Thiago Menuci had never heard of Lac-Mégantic, Que., when he received an invitation to compete in a triathlon there in 2020. Menuci, 40, a coach and endurance athlete from Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil, was scouting for a new challenge after he won Fodaxman in 2019 — one of the most gruelling extreme triathlon events in the Americas.

He Googled Lac-Mégantic, and only then did he learn about the disaster that had struck the town of 6,000 on July 6, 2013, when a runaway train carrying crude oil derailed, sparking a series of explosions and an inferno that razed