How Co-ops Are Transforming Quebec’s Food Deserts
Montreal, Québec, Canada - In French, the word for food processing is the same as the word for sweeping social change: transformation. Alex Beaudin dreams of doing both.
Beaudin, 25, is the coordinator of Le Grénier Boréal, an agricultural co-op in Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, a village of around 450 people in northeastern Quebec, 550 miles northeast of Montreal. Longue-Pointe is one of about 20 villages strung like beads on a necklace, between Route 138 and the vast St. Lawrence River. The highway and the river are the villages’ lifelines, and depending on either one for supply shipments — as the Nord-Côtiers do — can be maddening.
Ferry service is unreliable; a damaged ship can cause weeks of disruption.