A bitter chapter in Quebec history is ending with confirmation Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be in Mirabel Monday to announce the return of most of the remaining expropriated farmland that was taken to construct the infamous airport in 1969.
However, even after nearly four decades, the fate of those residual 11,000 acres remains contested.
Local farmers are eager to have first dibs on land being sold at a discount. But the mayor of Mirabel wants some of the area to be turned into an industrial park. And the Mohawks of nearby Oka say they, too, have a claim.
The land is outside the airport perimeter. It has been leased by farmers, many from the original families forced out when Mirabel International Airport was built in the 1970s.
Mr. Harper promised during the last election to return the land. He and Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon are expected in Mirabel, 55 kilometres north of Montreal, Monday afternoon.
Today, the white-elephant airport no longer handles passenger traffic.
Of the 97,000 confiscated acres, only 5,200 were inside the airport perimeter. Already, 80,000 acres were sold back in 1985.
To Marcel Denis, whose father was one of the thousands of people displaced in 1969, Monday's announcement is overdue.
"They needlessly stripped the property titles of people who had lived there for three, four generations. It's been 37 years and the airport is nearly shut down. It's been a disaster and we can't go on like this."
Mr. Denis said he expected the land will be returned in the same fashion as in 1985, with a 15-per-cent discount on the market value, and with current leaseholders having first buy-back rights.
The land is rented to about 120 leaseholders, most of whom are related to the original families.
A majority want the land for farming but won't invest to improve their holdings until they own it properly, Mr. Denis said.
The mayor of the town of Mirabel has other plans. He wants Ottawa to set aside 2,000 acres for industrial use to make up for the jobs lost when the airport scaled down its operations in the late 1990s.
If Ottawa doesn't grant the town's request, "then we'll have to expropriate," Mayor Hubert Meilleur said. An administrative tribunal would then settle the matter, he said.
"He's got no rights over this," said Mr. Denis, the head of a committee of expropriated farmers. "This isn't his business. It's illogical."
In addition, the 11,000 acres are within the larger area under a land claim of the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, near Oka.
That area is part of the Lake of Two Mountains seigneury, which King Louis XV granted to the Sulpician order in 1718. The Mohawks say the settlement was promised to them and they have long petitioned for it.
Mohawk negotiator Clarence Simon said the Kanesatake council could take its claim to the Federal Court. The Mohawks, he said, would be willing to lease the land to the municipality.
"We're not going to sit back and let [the federal government]do what they want."
Tu Thanh Ha