemoration.

The bosses and the government have made a scapegoat of Tom Harding, a member of the United Steelworkers and the engineer of the train that exploded. He is due in court Sept. 8 to set the date for his trial on frame-up charges of 47 counts of criminal negligence causing death brought by the Quebec crown prosecutor. The train controller, Richard Labrie, also a Steelworkers union member, and Jean Demaitre, manager of train operations for the now-bankrupt Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, face similar charges.

The federal government agency Transport Canada recently filed criminal charges against Harding and five officials of the rail company and against the company itself for allegedly violating the Railway Safety Act and the Fisheries Act.

The frame-up of Harding doesn’t sit well with many people here, who view him instead as a hero. Harding — a one-man “crew” by the company’s insistence and the government’s agreement — parked the train on July 6, 2013, and set the brakes before going to a motel for some sleep. When he heard the explosion he rushed to the scene and, risking his life, helped release brakes on cars so they could be moved away from the conflagration.

The responsibility for the disaster “went a lot higher up, for example the Minister of Transport and the oil companies, rather than Tom Harding and the others they’re trying to blame,” Marie-Claude Maillet, a local resident, told the Militant.

In a discussion around his kitchen table July 6, Jean-Pierre Bolduc, who once worked at the bunk house for the Canadian Pacific Railway, told the Militant that in his day “the freight trains had real crews with at least three people aboard — an engineer, a conductor and a helper.”

On July 4 around 150 people marched through the town protesting the planned resumption in January 2016 of routing oil trains through the center of this town of 6,000. The demonstrators are demanding that the federal government build a bypass around Lac-Mégantic.

That protest, called Solidarity Mégantic, was organized as part of North America-wide events and demonstrations opposing the expanding use of trains to transport crude oil to refineries and ports.

A Quebec superior court judge July 13 rejected Canadian Pacific Railway’s attempt to block a court settlement in which 25 companies would allocate some $431 million for compensation of victims of the disaster.

The Steelworkers and fellow rail workers in Canada and the U.S. are raising defense funds for Harding and Labrie. To contribute in Canada, send checks to Syndicat des Métallos, 565 boulevard Crémazie Est, bureau 5100, Montreal, Quebec H2M 2V8, or go online to www.justice4USWrailworkers.org. In the United States, checks can be sent to Tom Harding Defense Fund, First Niagara Bank, 25 McClellan Dr., Nassau, NY 12123 or visit www.tomhardingdefensefund.com.
 
 
Related articles:
Actions in US, Canada point to oil train dangers
On the Picket Line
 
 
 
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