PAVED PARADISE
JAMES BAY HIGHWAY IS A PLACE OF MANY POWERFUL FORCES — AND JUST ONE GAS STATION
To commemorate Canada’s 150th birthday, Driving is covering the country with a series of Great Canadian Road Trips, with itineraries revealing not just fun-to- drive routes, but also the pit stops, scenic views and local culture — all the things that make a road trip fun. This month, Robert Bostelaar takes us on a slightly different drive, through the lonely northern Quebec wilderness with a power station at the end of the road and friendly faces all along it.
Great currents pulse along the rivers t hat have s us - tained the people of Northern Quebec for millenniums, and now along the hydro lines that feed the younger society to the south. We’re pressing north along the 620-kilometre James Bay Highway, to the place where these currents collide and combine.
But first my son and I register — not required but strongly recommended — at the foot of the road built in the 1970s to carry equipment to Quebec’s massive hydroelectric stations.
The woman in the i nformation centre verifies that we have fuelled up, then hands us a sheet with circled phone numbers. We can reach her, she says, from phones at six Telebec towers between here and Radisson, Que. Are we supposed to call in? “No,” she tells us. “Only in emergencies.”
With little cell coverage along the route and just one midpoint gas station/cafeteria, we understand the need for prudence.
But like anyone who has looked a thinly marked road on a map and wondered what lies at the end, we feel a powerful draw. This is as far north as pavement can take you in eastern Northern America.
And what more suitable vehicle in which to explore this road than a True North edition of the Canadianmade 2018 Equinox 2.0T?
True North was indeed our heading when we left Ottawa in the compact (though not small) sport-utility a day earlier. Our plan was to tent that night in the Réserve La Vérendrye, which straddles a northern leg of the TransCanada Highway and is half again as large as Ontario’s Algonquin Park. But when we arrived at an RV-clogged campground we learned that the single site set aside for rustic campers was taken. Then it started to rain.
We pressed on for Val d’Or and surrendered, perhaps too easily, to the blandishments of a Comfort Inn.
Every road trip requires a book, something that can help you understand what you encounter. Ours is Roy MacGregor’s Chief: The Fearless Vision of Billy Diamond. Over the hotel’s impressive free breakfast — no one need leave Val d’Or hungry — we discuss the 1989 account of the late Cree leader who went from family trap line to residential school to negotiating a landmark agreement that gave the Crees and Inuit land rights and an economic foundation.
I feel a wispy connection to Diamond, who was just 21 when he learned of Robert Bourassa’s “project of the century” that would submerge the Cree hunting and trapping grounds and family graves. He went to my high school, Bawating Collegiate, as a day student from the Shingwauk Hall dormitories in Sault Ste. Marie.
I remember my brother holding up a copy of Maclean’s with Diamond on the cover and telling me, “This guy sat behind me in History.” It’s another reason I want to see this land.
Dust from an ill- advised shortcut layers the Equinox’s tailgate when we reach the quiet mining and forestry town of Matagami, 670 km north of Ottawa. Soon we’re on the James Bay Highway, glimpsing pothole l akes through the spruce trees and birches to each side. The Chevy absorbs all but the worst of the frequent potholes and frost heaves that mock the posted 100 km/ h limit.
We pass big trucks bearing the Cree insignia of Kepa Transport, one of many legacies of the native agreement. Other traffic is light: pickups pulling boats, the occasional cluster of motorcycles. Rest areas every 30 km or so have outhouses and picnic tables and often a placard in French and Cree outlining the spot’s history.
Within three hours we’re crossing the Rupert River bridge, its tall girders framing the road ahead. We look down on boiling rapids and imagine their force before part of the Rupert was diverted to a hydroelectric reservoir.
Another 90 minutes and we’re pulling in to the steelclad complex known as Relais Routier Km 381. Gasoline is $1.33 a litre, a cheeseburger with fries and pop — seemingly the standard meal — costs $16.43.
The people in the brightly lit cafeteria, like so many others we will meet, are open and curious. “Where are you from?” asks a Cree trucker next in line. He smiles. “You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”
The pavement improves as we continue north — fewer freeze- thaw cycles? — and the trees get smaller, rocky hillsides showing through the earth’s bony scalp. Often we see the broad bare paths of forest fires. But as we approach Radisson, the HydroQuébec company town that is the highway terminus, the landscape gets lusher. A wolf or large coyote trots toward us on the shoulder, then slips into the brush.
Near the end of the road we find the Motel Carrefour La Grande, where $ 142 secures a vinyl- floored room with two narrow beds and a tiny television. Everything costs more in the north. It has Wi- Fi, though, and is clean and quiet, and we are soon asleep.
Breakfast is eggs, potatoes and thick homemade bread at the busy Resto Chez Mika, and then we are driving 100 km west on a branch of the highway that follows La Grande River to James Bay.
At home in Ottawa it is 28 degrees and humid; here, as we take a short ferry ride to Fort George Island, the thermometer is stuck at 14 and a chill breeze is coming off the water.
Officially, t he se ttle - ment that grew up around the Hudson’s Bay Co. trading post at Fort George was moved upstream to a new town called Chisasibi in 1981 because of the hydroelectric project.
Yet plywood-clad summer houses remain on the island, many adjoined by the tall teepees that are central to Cree culture. My son and I meet not a soul but still can sense the presence of the part-time residents and perhaps those who have never left.
We drive the few kilometres to Chisasibi, home to a hospital, recreational centre and the posh new Waastooskuun Inn. Late-model trucks roll along streets where crews pour curbs and sidewalks. Chisasibi is different than Fort George, and even more removed from the television images we see of Attawapiskat and other troubled Cree communities on the Ontario side of James Bay.
Back at the motel restaurant in Radisson, our pulled pork and fried chicken entrees seem to have taken the same sad journey from freezer to microwave to plate. As consolation, however, the bar next door stocks Belgianstyle beers from Unibroue, a Quebec craft brewery now part of the Sapporo empire. Or you can get a Coors Light, also $6.
The next morning we meet visiting Montrealers Diane McGregor and Sylvain Bouchard. They’re impressed by the welcome they’ve received. “Everywhere here, we’ve met nice people,” says Diane.
At the couple’s urging we visit the Radisson “gift shop,” which turns out to be a gallery and boutique called Arts et Trésors Inouïs. It is indeed a treasure house, with works of native art and jewelry sharing space with photos and biographies of their creators.
Then we’re on to our last stop, the Robert- Bourassa Generating Facility at the very top of the road. You need to register in advance to tour of the underground power plant, the largest in the world, but we’re content to stay above ground and see the 53- storey dam and concrete spillway called the “Giant’s Staircase” that themselves are wonders.
From an observation tower we look across the dam to a reservoir that stretches to the horizon and is dotted with islands that once were hilltops. Perhaps every battleground eventually looks serene.
Why does the trip home always go faster? It’s a conundrum, like why does the top half of a gas tank hold more than the bottom? Perhaps the two are related, because we are getting better mileage — an average of 9.2 L/ 100km, according to the dash readout — than we did on the way up.
We bypass the road’s single gas station and refuel in Matagami, and on that tank make Ottawa. The Equinox, redesigned and lightened for 2018, has been an easy travel partner, with supportive seats, ample power from the optional turbocharged twolitre engine and a luxury-load of amenities from its Premier and True North packages.
After nearly 3,000 km our trip north, to a place where great forces collide and combine, is over much sooner than we wanted.