Powerful reminders of Sunday’s rainstorm can be seen everywhere across Chertsey, Que., from crumbling roads to broken dams and people cleaning up.
Pierre Rochon’s basement flooded. He spent the morning clearing water and mud from his home.
“Mother Nature is effecting revenge for what we’ve done to her,” Rochon said. “It’s payback.”
The city says more than 120 millimetres of torrential rain fell in a matter of hours, wreaking havoc on the roads and forcing the city to ask citizens to stay indoors except in case of emergency.
“It was very, very scary,” Chertsey Mayor Michelle Joly said.
One of the area’s small dams gave in, forcing the closure of one of the main roads to contain it overnight.
“We have 58 dams here in Chertsey; 15 are municipality and the others ones are private and last year we lost two big ones and that’s why we are very, very careful about that,” Joly said.
About 100 homes were stranded due to the state of the roads, forcing crews to repair them in a rush to regain access.
On Sunday morning, crews had to intervene in another emergency.
“Some people were stuck near the Ouareau River and they were there to save the people this morning,” Joly explained.
Chertsey has a small population of about 5,000 but it’s in Quebec’s cottage country.
On long weekends and holidays like St. Jean Baptiste, the population swells to up to 16,000.
With a wide territory spanning 347 kilometres of road that could potentially be damaged, people were asked to not leave their homes.
“Our crews were going near the dams and near the roads where they were broken to put signs to make sure people don’t pass away there,” Joly said.
Environment Canada says the worst is now over.
There is another system expected on Wednesday but the amount of rain in the forecast is not enough to create any concern — giving crews time to repair the damage caused over the weekend.
Quebec Public Security Minister François Bonnardel said his teams are in touch with Chertsey and Val-David officials.
“We will be on site if there are any specific needs,” Bonnardel said in a post on X on Monday morning.