By Canadian Press

Quebec hitchhiker on back of transport truck left with hypothermia and possible fine

Nov 30, 2018 | 1:25 PM

MONTREAL — Emile Claveau couldn’t believe his eyes as he drove to work along a busy highway in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region Wednesday morning.

As he approached a transport truck about 250 kilometres north of Quebec City, he noticed a man perched on the back.

“He was sitting, cross-legged, holding on to a door handle,” Claveau said Friday. “I was shocked and I tried to get the truck driver’s attention, but there was just too much traffic on the highway, so eventually I called police.”

Quebec provincial police got a call at 7:20 a.m. Wednesday reporting someone on the back of a tractor trailer, Sgt. Marie-Josee Ouellet said.

When a patrol car caught up to the truck more than an hour later, the man had climbed down and was in the stopped car of another motorist.

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Truck driver Dave Tremblay, who unwittingly provided the man a lift, told radio station 98.5 this week the man was riding on about two feet of truck bed.

He figures the unconventional hitchhiker hopped on at a rest stop and was on the Quebec City-bound truck for well over 100 kilometres before a motorist managed to alert Tremblay on Highway 175 in the Laurentides Wildlife Reserve.

It’s unclear where the man wanted to go, but he was clearly determined. Tremblay said there was a snowstorm and the rider was poorly dressed for the elements.

“He was freezing. He was like a little snowman,” Tremblay told the station. He wonders how long the man would have been able to hang on if he hadn’t stopped when he did.

Police say a 38-year-old man from Alma, Que. was treated for hypothermia and could face a $1,000 fine and be hit with a dozen demerit points for holding on to a moving vehicle.

Claveau has never seen anything like it in Quebec.

“I thought it didn’t make any sense,” he said. “That’s why I tried to stop the truck. It’s not something you see every day.”

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Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version misspelled the last name of Emile Claveau