Have you noticed the swallows circling in the sky this year? It is they, for so long, who made spring. Not anymore. No more swallows. My favorite, the tree swallow, has seen its population drop by 80% since 1970. Not something to sing about.
The barn swallow, always a little panicked, it was easy to find, without looking too hard, by looking near the farm buildings. She nested almost everywhere, clinging to earthen nests. It is not for nothing that it is also called the barn swallow. Gone, too, is the barn swallow. We hardly see any anymore. Its population has melted. More than 90% of the species has disappeared in half a century.
It is no longer through swallows that spring is announced. In Montreal, it is with the appearance of tram rails. Rue Berri, near the old Sainte-Marie college, we can see them. There, as in several places, the rails of the network abandoned in 1957 pierce the roadway. By the leverage effect of the frosts combined with that of the heat of spring, the rails resurface.
Right in the middle of René-Lévesque Boulevard, perpendicular to traffic, one of these rails reminds us that at a time not so long ago we traveled quite differently in Quebec. It was at the time when trams ran not only in Montreal, but also in Longueuil, Saint-Lambert, Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Sherbrooke…
We have come a long way since the days of the tram. Thousands of kilometers of asphalt and concrete, to the delight of oil companies. At a time when, as the electric charging network develops, that of service stations fears being relegated to the past, this lobby is pleading for the government to withdraw Hydro-Québec from the sector in order to leave the field free, once again, to the private sector. So that before long, in the name of change, everything might nonetheless be back to pretty much the same as before.
The history of roads, which have benefited many private portfolios, remains to be written. One day we will have to take the time to look into it. We could start by talking about bridges, which account for part of this kingdom of asphalt and concrete.
Take the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. Without even mentioning its tumultuous construction and its name change, who remembers that the toll stations supposed to finance it were the subject of multiple embezzlements? They led to arrests. In 2017, in another story, the former boss of the Federal Bridge Company, Michel Fournier, a man with an impeccably trimmed mustache, was sentenced to prison. In exchange for a contract, he received a $2.3 million bribe from SNC-Lavalin. And now, last week, a former vice-president at SNC-Lavalin was in turn sentenced to prison for setting up bribery schemes in order to receive contracts for this same bridge.
In our societies, the past is readily thrown into large bags, which allow it to be better smothered. Shaken by some nasty affairs, SNC-Lavalin took the cautious step of changing its name. The practice has proven itself. It allows us to assert more firmly that we have broken ties with practices relegated to the past. The former company is now called AtkinsRéalis. A large part of its growth is due to the nuclear energy issue.
In 1934, the Jacques-Cartier Bridge appeared as the gateway to a vast network of roads taking shape in the St. Lawrence Valley and beyond. The following year, the Île d’Orléans bridge was inaugurated. The Taschereau government tried, without success, to stay in power by moving around this new bridge. In the midst of the economic crisis, the work cost $3.5 million. The equivalent, in 2024, of around 77 million. This year, the projected cost for the work supposed to replace it is currently estimated at more than 2.75 billion. AtkinsRéalis was quick to publicly congratulate himself on having won part of the contract.
The new bridge, like the old one, will have two lanes, but with greater clearance and the addition of tracks capable of protecting cyclists. For now, the latter risk being killed by taking this bridge. The length of the structure remains approximately the same: around 325 meters.
Can we compare this bridge with the one that just collapsed in Baltimore? 2700 meters long, the latter was built in 1977 for 220 million dollars. The equivalent of almost 2 billion today. Eight times longer than that of Île d’Orléans, it had four lanes for traffic. More than 30,000 passages were recorded there. Double the traffic on the Île d’Orléans bridge. Estimated costs for rebuilding the bridge in Baltimore are estimated at $3 billion.
Our money goes a long way. When Minister Geneviève Guilbault asserts that the government’s function is to manage roads, but not to take care of public transportation, she is part of a long and costly tradition, which she is careful not to reconsider.
In this new National Museum of the History of Quebec, announced with fanfare, as if to better mask the total failure of this stillborn and costly project that was the “Blue Spaces”, perhaps there will be Is it about dedicating, somewhere between the celebration of Céline Dion and Hydro-Québec, a room to our excessive passion for concrete and asphalt? It says a lot, after all, about our poorly controlled fantasies of modernity.
In the meantime, there are fewer birds than ever singing in this half-country. Maybe that’s also why we fly so low.