Agency eyes tourism boost in hidden gem of Quebec

A new travel agency is making it easier to navigate the seemingly endless wilderness of northern Quebec via lake-hopping pontoon planes, rapids-rushing canoes and forest-darting snowmobiles.

The Cree Outfitting and Tourism Association has introduced Eeyou Istchee Baie-james Travel to help tourists book hotels, cars, activities and cultural experiences in an area that typically gets ignored by tourists.

Roch Anctil, executive director of Eeyou Istchee Baie-james Travel, says people already know about what governments have done in the James Bay region.

“Of course (visitors) learned about the Hydro-québec installations. They are not just asking for that. Now they want to meet with the Cree people who have lived here for thousands of years.”

(Tourists) want to meet with the Cree people who have lived here for thousands of years.

Eeyou Istchee is a Cree territory equivalent to a regional municipality of Quebec, while Baie-james is a municipality in northern Quebec located on the shore of James Bay.

The majority Cree-owned travel agency will help businesses in Aboriginal communities by keeping tourists in the area for days at a time, tourism association executive director Robin Mcginley told CBC.

The agency is offering three-, four- and seven-day packages including flights, hotels, water-plane tours, snowmobiling and access to some of the best fishing in Canada.

The new agency hopes to ride an uptick in local tourism. Statistics collected by Eeyou Istchee Tourism and Tourisme Baie-james and released at the end of 2018 showed an increase of 2.2 per cent in hotel stays in the James Bay region, with 5.7 per cent and five per cent increases for August and September. The provincial increase was, on average, 0.4 per cent, according to the tourism group.

“Just like Mexico, just like Cuba. That’s what they do all over the place,” Mcginley said. “We are doing it so we can get out in the market and shift from a cottage industry to a real sustainable tourism industry.”