Road trip. Part II. This story goes beyond the importance of a roadway.
It tells of what could happen if you don’t take a winter vacation to a destination anywhere in the area of the “Gulf of America.”
That was the second line from last week’s story, which highlighted the preparation and route to the longest winter-ice road in the world, the Wapusk Trail (white bear in Cree).
At 752 kilometres (467 mi) in length, one way, this access from northeast Manitoba begins at a small community called Gillam on the Nelson River, and then finds its way through Shamattawa, Manitoba on the Hayes River through to Ontario’s two more northern communities of Fort Severn (Wasaho First Nation) and Peawunuck (Wunusk First Nation) on the Winisk River (both Treaty 9). For about six to eight weeks it is a lifeline to remote communities isolated with only air access the rest of the year.
Here is the map from Timmins and back; the route has sort of a cursive writing “C” shape to it, zooming out it covers a massive area on the Canadian landscape.
The motivation for accomplishing such a trek is a Canadian thing important in these times of “elbows up”; this winter jaunt underlines our sense of place, our identity. For a while we most likely will spend time closer to home until clearer heads prevail.
The proximity for this trek wasn’t so close, though.
Wapusk Trail beginnings
It is dark and snowing on day three at 6:31 a.m. Central Time. We’ve already driven 2,486 km (1544 mi.) and are now departing from Gillam for the ultimate instance of back roads travel…maybe.
There’s no turning back now, it took us two very long days just to get to the beginning of this adventure.
By the headlights, we see there are two signs at the beginning of the Wapusk Trail. There are yellow and orange signs, the first reading: WARNING – Winter survival and communication are recommended. Sign two: Narrow winding roadway – slippery surfaces – sharp curves and hills – drive with extreme care! (sic). Ominous. This winter road was first developed in 1994.
The road ahead of us is heavy enough, with about 10 cm of new windswept snow and no discernible tire tracks. Shamattawa, Manitoba is the first of three Cree communities 194 km ahead.
The road is like a narrow two-lane secondary highway, with snowbanks as the guard rails. It only really widens by crossing the rivers and lakes, this avoids snow drifts.
It doesn’t take too long to discover what undulating terrain means. During this long ride, I pondered about how this would be explained to Village Media readers, about how I could make you feel it.
So here goes. Imagine mild turbulence on a plane for most of the day. You find your upper body is moving in all directions even with the seatbelt across your chest. Or imagine the worst washboard back road you have been on. Both dependent on speed and the severity of the ups and downs. It is relentless. You are lucky to reach a top speed of 40 kph (25 mph) on the occasional stretch of flat land. The word undulating means smoothly up and down, but this is not so by context.
You never take your eyes off the road because you can go up and hit hard on the bottom on each rise and fall – braking hard, you hear it in the shocks and struts. There’s no reason for distracted driving because cell service stopped at Gillam.
We pass two transports, pulled over – they’re sleeping.
AI says: “Your car's shocks and struts are responsible for keeping the vehicle's body suspended above the wheels and comfortably off the ground while driving. Without them, you'd bounce along the road, making for an uncomfortable and unsafe ride.”
That’s what it is on the Wapusk Trail. And it is magnified by the day’s flat light, making it more difficult to see the undulations. There’s no thrill of a roller coaster amusement ride.
You wonder again about the ice road truckers and how their ride is.
We found out. In this first segment, there are 18 abandoned vehicles. Some are from the early winter’s maintenance of packing and dragging by the First Nation’s road crew, stuck in the muskeg, they will eventually pull them out. But there are remnants of past vehicles, half tons, transport tractors, totally abandoned, including an entire transport trailer that’s been there for years. Lower temperatures can cause steel to snap more easily, meaning the chances of a driver’s truck experiencing problems are substantially higher.
Then we really found out. A tanker tractor/trailer had slid off the road and flipped on its side. We come along and find other drivers from the convoy are on it. They had gone ahead to deliver their fuel load in Shamattawa and came back to start pumping out this tanker, demonstrating their self-sufficiency.
Buddy from Nova Scotia is the owner of the three transports in the convoy, he’s originally from Pictou County, Nova Scotia. As leader, he had radioed a warning to the last of the trucks to be careful on this corner. The advice was not heeded well enough. Anyway, the driver ended up suffering a broken arm during the rollover and was taken by the lead truck to Shamattawa and airlifted to Thompson. There’s no 911, no one immediately coming to the rescue. (When we return, two days later, it is still overturned.)
In conversation we find out the transport drivers don’t need to keep driving logs, winter roads are exempt and are not restricted to the day’s length of travel. It is explained that for the period of time the road is open, it is continuous driving back and forth from Thompson. Time and money are of the essence for these drivers. The trucks rely on satellite communications. He said you do not travel the road when it is closed, even temporarily, as your insurance will be null and void.
But the road is blocked, we wait. Finally, the pumping is complete, the one tanker moves so we can pass; the day is waning.
We’re not too far from Shamattawa (Treaty 5) when we come to the inspection stop. The road is blocked by a black half-ton with the Shamattawa logo. You are expected to present identification to security and could be frisked. They are externally hired private contractors to ensure they have no ties to the community.
This story is worth the read to appreciate the social problems that can occur in remote communities and what can be done about them.
Our Jerry cans are opened; they’re sniffing for bootleg brew. From conversations with security, we find out there’s a significant drug and alcohol problem in the community. The checkpoint is manned 24/7.
We go to Northern Store for some treats, and it is the first time on the trip that we realize just how much food costs in the north. Like bananas, most nutritious food has a northern government subsidy but remains expensive. As an example, today at Food Basics online, the cost would be $1.30 /kg or $0.59 /lb. In Shamattawa, with the subsidy, it is $4.59/kg; without the subsidy it is $7.78/kg. A 1 kg jar of Kraft peanut butter is $13.49, without subsidy, $17.39; today anywhere else about $4.98. A can of pop is six dollars, not subsidized.
We gas up at $3.50/litre and move drive another 100 km to unceremoniously cross back into Ontario somewhere – we see some flagging tape and tinsel on a bonsai black spruce. Someone has figured this borderline out.
We listen a lot to Road Trip Radio on SXM 301, originally from the States, actually Midtown Manhattan, New York City, close to the Trump Towers on 721–725 Fifth Avenue. SXM has 70 per cet equity interest in Sirius XM Canada. On the website, you have to go to the blue dialog box ‘Go to Canada Site’ rather than ‘Stay on USA Site.’ So, we switch to Canadian content. We find the song, those lyrics of “Life is a highway…” by Tom Cochrane so that they remain stuck in my head, from last week’s story.
Onward for another 150 km, we cross the Central/Eastern Time Zone imaginary boundary, the GPS tells us so and we lose an hour.
It’s dark soon enough, but by headlight, the undulating shadows are more easily spotted ahead. The diminishing tree line of black spruce silhouettes with the setting sun is a painting masterpiece. You know the sparseness indicates the open tundra is just beyond. You feel glad to be here.
All of a sudden light, like bouncing silos appear in the distance, we pull over as two graders with trailing chains pulling the oversized tires pass us, grading and smoothing the new snow from the night before. In moments, we are consumed again by the night.
By headlight, we see polar bear tracks coming into Wasaho FN (Fort Severn), which causes elation and almost reach to where we will stay at 1:48 a.m. Eastern Time. Today, we have travelled 524 km, spending 19 hours in the vehicle.
Tired, yes, it’s really late, but our friend meets us, as he has arranged accommodation. George Kakekaspan was our guide for the first overland expedition to the north during COVID. He is a tall man with large, gentle hands. The challenge then, through two Village Media stories, was to trek to the centre and all four surveyed corners of the province. We saw many polar bears during that trip on the tundra beyond the tree line.
Moses
We start again early on Day Four, it is -20C with a bit of a wind. You feel the dry cold here.
George has one of the few gas outlets in the community, at $4 per litre. On to Peawunuck, which represents the start of the Wapusk Trail.
We pick up George’s older brother Moses. When we arrive, he first says, “Do you want a dog to take back?” There are a lot of feral dogs wandering throughout the community, and they surround you as soon as you get out.
He would like to say hello to some family members in Peawunuck, he has not seen them for quite some time. Other than the more direct winter road, Peawunuck residents fly to the Timmins hub, while the Fort Severn community fly to Sioux Lookout, which is not so easy to visit.
We find out that he has never learned to drive a car; there’s been no need, he says. He was born at a nursing station at Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation (Big Trout Lake).
He is the education director for the band, concentrating on teacher recruitment and land-based learning. He can write in Cree syllabics – the symbols used to write Cree dialects. He is a licensed pastor with the Independent Assemblies of God. He explains how you become one and how he attends to his “flock.” The light blue church hall is beside his house.
His humour is infectious, his solemn words are poignant, and we will spend the entire day together remembering many stories.
On our way out of town, there is a large airplane (Douglas C-47A-75-DL) propeller on display near the airport. Moses recalls the day (Sept. 25, 1975) he witnessed a cargo flight carrying building supplies try to land in thick fog. The airplane struck the bank of the Severn River. He described how It bounced into the air, took off the roof of an Anglican church and crashed in the adjacent graveyard. The aircraft was destroyed, and all three occupants were killed.
He then tells us about this day’s destination of Pewunuck.
The Winisk River, which flows through the Wunusk First Nation, experienced a massive ice jam and flood, overwhelming the community and forcing residents to evacuate on May 16, 1986, eventually to relocate upstream to higher ground on its present-day site with a new name. Two people perished. Both George and his wife-to-be, Dora, worked on the relocation project, staying in canvas tents.
Moses says everyone knows everyone else, and these family relationships are common in the coastal communities. He explains how Izra, his father, was part of the search party that found one of the drowning victims and that Moses’s mother’s uncle, John Rowe, was the other, buried in the cemetery we pass by.
Throughout the day, he talks of animal behaviour and ways of living on the land, his dad was a trapper.
We stop to see fresh polar bear tracks, and I record a short video. White ptarmigan (grouse) tracks are everywhere and Moses has his firearm at the ready. “We hunt because we have to; it is a way of subsistence living.”
Polar Bear Provincial Park
This day is a thrill for the environment.
Remote and accessible only by air (and by winter road for two months), Polar Bear Provincial Park (PBPP), Ontario’s largest and most northerly park, features unspoiled low-lying tundra. It is a non-operating park.
Check your folded road map or digital one; PBPP is almost five times the size of Prince Edward Island; it is enormous. The winter road to Peawunuck once went circuitously around the park boundary, but Moses described how the community had it changed to the route we are on today.
I have been to all the largest parks in Ontario – Algonquin, Killarney, Lake Superior, Woodland Caribou, Wabakimi and the Temagami cluster of parks (and all operating parks in northern Ontario) and to one of the smallest – Aaron Provincial Park (only 116.74 ha) near Dryden. It is a privilege to be crossing this northern gem among many.
The diminutive black spruce and naked tamarack are scattered along the edge of the open tundra, now carpeted by snow and ice. There’s that feeling of being swallowed up by the wilderness.
Here, there are postglacial gravels and sands are overlain by a layer of sedimentary clay. The land is basically flat with a few inland ridges that indicate the location of former shorelines. It tends to flood when the ice breaks up in late spring. We drive on top of these flooded areas.
No longer oppressed by the weight of mega-glaciers, the land is slowly rising at a rate estimated at 1.2 m per century. This is considered the most temperately located mainland tundra in the world. Your emotions tell you this is a special place.
The Ontario Parks website says: “Sub-arctic conditions prevail in the park, which is the domain of woodland caribou, moose, marten, fox, beaver, goose, black bear, and polar bear. Seals, walruses, beluga and white whales frequent coastal and estuarial areas. As many as 200 polar bears lumber through coastal areas at certain times.”
Moses explains his community does not hunt polar bears or eat seals, walruses and whales.
“Some communities do on the Hudson and James Bay coasts, we don’t.” At a polar conference he explained this to other northern communities and why there is a vibrant bear population around the two neighbouring First Nations. (That’s why we saw so many polar bears on our last trip to this area.)
We stop to see some fresh tracks, two cubs and a mother, says Moses. The female bears come inland to create snow dens where the young are born for a gestation period of approximately 200 days +-. At this time of the year, once the cubs become ambulatory, they leave these dens, following the frozen rivers and creeks to the coast to join the males, hunting seals on the ice floes.
Here’s the polar bear video clip of polar bear cubs and mom, shot the day before by George’s friend and the video of the new tracks.
Back to Moses
Before the first water system in 1988, Moses describes carting water from the river, he said he was a “water haul guy,” filling up drums and moving back by sleds. There remains only diesel generators in the community. In 1985, the beginning of electricity for them, he recalls people sharing communal freezers before households had their own appliances. There’s no water treatment system; the community has above-ground septic tanks that are routinely pumped out.
Moses speaks about the spectre of alcoholism within his family and contemporary drug problems. He aspired to become a drug and alcohol counsellor. There’s talk about the current opiate abuse in the community.
He grew up an angry man. Eventually, he explains. “You get taken away twice from your family and community - for elementary and then the journey to Thunder Bay for high school.” He was in Grade 2 when he was “taken from the bush,” crying for days and days. Other brothers, Peter and Mathew, were shipped to Brantford.
We spend hours in the vehicle, and finally, timidly I ask about the effects of residential schools.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded that residential schools were a “systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples.”
He tells the story about being rounded up by officials and put on the propeller-driven DC-4 bound for the infamous St. Anne’s residential school (1906-1976) in Fort Albany. He recalls the time, before takeoff, when the door was errantly left open. One of the older boys jumped out, ran away and escaped for months until finally apprehended again.
He knows Edmund “Ed” Metatawabin, who authored the compelling residential school book Up Ghost River: A Chief's Journey Through the Turbulent Waters of Native History, was forced to attend one of the worst residential schools - St. Anne’s.
Uncanny, later in the day when we go to the Wunusk FN band office to pay for gas, Moses literally runs into that same boy who leapt from the aircraft, now retired from a telecommunications career and a band councillor.
His mother, Theresa, was a residential school survivor, so he is second generation. He recalls that, upon a parental visitation day, covered in lice and emaciated, she took her children away from St. Anne’s for good.
He talks of the abuse, physical punishment, bullying and sexual abuse at school. He shares his adult breakdown moment at a hotel in Winnipeg and the epiphany of embracing religion as a born-again Christian.
Moses leaves us with this statement. “Everything you hear or read about residential schools is true.”
So much more to divulge but when a stranger takes you into their confidence, you write a respectful story because the person tells it like it is and wants to. Moses says he rarely speaks of all of this.
A couple of reflective thoughts. This is the only time I have spoken to and heard firsthand from a residential school survivor. I can’t relate, but there is now an emotional link to what trauma is and does. It is now not unbelievable.
It was a day to remember – a blessing to be with Moses and grateful to be in the Park.
There is fulfillment on the back roads. There is much more to learn.
From Fort Severn to Peawunuck and back, we drive 194 km, times two, just shy of nine hours seeing no other vehicles, whatsoever, throughout the day – can’t remember a day like that, anywhere, anytime – a vehicle less day of sorts.
We return for another short nap and prepare ourselves for another long day ahead on the winter road; our repeat trip continues.
Back we go
On our three days on the Wapusk Trail we see a total of 14 long-haul trucks and six half tons, and all those abandoned vehicles.
The return highlight was seeing a wolverine, something never seen before by Back Roads Bill. In Road Trip part one, we saw a taxidermist mount of a wolverine on day one of the trip in the foyer of Hearst’s information centre. It was fortuitous to see this bear cub-sized furbearer. It was worth the stop and turn of the head glimpse of its dark brown to black coat with a creamy white/gold stripe running along their flanks from the shoulders to the base of their tail and the noticeable white patch on their neck/chest.
As we retraced our steps, we stopped for pics we didn’t get a chance to take en route. We find out the Wapusk Trail is closed for a few days.
We stop in Winnipeg, and by good fortune, we have dinner with his wife and son, George Jr. has vehicles serviced; it is a long way to the dealer, and the seasonal Wapusk Trail only allows for this. It is March break, Dora is now working in Sioux Lookout, within a stay-in-school initiative. She has a master’s in education. Working there allows them to look after their youngest son, who attends Sioux North High School. They have two vehicles, one in each community to make this going back and forth visitation and family ties work. They have four other children. The second youngest is now in the Canadian military; George Sr. is also a Canadian Ranger. Older ones reside in Wasaho (Fort Severn). A daughter recently lost everything in a house fire and is living in their house. There is no fire department there.
Back in Timmins, after seven days, there’s that vertigo syndrome – that post-driving, long distance dizziness type of buzz in your head. From the dashboard app we have logged 103.57 hours within the emerald Hyundai Palisade, 6381 km (3964.97 mi.) and 10L/100km, crossing back and forth a shared provincial border and time zone.
We did it.
After completing this whirlwind trek, what about the braggin’ rights of a Canadian? It is not so much in our nature, and we don’t want to tell Americans much more about our hinterland “…the true north strong and free!…” (yes, the exclamation mark is in the official lyrics).
Heartfelt reflections from doing something Canadian. We take a great deal for granted.
This back road story is about geography. The land and the people we must know, the why of their resistance and the what of their resilience. “Oh Canada…”