Querelle of Roberval by Kevin Lambert

Author:Kevin Lambert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2022-07-04T14:13:08+00:00

Grievances

* * *

June. School is over and the campsites and chalets are filling up with tourists come to celebrate Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, to spend their vacations at the lakeside. Last summer Jacques Fauteux sold the chalet his grandfather had bought, and where he’d spent his childhood. It was bought up by people from Quebec City, two doctors who razed it to the ground, built a castle on its ruins, installed a Jacuzzi in the yard and a swing for the children. The prices never stop rising, you could easily make five or ten thousand more by waiting an extra year. Even at a campsite where you own a lot, the little fixed-up trailers to which an awning has been added, a porch, a shed in the yard, are being replaced by big, luxurious fifth wheels. Your neighbour had to cut down a birch tree to fit his in.

In summer, the shores of Lac Saint-Jean take on the guise of a work site. You can’t stop progress, the tourists and new property owners bring lots of money into the region, we’ve seen, these last years, a proliferation of microbreweries, little craft stores, bicycle shops. There are luxury items on the shelves of grocery stores. In summer, all of the Lac goes to the Chicoutimi Costco to do most of its shopping, the businesses raise their prices as soon as the tourist season begins and things start to sell well. New hardware stores offer material for the chalets, which are springing up like couch grass, stretches of beach are fenced off, Private Property signs are a familiar sight at the top of paths leading to the water, the municipality is not giving out any more construction permits. The cheapest timber in the region is produced by the Scierie du Lac, Inc., which does 54 percent of its business between June and August; direct sales at the factory benefit from the rumours circulating beneath the umbrellas or on the marina docks, Roberval’s and Métabet’s hardware stores are often out of stock, the white pine boards produced on Chemin Saint-Hubert are much in demand.

The strike has been going on for almost ten months. The picket line looks like Club Med with its coloured shorts, its tank tops that smell of sunscreen, its vented hats, its water bottles to keep yourself hydrated, its spray bottles full of ice cubes. Every once in a while a group of strikers will go off for half an hour for a dip in the water. Thirty degrees under umbrellas by the side of the local road, you’re sweltering, you tell yourself that the bosses ought to start feeling the heat too, you won’t let anybody get through, won’t let them bring out the boards stored in the factory to make money off our backs. One way or the other we’re holding the line, we make shade with our signs, we turn away people who show up, people from outside the region who don’t know about the strike. They arrive at

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