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“Vivre le Québec libre des éoliennes!”

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—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD (from Vaudreuil, Québec)

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July 1967.   French President Charles de Gaulle, visiting Montreal, famously boomed out to a huge French-speaking throng, “Vivre le Québec!”

As the approving roar died down, he leaned into the mike and roared back, “Vivre le Québec libre!”

“Libre!”  That one word made History.

“Hail to a free Québec!”  (Free of English control.)

Last evening, Nina Pierpont raised her voice in support of a Québec free of wind turbines.  (“Vivre le Québec libre des éoliennes!“)

Speaking in the measured language of the clinician, Pierpont explained to a rapt audience that “real clinical medicine does not support industrial wind turbines in your communities!”

Dr. Pierpont had been invited to Québec by a coalition of mayors (a half dozen or so) whose communities oppose Big Wind.  Communities rich in history.  Communities of black alluvial soils growing, for centuries, the vegetables for Eastern Canada.  Communities of robust towns along the banks of the Richelieu, as it journeys north from L. Champlain to intersect the St. Lawrence.

Communities where a name tells a story.  St.-Blaise-sur-Richelieu, l’Île-aux-Noix, St.-Valentin, l’Abri-du-Vent-de-Nord, Saint-Cyprien-de-Napierville.

Here kinship and hospitality reach back centuries—and still mean something.

Québecois tradition

Here, this physician with French surname spoke to the health of community.

First to a press conference.  Then, more formally, to a provincial tribunal.  To a government tribunal struggling to resolve the vexing issue of giant industrial wind turbines in the heart—the soul, really—of this eloquent fabric of land and people.

Testimony before an audience of hundreds—nearly all of them opposed to the mind-boggling machines being thrust upon them by a culturally tone-deaf developer.

Despite her name, the doctor’s French was rudimentary.  (A professional had to translate.)

And when she was done—the audience broke the rules.  They applauded!  They applauded “Vivre le Québec libre des éoliennes!”

Thunderously.  As if they meant it.