The production of flood as natural catastrophe: Extreme events and the construction of vulnerability in the drainage basin of the St. Francis River (Quebec), mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century

This essay analyzes how a popular adjustment to floods gave way to the gradual build-up of vulnerability among the riparian population of the St. Francis River, where flooding events have occurred repeatedly since the middle of the nineteenth century. The need to control the river flow required that the flooding events be framed as a natural catastrophe that threatened the well-being of the population. This was especially the case when a sense of urgency accompanied the flooding events of 1913 and those of 1942 and 1943, and when droughts concurrently incited the regulation of the river flow and of the production of energy for industrial purposes. In both episodes, droughts contributed to the construction of floods as a natural catastrophe because they disrupted economic activities by provoking power shortages.