Those who lost properties to make way for Mirabel airport to be honoured with new site – Montreal | 24CA News
A Nineteenth-century resort at 9975 Rue de Belle Rivière within the Ste-Scolastique village of Mirabel, north of Montreal, nearly didn’t survive previous the Nineteen Sixties.
It was known as the Hôtel Longtin again then, and was one of many properties expropriated to construct the Mirabel airport.
Luc Longtin nonetheless remembers the ache the expropriation prompted his dad and mom.
“Oh it was really bad,” he recalled. “They didn’t know where to go. All of a sudden, you have to leave.”
Monday, although, introduced some closure for him and different descendants of property homeowners. Aéroports de Montréal (ADM), which oversees the airport, introduced it’s leasing simply over 41,000 sq. metres of land close to the airport, for a greenback, to the Centre de mémoire collective de l’expropriation de Mirabel (CMCEM), a gaggle representing the households of expropriated land.
“They wanted a site,” ADM president and CEO Philippe Rainville instructed Global News. “They have a project, they wanted to put some memento on the site and they wanted a good site, so they were insistent, which is good.”
Members of the group plan to create a web site to commemorate the households’ struggles and can embrace a monument designed by sculptor Armand Vaillancourt.
“This centre will be the place — their place — to talk about what happened, really,” defined Denise Beaudoin, co-founder of the CMCEM.
“Most of the people in Quebec or in Canada, they don’t know what happened here.”
In 1969, the Canadian authorities purchased round 39,000 hectares within the space to construct the Mirabel airport, affecting some 3,000 households who Beaudoin says nonetheless keep in mind.
“The second generation and the third generation, when we talk about that, they cry,” she identified. “They cry because they saw their house burning, they saw their parents really anxious.”
Not all of the land was cleared and finally the federal government bought among the property again. Longtin purchased again the resort in 1986 and have become the final era in his household to personal it.
“They paid, well, not enough of course, but when we bought it back, that was OK,” he mentioned.
Longtin bought it 17 years in the past, moved away and the title modified to Auberge Belazur. But the mission introduced Monday subsequent to Highway 50 on the best way to the airport makes he and his household completely happy.
“Except for the noise,” quipped Lise Leduc, laughing.
They say at the least it’ll be straightforward for the general public to entry.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
