On Tuesday evening last week, in the middle of the second power outage to hit the Upper Pontiac during the heatwave, Waltham mayor Odette Godin got a phone call from a resident who was worried her mother’s portable oxygen tank would run out before the morning.
“The way the oxygen is now, they have these little tanks in an emergency, because they don’t run on power, but normally the oxygen you’re on is through a machine that takes normal air and turns it into oxygen, and that needs electricity,” Godin explained.
The caller, with no idea when the power would be restored, was concerned the emergency tank would empty before the suppliers could get to her the following morning, at their earliest availability.
Godin advised the resident to call local Fire Chief Larry Perry, and sure enough, Perry was able to deliver the needed oxygen.
Luckily, the woman’s mother didn’t need the extra oxygen. The power came back around 10:30 p.m. that night.
But for Godin, and many others across the region, it served as a fresh reminder of just how vulnerable residents of the Upper Pontiac are when the power goes out, especially in a heatwave.
People living in the municipalities of Sheenboro, Waltham, Chichester, Allumette Island, and sometimes even Mansfield have been hit with four power outages in the last eight days, two of them during the extreme heat that blanketed the region for the better part of last week.
Outages occurred on June 17 from 1 to 3:30 p.m., June 18 from 5:30 to about 10:30 p.m., on June 23, from 5 to 10 p.m., and again from 6:30 a.m. to just after 5 p.m. on Monday of this week.
The consistent power failures are frustrating for people living in these municipalities, many of whom are elderly and require electricity for critical medical devices, and on a hot day, air conditioning.
Alicia Jones is the director general for Allumette Island, as well as the emergency management coordinator for Allumette Island, Chichester, and Sheenboro, because the three municipalities share an emergency management plan.

“A lot of our homes around here are equipped with generators, but there are a lot that aren’t,” Jones told THE EQUITY on Wednesday last week.
“And so of course, the biggest concern is the vulnerable population – the elderly and the children, and anybody who needs oxygen or something like that, and sometimes don’t have backup power.”
Most residents in the Upper Pontiac are without cellphone service, which only makes them more vulnerable.
Jones said she always gets the same answer from Hydro Quebec when inquiring into the reason for a power outage: equipment failure.
Anna Rozanova is one of Hydro Quebec’s community liaisons for the Outaouais.
“Although both incidents happened on a particularly hot day, it was not the heat or high temperatures that caused them,” she told THE EQUITY last week.
“There was no apparent anomaly that was identified, so they couldn’t really pinpoint the damage.”
She explained that sometimes momentary contact with a branch, or something else that doesn’t leave a trace would be enough to trigger the power to shut off automatically as a safety measure.
Then crews need to inspect the lines to be sure there is nothing obstructing the system before restoring power. This can take hours though, as crews may have to travel all the way from Gatineau before they even get to the site.
Rozanova said Hydro Quebec has in fact been able to reduce the duration and frequency of outages in the region.
“Last year, in 2023, MRC Pontiac customers experienced an average of 84.5 hours of service interruptions. So far in 2024, they have experienced an average of 7.5 hours of service interruptions,” she wrote in an email, noting this includes outages during extreme weather events.
Godin knows the company is making an effort to improve its services in the region, but in a week with four separate outages, she didn’t see evidence of this work in her community.
On Monday, when Godin placed yet another call to Hydro Quebec to get some answers for the outages on Sunday and Monday, she learned that the cause of the outages was still unknown, and that the company was focusing on getting the power restored.
She’s been making these calls all week, trying to get information to bring back to the people of her municipality by way of the Facebook group she created for sharing updates.
“I’ve had about 50 people join this group between yesterday and today that don’t even live in Waltham just so they can read the updates,” Godin reported this Monday evening. “It just makes it all worthwhile that I haven’t slept.”