ST-LAMBERT, Quebec — In an echo of situations that significantly disrupted the railroad’s operations in early 2020, protesters staged a blockade Saturday of Canadian National’s line in St-Lambert, adjacent to Montreal , saying they were acting in solidarity with a First Nations group in British Columbia.
The Montreal Gazette reports protesters said they were responding to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police raid on Wet’suwet’en First Nation territory where a gas pipeline is being built.
“What we’re doing is we’re responding to Wet’suwet’en’s calls to shut down Canada,” protester Marianne Côté told the Gazette. “And we’re inviting everyone to respond to the call for solidarity and to block transit infrastructure.”
The protest ended after about 5½ hours, as Longueuil and Canadian National police lined the site. A CN spokesman told the newspaper that the railroad was “monitoring the situation closely” but declined to comment on how the protest ended. The blockade delayed some freight traffic and led to cancellations and delays for some VIA Rail Canada trains.
Blockades at a number of locations across Canada disrupted CN operations for about three weeks in 2020, taking both a political and financial toll [see “Toll of blockages includes huge cost for farmers …,” Trains News Wire, Feb. 28, 2020].
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