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magazine / nd05
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November/December 2005 issue |
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FEATURE
The price of peace
Diverting the run of more rivers in northern Quebec will release a flow of money to
the Cree. Will it deliver an economic boost to a growing population or flood a way of life?
Excerpt of story by Christoper Shulgan
Get an unencumbered pickup going fast enough along a gravel road, and it no longer seems
to roll across a laneway of pebble and powder. Up around 80 kilometres per hour, the sensation
is closer to floating. One summer day, Johnny Saganash, a quick-to-smile Cree who exudes
a laid-back vibe, is floating me along a stony bush highway just east of James Bay when our
pickup hits a company of potholes. The divots rattle the truck cab as if it’s a bowrider
on a freighter wake, and once we’re past them, the truck is no longer directed parallel
to the road. Our skew has a distinctly leftward tilt to it — directly toward the front end
of an approaching grader levelling the shoulder.
I have joined Saganash for a tour of the latest phase of the massive hydroelectric development
now under way in northern Quebec. Over the next decade, Hydro-Québec plans to divert the
powerful Rupert River. It has already begun to dam a section of the Eastmain River. In both
cases, their waters will be shunted hundreds of kilometres north so that they will flow through
existing electricity-generating turbines and one new power station. The projects will flood
about 1,000 square kilometres of the province and reduce the rapids-rich Rupert, a portion
of the Eastmain and a handful of smaller waterways to little more than a series of very long,
very narrow ponds. Much of the work amounts to earthmoving, basically filling in old river
valleys with thick gravel berms. Today, the entire area is crawling with diesel-gulping belly
dump trucks and bulldozers with blades the size of buildings. Walking among this mechanical
cacophony is enough to make any living thing — moose, beaver, me — conscious
of its own fragile mortality.
So I’m already a little anxious when Saganash and I hit the potholes at around 90
klicks. My companion is a fit and trim 48-year-old, who is equally ebullient in Cree, English
and French. I expect purple expletives in one of those tongues, but Saganash doesn’t
even grunt. Instead of braking, he accelerates toward the grader, just 20 metres away. He
nudges the steering wheel a degree, and as I wonder how my head would look iPod-thin, he
waves at the grader’s driver. Slowly, we drift back into our lane. Then a roar and
a whoosh, and the grader is past.
"You notice how that driver was Cree?" asks Saganash as he pulls the truck off
the highway and into a road-maintenance supply depot, where fuel and materials are stored. "This
road is maintained by the Eenou Company, which is a joint venture of the Nemaska Cree Band
and the CCDC."
For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.
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