40 years since the explosion at the Central Station | The forgotten attack

“I was very close to those who died. Just before it exploded, we were talking about their trip. From what I remember, their last words were that they were enjoying the moment.”

Forty years after the bombing of Montreal’s Central Station, Claude Beaulieu has not forgotten the explosion that changed his life and ended that of three young French tourists.

“My last memory is of cement blocks hitting us,” he said in a telephone interview last month with The Press. “They served as a screen. I am alive because they are dead.”

Eric Nicolas (24), Michel Dubois (24) and Florence Leblond (22) were killed on September 3, 1984, at 10:17 a.m., when a bomb placed in a luggage locker exploded. The main suspect, a former American soldier suffering from mental health problems, died of natural causes before the courts rendered a final judgment.

Claude Beaulieu “can’t stop thinking about it,” but the event has been largely erased from Quebec’s collective memory, which is more marked by the explosions of the October Crisis. The Central Station bombing was nevertheless the deadliest in the history of the metropolis.

Pierre and Benoit Nicolas, Eric Nicolas’ father and brother, cannot forget. “The people you’ve lost, you miss them every day, so you think about them every day,” said the latter, reached at the family home on the outskirts of Paris. He was 15 when he lost his older brother. “It’s a tragedy, it’s as simple as that.”

For the general public, “I think that the year after, it was forgotten,” continued Benoit Nicolas, not surprised to learn that the attack had not left an indelible mark on the minds of Montrealers. “And unfortunately, whether it is forgotten or not forgotten, it changes nothing. It’s good to remember people and not forget, but what does that change, between us?”

A “metal rain”

Summer 2024. McDonald’s at the Central Station. Two young travelers look for an electrical outlet to plug in their phones, the tops of their huge backpacks towering over their heads. Workers enjoy their break by sipping coffee. The restaurant employees are busy.

None of them suspect that this is where a deadly attack took place 40 years earlier. The McDonald’s area housed a large luggage storage area. It was there, near the entrance to platforms 19 and 20, that the bomb had been hidden.

According to testimonies published at the time, the station was teeming with travelers at the time of the events. In addition to killing the three young French tourists, the explosion also injured 49 people. “It happened at high speed. It was crazy,” recalled Martha Gagnon, the journalist dispatched to the scene by The Press in 1984.

“A rain of metal fell on the crowd, windows shattered, ceiling tiles fell,” wrote journalist Martha Gagnon at the time. “The building shook and thick smoke spread everywhere.”

A few days before the attack, the Central Station had received a difficult-to-understand letter warning that the “end of the impious reign of the popes” would take place in the building at 9:30 a.m. on September 3. John Paul II was expected in Montreal a week later.

Thomas Brigham, a 65-year-old American, was arrested the same day by the police. A madman, he traveled across North America to spread his wild ideas. Hanging around the Central Station on the evening of the attack, he directly confirmed to a journalist on the scene that he was the author of the threatening letter, but denied having planted the bomb. The journalist alerted the police, who arrested him.

The man was convicted twice, but the Court of Appeal overturned the trials each time. The man died before a third trial could be held.

An attack “erased from history”

On the walls of Central Station, bronze plaques commemorate Canadian National executives who died a century ago, but there is no mention of the three young victims killed in 1984.

They were buried together in Leuville-sur-Orge, south of Paris. The municipal concert hall there was named after Florence Leblond just after the tragedy, said Mayor Eric Braive.

Like his predecessors, he highlights the death of the young woman – originally from Leuville – every year in his New Year’s wishes. “It was a tragedy for our town,” he said. “It had a big impact.” But outside the town of Essonne, the memory of the attack is much less vivid.

“To my knowledge, in 40 years, there has never been a commemoration,” lamented Isabel Schutz, who was injured in the attack.

She too began her adult life in 1984 and had left France to visit Canada. Like Claude Beaulieu, she was also in the immediate vicinity of those who would lose their lives a few seconds later.

“I heard four young people laughing and speaking with a French accent, so I went over to ask them for Canadian currency and that’s when everything exploded,” she said in a written statement. “I was thrown back violently and found myself on the ground under all kinds of debris with my clothes on fire. I had several fractures and numerous injuries.”

Claude Beaulieu returned to the Gare Centrale only once, with his wife, “to show her what it was like.” “It literally changed the course of my life,” he explains. “There’s no time when I don’t think about it.”