Several other shops and restaurants are now a few blocks north of the old shopping district in a strip development. While pleasantly designed, the new town lacks the somewhat chaotic charm of the old town. It looks like something you’ll find in any suburb anywhere else in Canada. Down by the now decontaminated lakeshore, a few houses have reappeared and a subsidized apartment building has risen.

But aside from a bustling ice cream bar, the once busy downtown is lifeless.

The other unwelcome surprise was the physical state of what used to be the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway. Renamed the Central Maine and Quebec Railway, it is now owned by a subsidiary of SoftBank, the Japanese investment fund with $64 billion in assets.

Few of those billions, however, are evident when it comes to the railway. Certainly its locomotives, whose dismal mechanical state was a key part of the chain of events that led to the town’s immolation, now appear to be in good order, sporting fresh blue paint.