Citizen intervention in the face of the felling of trees on the CN wasteland
Machines came to uproot trees near the rails on the CN railway wasteland in Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Mrs. Pelletier asked to blur the faces at the request of the residents.
Excavator operators came to cut down trees on the Canadian National (CN) railway wasteland near Boisé Steinberg, which provoked an intervention by residents of the adjacent housing cooperatives.
The felling of the trees was done in order to “improve the visibility of the trains” according to CN employees, while rail traffic is rare on these tracks leading to the Cascades plant in the borough.
“Trains pass here twice a month maximum, underlines Émilie Pelletier, resident of the cooperatives who challenged the machinery operators. I live in the co-op behind, and when I saw that there were CN operators cutting down trees, we went to meet them and they told us that they were cutting down trees so as not to come back every three years to cut the branches.”
Following the group’s intervention, the machinery operators left the scene to make way for the police shortly afterwards. They took Ms. Pelletier's information in a respectful and peaceful manner.
The latter nevertheless says that it is distraught by this kind of maneuvers on the part of CN, which harm the quality of life of the citizens of the sector and are added to the activities of Ray-Mont Logistiques, which has begun to stack visible containers. from his window, which causes a lot of apprehension for the future.
“It’s one of the only green spaces left in the area with Maisonneuve Park, and there they uproot trees that contribute to decontaminate the soil, comments Ms. Pelletier. We no longer know what to do, and neither do the elected officials. We feel like second-class citizens because that kind of thing would never happen in Westmount. We wonder what it will all look like if industrial activities increase with more pollution and problems in the neighborhood. There is a CHSLD next door, and not everyone can move.”
As of this writing, Métro was still in the station. waiting for a reaction from Canadian National.
