Decades-long fight over: Airport on Wasagamack First Nation promised in Manitoba budget

A decades-long fight for a new airport on a remote Manitoba First Nation is over

The province has commit‐ ted in its 2024 budget to building a new airport on Wasagamack First Nation, ending about six decades of advocacy from the commu‐ nity, Chief Walter Harper says.

"Everybody is excited, even I was excited. Even to‐ day I'm very, very excited be‐ cause going back to 60-plus years, we were the most iso‐ lated," Harper said on Wednesday, a day after Pre‐ mier Wab Kinew's NDP gov‐ ernment tabled its first Mani‐ toba budget.

Harper and other band members were invited to the Legislative Building on Tues‐ day for the announcement.

The budget doesn't say how much the province in‐ tends to spend on the air‐ port. "Wasagamack airport and northern airport, strategy development" is in‐ cluded as a bullet point un‐ der "major capital investmen‐ ts."

However, Harper says an announcement at the air‐ port's site is planned for ear‐ ly May, and estimates that the airport and a road con‐ necting to it would cost about $70 million.

The First Nation, about 470 kilometres north of Win‐ nipeg, has a population of about 2,000 and can only be reached by boat or heli‐ copter. It renewed calls for an airport last year ahead of the 25th anniversary of a he‐ licopter crash that killed a pi‐ lot and two beloved elders, Harper's mother, Bernadette, and her friend.

"This is kind of emotional to me because … I was think‐ ing about my mom and her best friend. And I'm saying to myself, 'Look, I did it,'" Harp‐ er said. "This is what the community needed."

After that crash, then NDP MLA Eric Robinson promised an airport would be built, but it was never built.

Calls also resurfaced in 2017 when residents fleeing a wildfire near the commu‐ nity had to be taken 10 kilo‐ metres by boat to the airport in St. Theresa Point, where they boarded flights to Win‐ nipeg, Brandon and Thomp‐ son.

WATCH | Wasagamack chief calls for new airport ahead of 25th anniversary of helicopter crash