Train explosion in her final term will be mayor?s legacy

MONTREAL ? Only a few months after announcing she was leaving politics, Colette Roy-Laroche did not think a train explosion would be her legacy as a municipal leader.

But the mayor of Lac-Megantic was faced with the unfathomable challenge of dealing with the aftermath of a train disaster that razed a large part of the town?s core early Saturday morning.

?As a mayor, when you see your downtown destroyed for the most part, you can understand how we question: ?How can we survive this event?? ? said Roy-Laroche, her voice trembling at points during a news conference Saturday.

?It?s surpassed anything I could ever imagine as a politician,? she said. ?But my first priority right now is my citizens. That they are safe and being cared for.?

Roy-Laroche has been mayor of this town, 216 kilometres east of Montreal, since 2002, but she told its 6,000 residents in February that this term would be her last.

After speaking briefly with reporters Sunday, she went back to the local high school where the Red Cross had set up temporary shelter for those forced from their homes.

The municipality was founded as a railroad town and expanded during the 1880s and ?90s around the just-completed Montreal-St. John segment of the new transcontinental railway.

The municipality was originally known as Megantic ? which stems from an Abenaki word meaning ?place where the fish are held.?

More than a century ago, it was merged with the town of Agnes next door, named after Susan Agnes Bernard, the wife of John A. Macdonald.

Canada?s first prime minister, who spearheaded the national railway project, had visited the area with his spouse in 1879.

A famous local resident is Industry Minister Christian Paradis, one of only five Conservative MPs in the province and the government?s Quebec lieutenant.

With the railway in place, Megantic developed as a forestry town, its main industries being logging, lumber and pulp and paper.

?If I said I never worried about the trains (going through town) that would be a lie,? Roy-Laroche said during a news conference on Sunday. ?But we could never have imagined an event like this.?

With files from The Canadian Press

Source: http://o.canada.com/2013/07/07/train-explosion-in-her-final-term-will-be-mayors-legacy/

PSEG