Moose Factory Journal

Here’s one of the letters written — with the MPP’s response.

Some people have shared some pictures with me. They’re over in the ‘Odds & Ends’ blog.

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Sent: April 30, 2007 11:33 AM
To: Bisson, Gilles
Subject: ONR Botches Customer Service

Hi Mr. Bisson,

I am sending you this e-mail to file a complaint towards the Ontario Northland Railway and the incident that left 68 people stranded in Cochrane this past Friday and Saturday. On Friday April 27 — I along with 65 or so other people — were onboard the Moosonee train to return to Moosonee. We were out about 12 miles when we were forced to turn back because of a washout. That was understandable. We arrived at the Cochrane station at approximately 12:20 pm with signs posted that the train would not be departing Cochrane for a minimum of 12 hours. During this time we waited for direction from Ontario Northland Railway Passenger Services Manager Mr. Terry Vachon. At no time were we offered food or water.

Mr. Vachon arrived at approximately 2:20, went to his office through the back door and called to OPP. When the OPP arrived at 3 pm on the Friday Mr. Vachon appeared from his office he bypassed 60 or so locals and proceeded to a French speaking couple first and told them what was going on and then proceeded to another group of “white people” and then when we asked him to speak to us as a group he said he was going to make an announcement on the PA. We asked him to speak to us in person and when we did the OPP moved closer. We asked if meals and accommodations would provided and he responded “no, this was an act of god and we will not be providing anything”.

A family that had just lost their mother/grandmother were on the train going to Moosonee with a baggage car load of flowers etc… for the family service at 7 pm that Friday evening, and were told that no alternative transportation would be offered. I then called the ONR in North Bay and was transferred to the Vice-President. The story was the same as they were not and could not do anything for us. When I threatened media coverage with the MCTV news, Timmins Daily Press and Toronto Star the tone changed and a call was placed to Mr. Vachon who played it out like he had been waiting for the call from the VP. It was then that the people were given meals and accommodations and flights were booked for the family to attend the funeral.

This is when we think the media was contacted by the ONR stating that they gave us everything and everything was fine. We all know that is what happened and were made to look like fools and also took our leverage away for negotiations. This was 4 pm, 4 hours that we had been sitting in the station, women and small children and elders. I along with my father and a couple of friends of the family took the family, flowers and baggage to the airport and got everything that we could in the seven and nine seat planes to make the family service. The ONR did not co-ordinate anything nor did they acknowledge that once on route they are responsible for the passengers.

We were then told at 5pm that the train would be leaving Cochrane the next morning, Saturday at 10:45 am to Moosonee. We were told to be at the station for the 10:45 departure. The tracks were fixed and then gave away again and now at 11:00 am we were told that we would be flying Air Creebec within the hour. Air Creebec were grounded due to the fiber optic break caused by the further damage and all long distance phones were severed. This means no clearance could be obtained to take off out of Moosonee once they landed in Moosonee. We were not told this but a pilot happened to be in our group and had indicated that to Mr. Vachon. Again we waited till 3pm, no water offered, but the Station Inn employees went into action returning all to rooms that were available and the ticket agents and baggage employees helped out with whatever we needed. The restaurant provided food once again, not the Manager of Passenger Services.

3:30 we were told nothing until Mr Lawrence Martin, Mayor of Cochrane, entered the station along with some of our help took over the situation and had 3 Thunder Air planes enroute to Cochrane airport. A manifest was created by the ticket agent as Mr. Martin and stranded people began the order of who is to go on the planes first, women and small children, elders and the Moose factory due to chopper times to get to the Island in daylight. It was now pushing 5 pm when the first plane left with the first load. We loaded baggage that we had asked the people to split up and take immediate needs with them as Oscar’s Cartage transported the bags to the airport. The rest of our luggage we hoped would follow but did not. I was on the last plane that evening arriving in Moosonee on a 45 minute flight and arrived at 9:10 pm Saturday. Another plane flew the remainder up the next morning around 9:00 am on Sunday. Mr Martin handled everything in 30 minutes and indicated that he asked Mr. Vachon if he needed the Town of Cochrane Emergency Plan’s help and he was told that everything was under control. This might have saved us 10 hours of standing around herded like a bunch of sheep being watched over by the OPP.

With this we have been treated poorly as the “bread and butter” of the ONR and it’s employees. DeBeers will come and go but we, not the tourists, will still be the ones who ride the train day in and day out. Some segregation, discrimination and humiliation happened this weekend. In this day and age we need a permanent road to Moosonee and Moose Factory Island.

We are still after all these years deemed “non essential service” and are held hostage by the ONR and it’s staff and Air Creebec, (owned by a native man) with the logo “we are here to serve our people” the only airline that cost more to fly from Moosonee to Timmins than Toronto to Jamaica and they are continuously employed for the evacuation of Northern Communities.

A Thank you from all of us to, Mr. Martin, Rochon Buslines, Oscar’s Cartage, ONR Ticket and Baggage Department, Station INN and Restaurant employees, Wabusk Air, Thunder Airlines and many Cochrane residents.

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From: Bisson, Gilles
To: Mike & Valerie Dumoulin
Cc: Gerteis, Helen
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 4:05 PM
Subject: RE: ONR Botches Customer Service

Mike just to let you know I received your e-mail and have asked my staff to draft a memo from me to Chair of ONTC, our James Bay Rep at ONTC Randy Kapashisit and the minister about this. We will keep you posted as to results of our intervention.

Gilles Bisson, MPP
Timmins James Bay

No train. It’s been cancelled since Friday, 27 April. It remains cancelled through Saturday, 5 May 2007. I guess we find out on Monday, 7 May 2007, whether or not we get a train.

The ONR (Ontario Northland Railway) HAD stated (on the local cable TV channel) that we might get a train as early as yesterday (Wednesday, 2 May 2007). They didn’t make any promises then. And they’re not making promises now about next week, either.

A lot of track got washed out.

When the wash-out was (finally) discovered, the train had been on its way North. It had to back up — back to Cochrane. I don’t think it had to back up very far. I don’t know how many miles, exactly. The passengers, however, had to spend the rest of the day dealing with ONR.

The wash-out occurred about 30 miles south of Moosonee. When the passengers got back to Cochrane, I am told, they were informed that:

1. They were on their own and had to fend for themselves.
2. They were not the responsibility in any way of ONR.
3. The wash-out was an ‘Act of God’.

Soon after that, I was told, the mayor of Cochrane got himself into the situation and informed the motels, ONR, and Cochrane rather generally that they WERE going to take care of these stranded travelers.

Since then ONR has been flying those who *already* had train tickets on chartered aircraft. Northern Stores is flying in groceries. We’ll have some things to eat. But we’ll run out of plenty of others. I asked someone ‘who is going to pay for the additional cost of air freight?’ The answer, of course: ‘You, me, the customer.’

All of which brings me to two basic reflections….

One is that the washout was not an act of God. It was the result of supine negligence, indifference, incompetence. The situation is exacerbated by ONR’s persistent avoidance of accountability. Sadly, it isn’t just ONR that we are talking about. Assuming, as I do, that the flooding occurred because of mishandled debris, then, we are talking about:

• Hydro-One.
• The contractor for Hydro-One who did the actual construction.
• The Ministry of Natural Resources — which is supposed know what’s going on out there.
• And, of course, ONR.

The flooding — I am told — could have been avoided by proper disposal of the debris from the construction work along the tracks. Having failed to attend to that or to note that the removal was not properly carried out, someone might have understood that the rising water had nowhere to go. Someone might even have noticed that there was water out there. Trains DO have windows.

In New England, around Providence, anyway, it’s the drivers of all those cars who see things and report things like deteriorating bridges and over-passes. One might hope that the passengers on the ONR could exercise the same vigilance. But they don’t make the same run every day — as commuters on the highway do. The eyes of the train all belong to the employees. Were they looking?

The problem is that nobody cared. Or, nobody thought it was their job to bother with somebody else’s job. For that I blame management of each of the entities listed above. If the management of each of those entities depended on the train running for their jobs, they might care. And they might — just might — be able to communicate that new-found sense of vigilance to the employees.

That brings me to my second reflection — one that I have made before in this Journal…. The single most powerful — most compelling — argument in support of a highway all the way into Moose Factory is the management of ONR.

Some time near the end of last week, the train stopped running. About a hundred feet of track got washed out around 30 miles south of Moosonee. Tons of gravel have to be hauled to rebuild the road bed. And then new track has to be laid. I’m told that the earliest we’ll see a train here again is Wednesday, the day after tomorrow.

I am told that the culprit (or primary culprit) is Ontario Hydro — or the contractor for Ontario Hydro. People are blaming the Ministry of Natural Resources, as well, for failing to do proper inspections. And, so far as that goes, if the people in the train company REALLY cared about the service they provide — or are supposed to provide — they’d have noticed the mess a long time ago. But they don’t have to worry about their jobs, because they have no competition. The power line was none of their business. They never noticed. Ten to one they would have if there had been a highway parallel to the train tracks. Certainly a motorist would have noticed.

A new power line was installed over the last few months — a line that would power the mine site 150 miles to the north on The Attawapiskat River. Evidently the contractor for the new line built temporary bridges over the creeks draining the swamps through which the power line runs. South of Moosonee the power line parallels an existing power line — the one that powers Moosonee and Moose Factory. And they both are right next to the train tracks for the Ontario Northland Railroad. Makes a good deal of sense. However, when the job was done the contractor failed to clear the debris. That debris then clogged the creeks and streams. Those creeks and streams may appear perfectly innocent in the summer, fall, and winter. In the spring, however, they wake up and dance. This year they closed the railway.

Those who already have tickets are being transported by the train company by charter aircraft. The rest of us have to wait for the next train.

As though that were not enough … somebody at the construction site hit the phone wire on Saturday morning with a back hoe or something like that. The phone company has installed a fibre-optic cable in the railroad’s road bed. The cable runs from Cochrane to Moosonee. It’s our connection with the outside world. You’d think that a cable buried in a railway roadbed would be safe. It was — until the roadbed gets washed out — or, actually, until the crews start working on the washed-out roadbed. The ATM machines on The Island, long distance phone connectivity, and internet access all went down — suddenly and without warning. That broken cable affected more than Moosonee and Moose Factory. A large chunk of northeastern Ontario lost phone service as well.

By Sunday morning the phone line was back in business. There have to be some busy crews down there in the swamp. (Actually, it’s UP there in the swamp.)

There is open water up-River — or, ‘way-up’ — ie, south of The Hospital. Nothing seems to be moving anywhere fast. I’m told that there still is lots of ice in The Bay. The ice here in The River has no place to go. It just sits there — melting. One of these days, however, it will be gone. Some people had predicted that breakup would be complete by May 1. It still could happen. But it’s getting close. We’ve had alerts — but nothing serious. The authorities are just watching The River — carefully — as they do at this time every year. Parishioners tell me: “It’s boring this year. That’s just the way we like it.”

There were bears in the back yards Friday night around 7 PM — when all the kids were out and playing. This was going on close to where I live, but I saw no bears. I suspect that if we get more reports of bears roaming in the back yards there will be numerous young gentlemen roaming The Island with rifles. Bears in the dump are one thing. But bears in Granny’s back yard are something completely different.

And I thought I’d be done chattering about the ice highway.

But, first, to catch up.

My last post was on Saturday, 27 JAN. The next Tuesday (30 JAN) I took the train to Cochrane. There I lingered for a couple of nights. That gave me time to get a hair cut, get a new glasses prescription. AND, surprise, surprise, get a new battery for the truck. I was lucky. The battery failed in a parking lot a block away from Canadian Tire. A delivery truck gave me a jump start. (This is Canada.) And ten minutes later I was begging the lady at the counter at Canadian Tire to squeeze the truck into their already chaotic schedule. She did. And I was off and running to Staples for fun and frolic.

Fun and frolic this time around included a new printer. I got a Brother laser printer. It works just fine. Sits on the desk and grinds out letters one after the other.

The Hewlett Packard monster had started going comatose before January 1. Fortunately it started going down by degrees — with intermittent failures. Eventually, by process of elimination, I guessed that the network server card had started to fail. I went to HP’s website, looked up the 4300 (which is the beast I have) and saw right away that there were just LOTS of network cards (refurbished) for sale. Mine (if that is what had gone wrong) had failed outside the warrantee period but well within the life expectancy of the machine. So, I picked up the phone and called HP’s 1/800 number.

I wanted to know if the part was available. It was. I wanted to know how they shipped. Usually by UPS. I said that if it was by UPS, I’d never get the package. Not to worry, they could ship by Purolator. They promised they would.

That sounded good, so I gave my credit card number. The next day (3 JAN) they docked my credit card by $600. The part had shipped.

To make a long story a little bit shorter … by Monday, 15 JAN, no part. No word of part. Even the Freight Office of the Ontario Northland Railroad had never heard of the part. I called Hewlett Packard to find out what was going on. This is where the fun begins. This phase of the project took ALL DAY. First I got an hour of rotten music. Then I got someone who really wanted to be helpful. REALLY. BUT, he didn’t realize I was calling from Canada. And he couldn’t really speak English. Two hours later, we had established the fact that the order HAD originated in Canada — and that I was calling FROM Canada. Actually, I was lucky to have gotten this far. Even though I had to ferret through the trash to find the relevant numbers — written on the back of envelopes and church bulletins, I did find all the code numbers, order numbers, and whatever numbers, so that they could find me (and my order) on their computer.

As soon as we had figured all of that out, my call was redirected to the warehouse operations in Toronto. Another hour of terrible music, and a very nice person came on the phone and wanted to know what my problem was. My problem was that I had not received the merchandise.

O, but I had. The computer said so. The package had been signed for. Perhaps my neighbor had received and signed for the delivery. I noted that UPS does not deliver in Moose Factory. AND, if there WERE a delivery for John Edmonds, the parcel would find him soon enough. “But the records from UPS say that the package was delivered.” I replied simply: “That is an outright lie.”

That comment got me transferred to another person. He may have been further up the Hewlett Packard food chain, because he actually spoke intelligible English. He had a sort of no-nonsense attitude, it seemed. (And, why not, a customer was calling somebody a liar.) I explained to him that I had not received the package. He explained to me that the package had been delivered. Now it was time for me to lay out the whole of the UPS scam. I told him that his company’s reputation was at risk, although the problem seemed to be simply one particular customer. Usually, I said that UPS just sends packages to the ONR Freight Warehouse — without notifying anybody. And there the package just gets lost. I noted that other carrier services — such as Purolator or FedEx work through Canada Post one way or another. Maybe it costs a little more. Maybe it doesn’t. You get the package.

Somehow in all of that conversation I noted that Moose Factory and Timmins are 300 miles apart from each other. THAT little fact DID catch in his mind. Evidently the package was traced as having been received in Timmins by the same person who delivered it (supposedly, personally) to me an hour later in Moose Factory. That little fact DID catch his attention. The entire tone of the conversation changed. He said he’d look into it. He noted that the investigation would take a week. I had to be patient. (Why did I already know that?)

So, I had come that far. The day was done. It was time for supper.

A week later, of course, nothing. No package. No messages. My friend in the warehouse had given me his personal phone number in the warehouse. I called that number several times and got an answering machine. I noted that time was running out on all of this.

Then I left for a week. And that’s why I got the little Brother printer in Timmins. Just in case I never got the HP working again and/or just in case it broke again, I had a handy little backup — just in case…..

Then I rode the train from Cochrane to Toronto. The train takes awhile. But I can relax and listen to music. On this particular trip — both going and on return — there were weather and traffic problems. In the end I probably saved time with the train. And I was rested.

I attended the Wilderness Canoe Association Symposium. There were a number of presentations on The Rupert. One presenter had some great slides of The Eastmain — which I instantly recognized. He also had great shots of The Rupert, of course. Some of those I recognized — but only because of my examination of other people’s slides. I have never been on the lower Rupert.

On the train ride back — on the Cochrane to Moosonee run — I got to talking with some of the locals. Evidently, the ice highway was closed to DeBeers traffic — by The Albany Band. That, hopefully, was going to force DeBeers to the bargaining table, or so the folks thought.

Then, yesterday, I was in Moosonee. I was told that — again — the highway was closed. This time it was the Moose Cree (Moose Factory) Band that had closed the highway — again, just to DeBeers. And, again, now DeBeers and the Moose Cree Band were at the bargaining table.

Now, some thoughts about all of this.

The ice highway is a critical piece of the economic fabric in this region. It runs from Moosonee (which is at the end of the ONR line from Cochrane) 150 miles to Attawapiskat. It is operational whenever freeze-up is complete. And, it collapses every spring. The heavy trucks usually have to stop running in mid-March, I am told. This year the highway got operational somewhere near the end of January or beginning of February. Like the ice highway between Moose Factory and Moosonee, the traffic starts with skidoos as soon as there is enough of a crust. Often WEEKS later the road is safe for heavy trucks.

Once the highway is operational, the traffic rolls day and night, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The train company has to haul so much freight to Moosonee that they have been running a special freight train almost every day. Drivers are hired from as far away as Labrador to drive the vehicles back and forth. The bread and breakfast business in Moosonee is an industry in itself. The road is critical to the operation of the diamond mine 150 mile or so north of here. When the road is useable there is only a very specific time period for the heavy machinery. This year it could be as short as six weeks. The trucks may have to stop rolling in about four weeks.

All of this (mine) traffic grinds to a halt when a Cree Band closes the highway, as they can, and as they have.

Some people are asking, WHY? Aren’t the Bands shooting themselves in the foot — or in the feet? There are other ways of getting a road into that mine that DeBeers is developing on The Attawapiskat. How much static is DeBeers going to take before they reroute their traffic? If they DO reroute their traffic and build a gravel road into the mine, say, from some place like Hearst, might not that then consign Moosonee and Moose Factory to permanent backwater status? And is that what people here (or their children or their grand children) really want — or really will want (when it’s too late to reverse the situation)?

So, some more thoughts. …
Any other road, also, will very probably have to go through territory controlled by The Cree. And, I’ll bet anything that the Bands along those possible routes are studying the present situation very carefully. The more they bargain, the better the deal. History is starting to show that.

Also, DeBeers has NO ONE to blame but itself for the stance taken by people in this region. Its initial interaction with the Attawapiskat Band led to confrontation. When Theresa Hall was Chief at Attawapiskat the issues — whatever they were — were resolved for the time being. But it was her insistence that brought DeBeers to the bargaining table — not their initiative. Either they didn’t hire a competent public relations consultant. Or they didn’t listen. Or they couldn’t hear. Folks here are used to corporations moving in and trying to just take things. Quebec Hydro betook itself to the bargaining table only after the Courts ruled in The Crees’ favor and after negative publicity in the United Nations. DeBeers had not read Billy Diamond’s book. Or if they had, they didn’t understand it. Or they didn’t believe it could apply to them.

I was told recently of two situations here near Moose Factory. One relates to illegal clear cutting on the part of a lumber company — on Moose Cree land. The office back here in Moose Factory didn’t know about the activity until one of the residents of Moose Factory discovered it and reported it. Representatives of Moose Cree Band had to go out to the job site by chopper and personally close it down.

Another story told to me involved survey markings up The Moose River. Locals started to look around the rapids and falls going up-river. Someone was surveying for a hydro electric project. The first that anybody from Moose Factory knew about the impending project was from those survey ribbons. People started talking. The project got blocked — or stalled, anyway.

This way of doing business with native people around here goes back a long time. And it will die hard. It may not die without a fight.

For instance, last spring, after the frost had gone — maybe in June — survey ribbons appeared around The Rectory — where I am staying now. Nobody — that I talked with — had any idea what those ribbons were about.

Then, some time later in the summer, one morning, I noticed some people walking around the church building with tape measures. They were doing this all morning. It’s possible they knocked on the door. But, if they did, I never heard them. (One doesn’t when the printer is running. Or I was on the phone and wouldn’t have heard, if I was upstairs.) Later that afternoon, however, I saw a white truck and two people outside. I stuck my head out the door and looked. Then they got out of the truck and came up to me and introduced themselves. They were from Northern Stores — from the head office in Winnipeg. And they were measuring off the lot which had been surveyed that last spring.

They were getting ready to sell half of the lot. St. Thomas’ Chapel (The Little Church) sits on one half of the lot. Another building (used by a local Pentecostal Church) sits on the other half of the lot. Presumably St. Thomas’ has leased one half of the lot — the parcel that the church building sits on. What no one realized when the lease agreement was established is that the plot of land that the Church Building sits on uses more than one half of the whole lot. That is, there is a hedge maybe 50 feet from my front door that marks the boundary between our plot of land and the other ‘half’ of the lot. The actual surveyed line lies much closer to the Church and to my front door. If our property’s line were on that surveyed line, we would have much less protection — or buffer — between ourselves and our abutter. Nobody realized this or thought of this when the agreement was signed. Further, the hand sketches of the property — reviewed by all parties at the signing of the lease — show that our boundaries lie along where the hedge is. The surveyor’s line moves that boundary to about ten feet from my front door. Given how the building is situated, that is a really critical change in the plot’s boundary.

I gathered from our conversation that Northern Stores intended to sell one half of the lot — the half of the lot that we were not using, that they didn’t know whether or not we intended to stay where we were (we had just signed a 75 or 90 year lease) and that it didn’t make much difference anyway, because there was plenty of room elsewhere on the lot for us, if we wanted to use it.

I noted that I hadn’t seen the lease, so I really couldn’t say much about it. I also noted that we both seemed to be in agreement that the map of the plot discussed at the time the lease agreement was signed was the hand sketch he showed me (though he didn’t give me a copy of it). And that sketch showed the boundaries of our leased land to be along where the shrubbery is now. So, … if he was proposing that the boundaries were somewhere else, he had some explaining to do. That is, he had some explaining to do, if he valued a viable and ethical relationship with St. Thomas’ Church. I noted that he could begin that explaining by informing St. Thomas’ Select Vestry of who the surveyor was and what the surveyor was doing and why, of who he was and what he was doing and why. And he could explain for Northern Stores what Northern Stores thought it was doing and why. I suggested that all of this be put into writing and delivered to The Select Vestry in the form of a letter, that someone from Northern Stores appear personally before the Select Vestry and explain what was going on.

As of this date, no letter has come in. I don’t expect one. I fully expect us to learn who is doing what and why when a bulldozer starts digging up the lawn.

You don’t have to dig very far into the past to see why so many people here just don’t trust the rich and the powerful who come from afar.

Some of my free market friends say: Well, it’s just the market at work.

Perhaps. But, if this is simply the market at work, the market is in the process of self-destruction.

Good people through no fault of their own, are being deprived of their inheritance. AND, any market — or positive human relationship — is based on trust. My thesis in all of this is that the corporations I have cited are borrowing against their trust. Sooner or later their bubbles will burst. But, more than that, if one people are eligible for victimization, then all people are so eligible; the market will decide. When a people become expendable, and when their land becomes expendable, all people become expendable and the planet becomes expendable. Eventually THAT bubble will burst. It could well be the end of us all.

UPS runs an outright fraud — or allows their agent to do just that. UPS has cost me, personally, hundreds of dollars of outright cash and hundreds of hours of lost productivity. The loss of cash has come from when I have had to re-purchase and/or re-ship merchandise they have deliberately and willfully abandoned — whilst advertising full service and billing accordingly. Lost time comes when I spend days on the phone or weeks waiting for something critical like a printer part. What is almost laughable about UPS is that they have even sent me bills for charges made on a COD shipment. (They never got the COD payment, because they never delivered the package. So, being UPS, they tried to collect, anyway.) It’s a fool proof system.

UPS, of course, doesn’t work for me. They work for the vendors who ship to me. If I complain to the vendor, sometimes the vendor accommodates me. Sometimes the vendor doesn’t want to hear about it. That all seems to vary according to how badly the vendor wants my business. People here don’t amount to a market worth worrying about. Some vendors actually are honest about that. Tiger Electronics tell me they only ship by UPS. Take it or leave it. That’s good to know. I go elsewhere. Undoubtedly, they never noticed.

Hewlett Packard DID promise to ship by Purolator, screwed up, and then promised to refund my money. I won’t know until I get my credit card statement if they actually made good on that promise. But other companies (Apple, Xerox, and Direct Dial, for instance) have simply sent out another shipment as soon as they knew there was a problem.

DeBeers supposedly is marketing the Canadian diamond as a ‘clean’ diamond. It is identifiable as Canadian. And supposedly it is clean of all victimization of the locals. The jury of public opinion is still out on that one. I think the crunch will come when the village of Attawapiskat has to be moved. The question(s), then, will be who pays & how much? Where does the village get moved to? And how much catastrophe happens first? While their corporate decision may have been to turn over a new leaf in dealing with indigenous peoples, their corporate culture is severely challenged. Their start with the Attawapiskat Band was just abysmal.

At the Wilderness Canoe Association’s Symposium there was a presentation on yet another river being surveyed (quietly) by Quebec Hydro for development. Someone in their system referred to the environmentalists as ‘dreamers in canoes’ — which is exactly what some of us are.

Quebec Hydro, as explained to me, has an interesting position in Quebec’s economy and society. In order to get a permit for the development of a water system, Quebec Hydro must pass an environmental inquiry. That inquiry is done through an agency of the Quebec government — which owns at least part of Quebec Hydro. By selling electric power to the northeastern United States, Quebec Hydro brings in money, then, for the Quebec government. That lowers taxes in Quebec — a point not ignored by the political establishment. Electric power is made cheaper, of course, to the extent to which the region it comes from is expendable — both the people and the land. Some may say I am wrong. But I believe that every entitlement or benefit that has come to the Cree has come because they fought for it. The Quebec government didn’t see any injustice in the development of the region until New York citizens started writing their politicians about the matter. Waskaganish (formerly Rupert’s House) only got hooked up to the power grid in the last year or so.

So, at the end of a long road of ice is the intersection of justice, ecology, and a workable market. One road leads to the inevitable destruction of all three. The other road may lead somewhere else. Probably it will be the people who already have lost most of their own culture and who are having trouble adapting to the prevailing culture who will be able to lead us out of this mess — if they are still around to be able to do that when the time finally does come when we realize we need them.

Well, the highway is in. Officially. That is, I drove it. Last night and this morning. Also, I just helped load a truck with boxes of clothes. The truck is headed today to Attawapiskat. The clothes come from St. Andrew’s Church in Toronto.

So the traffic is rolling — or most of it, anyway. I don’t know if the really heavy stuff is using the Moose Factory/Moosonee Expressway yet. I just don’t know about the coastal highway. Around here the crews have to wait for the ice to get thick enough (and strong enough) before they can really plow it. Once the snow is off the ice the ice can thicken and strengthen much more quickly. The Moose Factory side of our highway is in pretty good shape. There’s work that has to be done, however, on the Moosonee side. Part of the problem on the Moosonee side is a large chunk of ice (that we have to drive over) that heaves and sinks according to the moods of the tides. It’s sort of like driving a toy car over the bellows of an accordion. It can be done. But with care. You’re driving over glare ice. It wouldn’t do to salt it.

Our highway got going (finally) because the last week or ten days has brought us some nice nippy temperatures. We’ve been getting anything from minus 30 (Fahrenheit) to zero. Never above zero. That’s enough to convince The River that we’re in winter now. And The River has cooperated. Someone sent me some pictures of Niagara Falls frozen SOLID — in about 1918. I don’t think that will happen this year. But we will get February and most of March, probably, to move things and ourselves around a bit more easily.

For Moose Factory the ice highway is a great convenience. It also is a cost saver. Once the ice is in and thick enough really heavy loads can be trucked across The River — saving the expense, limitations, and the delays of the barge. For the coastal communities — and also the diamond mine on The Attawapiskat — the coastal ice highway is really critical.

The traffic rolls day and night. Families come to Moosonee — and often go further south — for shopping. The prices in Moosonee, I’m told, rise as soon as the highway is in. The ‘Coasties’, as the locals call them, roll into town — Moosonee AND Moose Factory — and buy EVERYTHING. It’s their once-a-year shopping spree. For instance, it’s cost effective to simply buy gasoline or oil in 45 gallon drums and transport the stuff up the coast on the back of a pick-up truck. For this reason many of the pickup trucks are overloaded — and THAT has people talking. Also, many vehicles have bright orange flags or even lights on tall poles a foot or so higher than the roof of the vehicle. This is so oncoming cars and trucks can see you coming — long before they can actually see you over the drifts of snow.

Next Friday is Groundhog Day. This, too, shall pass.