In memoriam
Mathieu and Andréa Paquet-Garceau
Two presences. Two names. A family memory that refuses erasure.
July 20, 1996
La Baie, Saguenay
Saguenay flood
Two presences, not two numbers
Their place remains human.
Mathieu and Andréa, Jason’s brother and sister, remain present through their names, their faces, and the memories that belong to them.
They are not only tied to a date, an event, or a report. They remain at the heart of the family story, in what existed before the tragedy, in what was lost, and in what continues to be transmitted.
July 20, 1996
The night that marked a family.
Mathieu and Andréa lost their lives when the family home was swept away in a landslide during the Saguenay flood.
This memory belongs to a family, but it also belongs to a collective history: a tragedy that shook Saguenay and Quebec.
Memory and truth
What memory refuses to erase.
To remember here is not only to name absence. It is also to keep visible what surrounded the tragedy: the places, public documents, testimonies, traces, and responsibilities referenced in the archives.
Memory erases nothing. It places human beings back at the centre.
Visible presence
The cross keeps their names.
The cross placed at the site of the tragedy keeps a visible trace of Mathieu and Andréa Paquet-Garceau.
The plaque on the cross was graciously added through a donation from Madame Isabelle Harvey in 2025.
Public archives
Documents, articles, and markers.
Le Quotidien in the immediate week after the tragedy
A digitized issue of Le Quotidien preserved by BAnQ, useful for placing the disaster in its immediate press coverage.
Investigation report concerning the deaths of Mathieu and Andréa Paquet-Garceau
Coroner Gilles Perron’s report remains the central document for understanding the official analysis of the deaths.
A preventable deadly landslide
The Journal de Québec relays a widely cited conclusion from the coroner report about the application of municipal rules.
The McNicoll Street landslide, July 20, 1996
Technical documents placing the landslide in its physical, territorial, and geotechnical context.
25 years after the flood: scars still alive
A journalistic return to the tragedy, with direct mention of Mathieu and Andréa dying in the mudslide.
A magazine marking 30 years since the flood
The City of Saguenay and Le Quotidien gathered testimony and photographs for the 30th anniversary.
Jason’s public speaking
Articles and interviews connecting public facts, remembrance and Jason’s path.
30th anniversary edition
Entre Chaos et Lumière
The inaugural issue of the J.A.M Journal extends this duty of remembrance around the 30th anniversary of the Saguenay flood, with Jason Paquet-Garceau’s book as a point of passage.