During the summer, The duty crosses the waters of the St. Lawrence River, this giant “almost ocean, almost Atlantic” that Charlebois sings. Today, we wonder about the value of its breathtaking landscape. A collective good in lack of recognition.
Who owns the landscape? Why do we allow the banks of the river to be disfigured by certain industrial, commercial and residential uses? I am back on the Gray terrace in Quebec, which borders the battlefields, after a few years of absence. I see to my great dismay, sitting on a park bench facing the river, a tanker that is refueling (I imagine), parked at the Ultramar/Valero wharf just opposite, in Lévis.
The American firm Valero Energy is installed in the Jean-Gaulin factory, formerly Ultramar, and, even if it decorated its tanks near the cycle path, it remains difficult to miss it as its footprint in the landscape is large. Its commercial activities generate oil traffic in what is known as the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Sometimes, this firm is also responsible for spills during handling of its fuel or handling in the factory (in 2013, 200,000 liters of fuel spilled into the company’s pipes. An unknown quantity was spilled into the river without being declared by the firm; in 2016, there were 24 notices of non-compliance issued by the Ministry of the Environment for non-compliance with environmental laws). For users of Gray Terrace, residents and tourists alike, these industrial activities offer a very disappointing view for a city included on the World Heritage List.
Shared memories
What is known as the “St. Lawrence Seaway” is above all a river, air and land ecosystem that feeds a rich and amazing biodiversity where species live in interdependence. It is also, for the people who live on its shores, a place of rest, meditation, leisure, a benevolent presence, a historical thread between the populations who have lived there — from the First Nations to the urban populations of ‘today.
Who doesn’t have childhood memories along the river? Who hasn’t found comfort walking dreamily on its banks or getting their feet wet? Who hasn’t breathed in its spray and closed their eyes, letting themselves be transported in their imagination to the Atlantic Ocean, along the water?
Its shores, sometimes of sloping rock, mostly wooded, form a 1,200 kilometer long landscape to be protected, a collective landscape which belongs to no one and which belongs to everyone at the same time. A landscape that everyone can admire and contemplate, to bring back memories of it. If we realize, moreover, the pressure exerted by new residential constructions, often multi-storey buildings, on the land located at the top of the cliffs, we also note the gaps left by the deforestation of the coasts and the irreparable damage to the landscape resulting therefrom.
Last summer, I watched the mechanical shovels destroying large stretches of riparian woodland on a cliff on the South Shore, opposite the Cap-Rouge marina. I also saw with amazement a crane of an impressive height settling there. This was followed by the construction of a tower of apartments that will house dozens of privileged people, those entitled to an unobstructed view of the river.
But this to the chagrin of the population on the other side, who must now deal with this unsightly addition that rhymes with ecological discontinuity. Not to mention the impacts on the local ecosystem and the significant risk of erosion when the cliffs undergo a clear cut of the kind that has been carried out, always in the name of the breathtaking view that will be sold at high prices.
A living ecosystem
Who owns the landscape, exactly? Collectives of citizens in Gaspésie, Estrie and Charlevoix have formed to take stock of the quality of landscapes, which has resulted in landscape protection charters. So why shouldn’t the St. Lawrence River also be entitled to its protection charter?
The International Observatory for the Rights of Nature (OIDN), based in Montreal, tabled a bill last April in the National Assembly to assert the rights of the river. Can we imagine giving the St. Lawrence River the possibility of protecting itself against these attacks that disfigure its shores, its landscape and undermine its ecological integrity?
Recognition of the legal personality of the St. Lawrence River could advance Quebec law by including an ecocentric component that would make it possible to change perspective and stop prioritizing human needs (which anthropocentric law reflects), which sometimes leads to abuse (ecocide).
What are we waiting for to assert the collective character of river landscapes? Legal tools that integrate local knowledge, such as a river landscape charter and a law on the recognition of the legal personality of the St. Lawrence River, would make it possible to recognize that it is much more than a maritime route, that it it is a living ecosystem.
The river is a source of life, which we would like to be infinite, but which, alas, is threatened by several endogenous and exogenous factors (spreading of pesticides on lawns, polluting industrial activities, salinization by road salts , climate change, non-environmentally friendly construction, maritime traffic, etc.). Helping the river is helping yourself. We are the river!