It is definitely winter in northern Ontario, but winter road season has still not arrived.
And on Lake Temagami, there are fears that, for the first time ever, the ice road won’t open at all this year.
“I’ve been having the talk with people in the community about how we’ve got to just get used to the snow machine ride again, and this is probably how we are going across the lake this winter,” said David McKenzie, executive director of Temagami First Nation.
“I don’t think we are going to have the ice road unfortunately.”
About 245 people live on Bear Island in the middle of the lake, and during the winter, they depend on the ice road for getting back and forth to the mainland for everything from doctor’s appointments, to groceries to employment.
McKenzie said they need about 25 cm of ice for it to be safe for cars and trucks, but right now, there are spots of “very questionable ice” on the lake with only five centimetres.
The snowmobile path across the lake is open with a thickness between 15 and 22 centimetres, but McKenzie said it only opened in early January, when that usually happens before Christmas.
Ice roads are fundamental to remote communities’ survival, as winter is when they can haul in fuel tankers, lumber and other building supplies, and canned/bulk foods. To do it in summer means flying it in and that adds an astronomical transportation cost to the items.