After seeing so many men and women in handcuffs being lugged endlessly through interminable corridors, then going to jail after dark … After attending so many videoconference hearings where cables and screens now prevent physically spitting in the face of the judges, or thinking full of rage to jump from the box and try to run off… After contemplating a beautiful sample of what humankind can offer most vilely – executioners in uniform, scoundrels in togas, conscientious journalists, experts in the right of the strongest, I’m-only-doing-my-job clerks, repentant scales … By dint of hearing the complaints of fine talkers claiming what a tool of domination cannot structurally give them, namely justice or truth, which moreover is non-existent in heaven as on earth …
By dint of, who knows ?, reflections on the absolute incompatibility between authority – that which it embodied so well – and freedom …the court of Roberval went up in flames in the evening of May 8th 2021. . But after all, doesn’t the famous motto on the coat of arms of this small Quebec town located on the shores of Lake Saint-Jean proudly profess “For a valiant heart, nothing is impossible“? Although humans often have poor memories, what was one of the last historic buildings in the city (1910), however, remembers very well that the following year a regional prison was added to it. Certainly the mark of some civilizational progress on the predecessors of the shores of the lake, these Innu nomads whose wisdom had for too long despised the splendours of state centralization and its benefits such as mass confinement. In this regard, the now charred imposing pink granite building remembers, for example, that the first prisoner who was tried and then imprisoned in this complex as functional as it was expedient, combining court and jail, was enclosed for two months after having transferred three dollars from one pocket to another, or that a woman was condemned to death by hanging in the courtyard of the enclosure in 1926, accused of having poisoned her husband.
Or that rebellions, resistance and mutinies shook its thick walls, like the one told with vexation by a screw of the 80s, who was taken hostage by a prisoner who had managed to saw some bars before forcibly snatching his bunch of keys to move towards the exit by reversing the roles. But, some sorrowful spirits may object, was not this adjacent prison demolished last year after having definitively closed in 2015, that is to say all the same more than a hundred years of good and loyal service rendered to power? Certainly, but on the one hand it was to rebuild a new larger one at 115 million dollars outside Roberval, nicknamed the Alcatraz of Quebec by the press because of its high-tech means intended to crush bodies and spirits by preventing them from escaping, and on the other hand this demolition aimed to take advantage of the space gained in order to quintuple the size of the current Palace of Infamy, whose work had been underway since September 2019 … before going up in smoke a few days ago. When it is not freedom-loving rebels who raze these buildings to the ground, but the State which restructures them on its own, it is obviously to increase the number of imprisoned (from 65 to 180 in Roberval), to strengthen and perfect its control over us (inside and outside the walls), or make room for other oppressive institutions. Despite all this, and since chance sometimes does things well, everyone can see that while the burning of the Roberval court (about which the authorities are careful not to comment) could have erupted any day of the week at any time, it chose to declare itself outside construction and courtroom opening hours, i.e. just before 7 p.m., but also on a Saturday evening when most of the good citizens are still out and rushing to finish their errands before returning home for the start of curfew.
Surely enough to offer them a life-size dream that was visible for thirty kilometres around, certainly more real than any series devoured during a confined weekend: that of the only interesting justice reform, at least when we still care about freedom. Finally, a small useful clarification, although the firefighters from the six barracks of Roberval took eleven minutes to arrive, quickly joined by their colleagues from Saint-Félicien, Chambord, Sainte-Hedwidge and Mashteuiatsh, the dance of the flames had meanwhile succeeded in striking a double blow. It thus ravaged all the parts of the court, both the new under construction and that of the original building, since according to the first police reports it started its warm ballet right at the junction between the two. As they say, chance sometimes does things well, even choosing the most suitable place to deliver this heinous power structure to complete and merciless destruction!
The least that can be said therefore is that the work in progress at 66 million dollars with delivery initially scheduled for February 2023 must no longer even simply start from zero but has moved back a good way, after including the historic rooms in which judges continued to sit, now out of use in Roberval for a long time …
functional as it was expedient, combining court and jail, was enclosed for two months after having transferred three dollars from one pocket to another, or that a woman was condemned to death by hanging in the courtyard of the enclosure in 1926, accused of having poisoned her husband.