It is definitely winter in northern Ontario, but winter road season has still not arrived.
And on Lake Temagami, there are fears that, for the first time ever, the ice road won’t open at all this year.
“I’ve been having the talk with people in the community about how we’ve got to just get used to the snow machine ride again, and this is probably how we are going across the lake this winter,” said David McKenzie, executive director of Temagami First Nation.
“I don’t think we are going to have the ice road unfortunately.”
About 245 people live on Bear Island in the middle of the lake, and during the winter, they depend on the ice road for getting back and forth to the mainland for everything from doctor’s appointments, to groceries to employment.
McKenzie said they need about 25 cm of ice for it to be safe for cars and trucks, but right now, there are spots of “very questionable ice” on the lake with only five centimetres.
The snowmobile path across the lake is open with a thickness between 15 and 22 centimetres, but McKenzie said it only opened in early January, when that usually happens before Christmas.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“I’ve been having the talk with people in the community about how we’ve got to just get used to the snow machine ride again, and this is probably how we are going across the lake this winter,” said David McKenzie, executive director of Temagami First Nation.
About 245 people live on Bear Island in the middle of the lake, and during the winter, they depend on the ice road for getting back and forth to the mainland for everything from doctor’s appointments, to groceries to employment.
The thousands of people who live on Ontario’s James Bay Coast are also dealing with a shorter driving season every winter.
It’s no surprise the construction of ice roads is delayed for many Indigenous communities for Sudbury researcher David Pearson.
Pearson, an emeritus professor at Laurentian University, receives regular updates from Indigenous Services Canada about the winter road season for communities in Ontario’s far north.
“The only thing that can be done, and it would be very expensive, and we’re talking about hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, is to connect those communities with what we call all-weather roads,” he said.
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