More than 200,000 Hydro-Québec customers woke up to homes with no electricity Thursday morning, as the province continued to deal with the fallout of a major winter storm that continued overnight.
Some schools, including all schools under the Lester B. Pearson School Board, The Centre de services scolaire des Patriotes and the New Frontiers School Board will remain closed, because of power outages and poor road conditions.
The English Montreal School Board kept schools open Thursday morning, but is keeping those without power closed. The board said parents in those buildings will be contacted.
Other school boards, including the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board and the Centre de Service Scolaire de Montréal opted to keep most of their schools open and shut down a handful of them in select areas instead.
Montreal and the Montérégie were among those hardest hit by the outages Thursday morning, with more than 32,000 addresses affected in Montreal and more than 80,000 in the Montérégie.
“Overnight, we had an increase in the number of addresses without power in Quebec,” said Hydro-Québec spokesperson Cendrix Bouchard.
He said while some crews were out overnight, all 550 teams will only be deployed in full force when the sun comes out.
“We have crews ready to hit the ground,” he said.
Service disruptions on Montreal’s light-rail network, the REM, also continued Thursday morning between the Gare-Centrale and Brossard stations because of ice accumulating.
In a news release, the REM’s operator said it hopes to get that line partially running — every 35 minutes — during the day on Thursday, but that it’s unclear when service will return to normal.
Shuttle buses are in place in the meantime on the South Shore and Nuns’ Island.
Crews were out Thursday morning to try to knock the ice off the cables of the REM manually.
Service between Deux-Montagnes and the Gare Centrale is maintained.
While Montreal saw freezing rain Wednesday, other parts of the province saw a mix of snow and ice pellets and a snowfall warning remained in effect Thursday for Baie-Comeau and Sept-Îles, where up to 40 centimetres of snow is expected to fall by Thursday afternoon.
Several schools in the Quebec City area also remained closed Thursday morning, though some daycare services were open.
