In the early morning of May 19, a sulphurous yellow rain soaked the land around Lac St-Jean. To the north, thick smoke hung in the heavy, moist air as a raging brushfire reached the forest. A strong wind from the west further intensified the inferno, which by now was spreading by leaps and bounds.
In a matter of hours, the flames destroyed everything over a distance of 150 km, from the Mistassini River, near Lac St-Jean, all the way to Baie des HaHa. The fire spread so quickly that some people had just enough time to scramble into makeshift dugouts or to run to the nearest body of water. By six o'clock that evening, the blaze burned itself out and an eerie calm settled over the devastation.
Though surprisingly few lives were lost, many people were seriously burned, and nearly a third of the population lost everything; homes, barns, livestock, mills and bridges. Cut off from the rest of the world, the victims were reduced to building crude huts from seared tree trunks and sleeping on the fire-ravaged ground.
A disaster relief committee set up in Chicoutimi began distributing food, seed, clothing and other supplies sent in from parishes along the St. Lawrence and from the large dioceses in Montréal and Québec City. As a result of newspaper coverage describing the terrible plight of the victims, aid from across the province began to come in. Though the generous donations fell short of what was needed, they did give hope to the destitute farmers, who immediately began sowing their fields again. Thanks to supplies of lumber from the local timber company of William Price and Sons, rebuilding was able to begin in earnest.
The settlement of the region was just beginning to take hold when the "Great Fire" struck. Despite the terrible toll exacted from the land and the people who worked it, the stricken families of the Saguenay stayed, forging a reputation as a remarkably tough and resilient people.
More than 9,000 forest fires occur in Canada each year, almost two thirds of them caused by human carelessness. Fortunately, crown or upper level fires have a beneficial effect on forest ecosystems. Not only does the heat produced cause the cones of the conifers to burst open and release seeds, it also promotes (provided the humus remains intact) the regeneration of the boreal forest's main species: black spruce, jack pine, white birch and trembling aspen. After larger, more intense fires, such as the Saguenay blaze of 1870 and those that ravaged Québec's North Shore in 1991, more than one hundred years may be needed for the humus to regenerate. These devastated areas are sometimes transformed into virtual deserts.
To limit the damage caused by such fires, Québec's forest fire prevention agencies have been making use of a Canadian-developed forest behaviour forecasting system, which studies data on tree species and topography in order to predict fire propagation speed and direction as well as to identify high-risk areas.
Historica Minute Cast
| Dad | Stephane Zarov | |
| Mom | Brea Asher-Pelletier | |
| Girl | Maggie Castle | |
| Boy | Gilles Ostiguy | |
| Additional Cast | Denis Lacroix |
