Cooperation

…It wasn’t rebuilt in exactly the same way. We rebuilt it more solidly. The objective was—taking account of the costs and the potential impact on the general public if it ever happened again—that, if the situation ever happened again, the outages wouldn’t last longer than a week and not six weeks. The next time, if there is one, God forbid. One week. The equipment is stronger now than it was before. Lines that could withstand 15 mm of freezing rain, now, they’re able to take, I don’t know, 35 mm. There are mechanical switches on the lines now so, if a lot of ice accumulates and the lines fall, they will simply detach from the tower rather than taking the transmission tower down with them. The towers can be reconstructed. It’s very different if the tower remains there intact than if it collapses and crumples. In the second case, there is only one thing left to do—ask the good general to get it out of the way. It will go faster the next time. Instead of taking six weeks, it will take one week. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be any impacts. We shouldn’t wish for another event to happen to be able to test it out, because, for sure, there will be impacts.

Hydro’s work was much easier because of the atmosphere of mutual assistance. Much much easier. That’s for sure. If there’s a word to be remembered from the ice storm, it’s mutual assistance. Quebecers are able to pull together and help each other out, whether it’s relatives, neighbours or friends. When help is needed, there’s no hesitation. It happened everywhere, simultaneously. It wasn’t one group that started it and prompted others to do it, it occurred spontaneously everywhere at the same time. It is truly in our genes.

The media appearances were an initiative by the Premier. It was Premier Bouchard who decided to do them. They started the first day, I think, the day I came back from Europe. No, it wasn’t Monday evening, there weren’t any media appearances then, but beginning on Tuesday, they were already set up and ready to go. The Premier called me to tell me that he would be doing them and hoped I would join him. And that is how the turtleneck story got started, by the way, because, when I arrived in Saint-Hyacinthe, I was still dressed for Paris. I was shivering. Radio-Canada was adamant about doing the interview outside. OK. So, I was wearing a shirt and a jacket a bit like I am wearing now and it wasn’t really cold because it’s not really cold when there is freezing rain. It was 1 or 2 degrees above zero, but it was snowing, raining, sleeting, whatever the sky could throw at you, all at the same time. So, I was shivering and I asked Rioux to find me something to wear. That’s what he managed to come up with—the infamous turtleneck sweater. The next day, when I showed up to do the press conference with the Premier, the Chief of Staff said to me… I was dressed like I usually dress. Back then, at Hydro, we wore a tie. Not like today. In those days, we wore a tie. The Chief of Staff asked me, “Why are you dressed like that?” “Because I dress like this all the time.” “No, you don’t, not now! Put the sweater on.” (Laughter). It had become a uniform.

At a certain point, there was so much work to be done that we knew that, if we wanted to get the situation back to normal as quickly as possible, our current staff wasn’t enough. That’s why, at a certain point, the Quebec government asked the army to come in and we also called on line crews from New Brunswick, the northeastern U.S. and Ontario. There were already agreements between public utilities, including power companies, to help each other out in a disaster. The Hydro-Québec crews do it almost every year, whenever there is a hurricane on the U.S. East Coast, they go lend a hand. But this time, it was our turn to need help.

What struck me, I would say, is that, first, there was spontaneous solidarity both inside the company and in the society at large, as well as in the media, and everyone went fairly quickly into the mode of helping others. So, we found ourselves in a situation where the entire society was ready and eager to help and rely on each other and to do anything needed to get the situation back to normal as soon as possible. It made a big impression on me and all the eyewitness accounts I’ve heard in the last 20 years say roughly the same thing.