The third link will not take place. However, over the past ten years, only Carey Price has obtained more media space than this tunnel project between Lévis and Quebec, promised and reproached by the CAQ. While humanity dreams of going to Mars, we dreamed of going to Quebec by driving in our van under the St. Lawrence.
The Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, closed the light at the end of the tunnel, announcing the new orientation of what was to be a pharaonic site dedicated to the god Vroom Vroom. It will now be a modest passage for public transit, because the Quebec government wants to make people want to leave their cars behind.
You read correctly. It was not Valérie Plante who said that. It’s not Greta Thunberg either. She’s the CAQ’s Minister of Transport! There’s no more steak-corn from India-potatoes than the CAQ. There is no party more attached to traditional Quebec values: hockey, job steady, the good boss and the big tank. They just crossed the last one off the list.
Motorists, our dog is dead! Or rather, our tank is dead! The abandonment of a highway link to the national capital is symptomatic of the fate that awaits private vehicles in the short and medium term. We don’t want it anymore. At the dump, the heaps of scrap metal! It’s no longer just a whim of the Montreal pedal gogauche. It is a state objective.
The automobile is the cigarette of the next decade. We drive everywhere like we used to smoke everywhere. It ends. In the cities, there will be car sections, just as there were smoking sections. Which will shrink until they disappear. For the good of all. We have to mourn it.
It won’t be easy, I know. Our chariot is much more than our chariot. Our chariot is our freedom. The place that allows us to be everywhere. To go where we want. Without waiting for anyone. The extension of our being that allows us to surpass others. To leave, to arrive. To lose and to gain.
For a century, getting around was an individual right. From now on, it will be a collective right. It’s over Lévis-Québec, the music in the background, the window open, and the arm in the air. From now on, we are all in the same car, with our headphones, arms crossed.
Above all, do not think that the electric car will be the equivalent of the gasoline car, in the life of a guy or a tank girl. Impossible. A Tesla will never replace a jacked-up 1970 Dodge Charger or a 1999 Ford 150 SVT Lightning. The electric car will never be a fantasy. The electric car will never put on a smoke show. The electric car is a convenient transportation. A golf cart to get to the metro station or bus stop. Behind the wheel, you’ll never be Vin Diesel in Fast and dangerous. At the wheel, you will always be Charles Tisseyre in Ecological and careful.
We are not going on a nowhere with a rechargeable battery.
This is why the tank will no longer be the object of our desires. On the contrary. It will be the object of our reason. Stephen Faulkner wrote If I had a chariot, in 1978. In 2023, he would write If I had more tank :
“If I had more tank
It would change my life
I would go for a walk from the edge
From the bike path…”
Celine will no longer sing I drove all nightbut I took the bus all night. Tom Cochrane won’t sing anymore Life is a highway, but Life is a tram. And Willie Nelson won’t sing no more On the road againbut On the pedestrian street again.
It’s the end of the reign of the automobile. And so it is. Otherwise, it would be the end of the animal kingdom. And that wouldn’t be fun. For many, it will be necessary to find another way to define themselves, to differentiate themselves, to magnify themselves.
On this Saturday, if it’s not raining in your part of the country, take the opportunity to wash your tank. Put it nice. Spend some quality time with him. Go to the Orange Julep, while drive-thru is not yet banned. Give him a little kick on the tire to tell him I love you, old man. It will do him good. He feels he has had his day. That soon, it will join the ashtray, the landline telephone, the VHS, the answering machine and the trouser-saving mat in hardware paradise.
The tank is dead!
Long live the planet!