For a long time, I hesitated to buy this graphic novel, which was only available in one of the seven bookshops I regularly visit. In this age of flashy covers and attention-grabbing themes, I found myself faced with this quiet book about the seven lives of a complete stranger. What was I to do?
In the end, I decided to buy it and found it so interesting that I read it in one go. A very nice surprise, although I should have known that the quality would be there when I saw the name of the author, Charles Masson. I had previously read another very interesting graphic novel by this author. The book was entitled “Droit du sol” and dealt with the difficulties experienced by natives in dealing with colonialism.
A page from the graphic novel “Sept vies à vivre”.
“Seven Lives to Live” is an intelligent and humane account of the life of an ordinary man named René. Forget computers and social networks. The reader finds René and his family several decades ago in the Bauges massif, where he spent his childhood and adolescence in the absence of comfort and luxury. The inhabitants toil to survive in this part of the country.
René lost seven siblings in infancy and is determined to live life to the full. He heads down to the valley to change his life. René’s seven lives are the seven great moments that change this man’s destiny. Like so many of us, he was shaken by events. In his case, it’s the Second World War, compulsory military training in France in 1946, chance encounters, and so on. How do you adapt and retain your humanity in the face of life’s surprises?
The script is solid and the graphics interesting. There’s no downtime, which is something to be said for a 225-page story. A great find to add to your library.
Non fiction comic book “Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit”.
We have all heard of the tragedyexperienced by the inhabitants of Lac-Mégantic in 2013, when a driverless oil train from the CP railway company pulling hundreds of cars of explosive petroleum derails in the middle of the night, explodes and kills 47 inhabitants of the city.
The comic book (or graphic novelaccording to some) “Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit ” adds to the information that we already knew about this tragedy. It also exposes several key pieces of information overlooked by the media.
Author Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny worked for years on the file and, in order to convey the content and the emotions in images, enlisted the help of Christian Quesnel. The result is extremely interesting. The formula works: the drawings are very precise, the layout leaves room for the reader to reflect on the events, the colours are appropriate.
In the train explosion in Lac-Mégantic, there are multiple factors to consider, among others:
1) Executives of the CP company making catastrophic choices.
2) As always, a desire to meet the demands of shareholders. There is a reduction in staff and the company self-assesses when it comes to safety.
3) One driver only is allowed for a train carrying hundreds of tanks of explosives.
4) Politicians agree to the new cuts proposed by the company.
5) There is some magical thinking involved: if something goes wrong with the driver, the train stops on its own thanks to a mechanism which, however, is always likely to fail eventually.
6) Dated rails.
7) The transport of dangerous goods is granted to the MMA, a company with a dubious reputation .
8) The DOT-111 tanks are too fragile for hazardous materials and targeted in more than 25 surveys.
9) There is an agreement to tamper with the oil bill of lading. Instead of indicating the code PG1 (the most dangerous, the most explosive) as it should be, it is instead PG111 (not dangerous) that is written.
10) The lead locomotive is terribly worn.
11) The driver reports a problem with his old locomotive. He is ordered to continue on his way.
12) In Lac-Mégantic, the train is heating up. The driver is ordered to apply the brakes and let the engine run. The driver is then allowed to leave the premises and go to bed. This is one of the repercussions of allowing a single driver on a train.
13) During the night, a fire starts on the lead locomotive, the one that had problems. The firefighters shut down the engine. “By turning off the engine, the air pressure in the air brakes is released. Eventually, the train will start to move on its own and descend the slope towards Lac-Mégantic.”
With just one driver gone to sleep somewhere, there are now 5,000,000 litres of explosivesstarting to move on the rails and no one will stop them.
“Firefighters believe they are fighting low flammable oil. They are unaware that the CP and World Fuel have falsified the papers, camouflaging their oil classified as the most explosive and dangerous.” There are 47 dead, including several suicides.
Now that there has been a disaster, those involved directly or indirectly are passing the buck, as is the custom in tragedies. The graphic novel mentions, at the political level, the names of Denis Lebel, Lisa Raitt, John Baird and later Marc Garneau. At CP, the author mentions Hunter Harrison. The MMA’s CEO Edward Burkhardt is also mentioned.
Changes happen, but not the ones you would think…
Naomi Klein analyzes the “shock strategy” devised by Milton Friedman. In step 1, “we take advantage of what the population while it is still dazed: they will not be able to oppose what we want to impose on them.” The zoning is being quickly changed to include the expropriation of houses that are totally outside the disaster-affected area. There are some people who are interested in these properties…
In step 2 of the “shock strategy”, we “use the excuse of mandatory decontamination to wipe out the Old World. Excluding the population from the scene of the tragedy, so that they cannot cling to it, so that there is no going back. “
Finally, step 3: “Faced with a population whose shock has been exacerbated by the destruction of its landmarks and habits, we can launch a reconstruction or reinvention which will be received with resigned acceptance“. We have the case of people living in Fatima, a remote area spared by the disaster: owners must quickly sign their expropriation or they shall lose everything. When the former owners are finally gone, a Jean Coutu pharmacy comes to settle on the vacated land.
On the legal side, the small players are targeted and the investigation is limited as much as possible. Takeovers are carried out and returns to shareholders multiplied.
The book flaunts some of the political and entrepreneurial maneuvers aimed at protecting the railway companies. Even at the dawn of 2022, eight years later, the rails still pass through downtown Lac-Mégantic.
“MMA-Canada, essentially bankrupt, has paid nothing and has not been sued.“
“Nothing has changed in rail laws in Canada since the tragedy: companies self-regulate, self-monitor and, in the event of an accident, self-investigate. Thus, it was the CP itself that investigated the deaths of three of its employees in an accident in February 2019 in British Columbia. The CP investigator, prevented from investigating, denounced his employer and called for an independent investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Transport Safety Board (TSB), an investigation immediately accepted by the chief investigator responsible for the case at the TSB. That same day, this TSB investigator was dismissed from his post. The CP investigator concluded on a CP no-fault.”
Even though World War II is over and the armistice was signed in 1945, four Japanese soldiers continue to hide on Lubang Island in the Philippines, awaiting official orders from their superior to surrender. They have been forgotten there in the jungle and continue to survive as best they can, dodging the patrols that have gone looking for them to tell them the war is over. They continue to accumulate information on the island for the intelligence services, hoping to be useful when a possible Japanese landing takes place that will drive the Americans out of the island. Years pass and there will be only one Japanese soldier left, Hiro Onada, who will finally surrender in 1974, thirty years later!
The bookis a lesson in survival in a hostile environment. The discipline and resourcefulness that are required to survive and ensure their safety is extremely impressive. Onada, even as he gradually sank into an alternate reality, shows a remarkable tenacity.
Here is a passage that shows the reality of the jungle. I translated it as best as I could: “[…] There are also a lot of bees on the island. Huge swarms fly in the bushy areas at the foot of the mountains. I saw some that were thirty meters wide and a hundred long, flying here and there with unpredictable changes of direction. If we encountered one of these swarms, the only thing to do was to go back to the woods or, if we did not have time, to cover our heads with the canvas of our tent or our clothes and lie down on the ground. If we made the slightest move, they would attack. We had to breathe as gently as possible, until the swarm had passed. “(P.216)
In 1957, bombardments in the neighborhood reassured them that the war continued. But these were military exercises by the Philippine Air Force, not an American attack.
Onada et Qanon
As the years pass, there will be countless opportunities for those soldiers to realize that the war is over. They even had access, for a while, to a radio. It did not matter: whatever was read, heard or discovered by chance was, according to them, only the fruit of disinformation from the enemy.
On reading this real life story, it is possible to make a connection between Onada’s testimony and a follower of Qanon: both cannot accept defeat and believe in an almost divine mission. As Onada himself put it so well: “At that time, Kozuka and I had developed so many fixed ideas that we were unable to understand everything that differed from them. If something did not fit our vision, we interpreted it to give it the meaning we wanted “(p.192).
When a person is gradually made to believe in an alternate reality and decides to cling to it for their mental or physical health, or both, the same conclusion remains: regardless of the evidence, the rhetoric or the new realities that will be presented, that person will continue to persist with his line of thinking. It will take some dramatic event in his life for him to decide to change course and come back to a more objective reality.
Have a good read!
Click on the link for more books on war in my blog.
