More ugliness at “381.” The sudden departure of the manager and another employee has shaken up things at the beloved rest stop on the James Bay Highway.
The “lay-offs” followed a screaming match last summer in which a gas bar attendant refused to serve some Cree travellers.
It all started when Christopher Stephen, his wife and another Cree rolled into the rest stop last June. They arrived at 11:57 a.m., three minutes before gas-pumper Chantale Mainville was due to go on her lunch-break.
She refused to be of service and allegedly started yelling and started throwing around racial slurs about “Indians.”
Not long after, Mainville was let go by 381
manager Louis Prive. Then, Prive himself was let go. This started speculation that the departures were related somehow to the racist incident. Was Prive fired because he had fired Mainville?
Richard Beland, the new manager, confirmed he had heard that Mainville was let go because of the racist incident.
But the SDBJ, which owns 381, denies the the departures had anything to do with the incident.The SDBJ’s Raymond Thibault said Mainville left for “personal reasons,” while Prive was let go becausehe didn’t have the experience to run such a “complex” operation as 381.
