Experts and community trying to untangle mystery of outburst that saw water travel almost 10km overland into a bigger lake
All the water of Lake Rouge had, in fact, vanished. Eagles and crows soon began to circle over the mud and dead fish that remained. […]
A massive mud plain cutting north-east made it clear where the water had gone. It had travelled almost 10km overland into a bigger lake. Amazingly, no one had been hurt in this gigantic – was it a mudslide? A flood? Nobody was sure what to call it.
“I was devastated,” said Chief Irene Neeposh of Waswanipi, an Indigenous Cree community. She called an emergency meeting, though she wasn’t sure who to invite.
“Call me if you have a lake that drains, right?” she said. “Nobody knows what to do in this type of situation.” […]
Natural geology was key to Lake Rouge’s demise. The lake was elevated and its banks were relatively soft with a pre-existing weak spot. The year’s snowfall and speed of spring melt were also reportedly both high. But some scientists and Cree elders say you must zoom out on the whole region’s history to really study the flood.
Two rounds of wildfire torched Quebec forests in the last six years, including the mammoth 2023 fire that ate through a square mileage the size of mainland Denmark. […]
“Any disturbance on the land – wildfire, clearcut, logging, whatever … causes the groundwater table to move up to higher elevation” more often and for longer, said Younes Alila, a University of British Columbia hydrologist. “Instead of just one day, maybe several days. Instead of one week, maybe a couple of weeks.”
Each time, the soaked soil loses strength, he said. “The soil starts to break. But where [is it] going to break first? On the banks of lakes and the banks of rivers.”
On top of this, wildfire can make soil water-repellent for a few years, increasing runoff. And logging companies often “scarify” the ground after they log, essentially breaking up roots and dirt for replanting. This happened in one corner of Lake Rouge’s catchment area.
As wildfires approached the Cree village, 1,012 people left their homes when the municipality issued an evacuation order.
Rhonda Oblin, deputy chief of the Cree Nation of Waswanipi, got teary-eyed speaking in the corner of the ExpoCité centre in Quebec City, less than 24 hours after the start of the evacuation of the community of about 2,000.
She was emotional, thinking about all the people who are still there — including the chief and about half of the town — many of whom live along the trapline permanently. She says 1,012 people left last night as part of the city's evacuation plan, which was announced in the late morning and early afternoon.
"It's been a whirlwind, I can say. Very little sleep, kind of running on fumes and adrenaline," said Oblin, who was among 700 people who travelled to Quebec City by car and bus.
While Waswanipi is not in imminent danger, Oblin says they began the progressive evacuation pre-emptively because of encroaching smoke from wildfires in the region. [...]
18-bed shelter will provide counselling, healing and support services, including 24-hour crisis management
A ceremony opening the first regional Cree women's shelter was held Monday in the James Bay community of Waswanipi. The shelter gives Quebec Cree women and children a culturally safe place to go if they are experiencing abuse.
''I'm going to call it a temporary resource right now,'' said Linda L. Shecapio, the president of the Cree Women of Eeyou Istchee Association, who spoke at the ceremony.
''We know it isn't our value in disrespecting and dishonouring our women. I believe we are in the right direction for healing.''
#waswanipi #light in the #water #matagami #going from the stream to the open water (à Les Écogîtes du Lac Matagami) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHYxGoQnUAU/?igshid=14fwwsvlhlwzq
The Cree First Nation of Waswanipi, Que. is fighting to protect one of Quebec's last remaining virgin boreal forests and its at-risk caribou population from forestry development.
The Cree First Nation of Waswanipi, Que. is fighting to protect one of Quebec's last remaining virgin boreal forests from forestry development.
Located about 730 kilometres north of Montreal, the community of Waswanipi describes itself as the "gateway to northern Quebec."
The Waswanipi Cree territory covers an area slightly smaller than Switzerland, and Chief Marcel Happyjack says 90 per cent of that territory has already been harvested or carved up by logging.
Now the community is taking a stand to protect the remaining 10 per cent — or about 4,000 square kilometres — of virgin boreal forest called the Broadback Valley forest.
The swath of land is in the heart of the Waswanipi Cree First Nation territory, and it's one of the last remaining intact boreal forests in Quebec.
It's an area which the community says is central to the Cree way of life.
Plans for forestry development in the region call for building 126 kilometres of roads through the territory, which would encroach on a section of the Broadback River Valley forest.
"If they do go ahead, we would see over 113,000 hectares of land gone within two years," Happyjack said. "That would bring total devastation to the trappers' way of life, which is hunting, fishing and trapping."
Caribou population at risk
"We're not anti-development," Happyjack said. "We're not anti-forestry, but we just want something that will ensure the protection of the Cree rights ... and also to protect the species that are within that area."
Since 2002, the local community has been asking the province of Quebec to protect that land — home to bears, moose, migratory birds and woodland caribou — classified as a threatened species by the Canadian government.
The roads would not go through the area in question, but they would come close.
Happyjack said if the firm that wants to construct the roads, Matériaux Blanchet Inc., does get the green light, he has no doubt there will be an impact on the caribou.
"That caribou [population] is decreasing. We know that there's a lot of disturbance because of forestry and because of roads being built, and this species seems to be moving farther away from the territory," said Happyjack.
"Our people — our trappers and our tallymen — are able to see that there's something that's bringing a disturbance upon the wildlife there," he said.
Tallymen are the stewards of the land, authorized by the Cree community to supervise harvesting activities on a given trapline.
The proposed logging roads are currently under review.
An independent government agency, known as the Environmental and Social Impact Review committee (COMEX), held a public hearing in Waswanipi and has consulted planning documents and environmental impact studies.
Now the residents of Waswanipi are waiting to hear what recommendations COMEX will make to Quebec's minister of sustainable development.
'Put faith in consultation,' Grand Council urges
Concerns about the protection of the Broadback Valley forest have also pitted Waswanipi against Quebec's Grand Council of the Crees, to which the Waswanipi Cree belongs.
Last July, the Crees' Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come signed a partnership and co-operation agreement with the Quebec government, aimed at resolving a longstanding dispute with the forestry industry over a huge swath of territory of the James Bay Crees.
At that time, Coon Come said the agreement would not affect the Broadback River Watershed Conservation plan.
The Grand Council's executive director, Bill Namagoose, told CBC that Waswanipi should put its faith in the consultation process, which he said is going well.
Namagoose said in any event, the forestry companies don't want to cross into the Broadback River Valley forest because they would have to build a bridge.
Now that the public hearings have wrapped up, there is a 30-day waiting period to allow for stakeholders to submit further statements and comments on the project before COMEX submits its report to Quebec.
A spokesman for the Minister of Sustainable Development, David Heurtel, said the minister would not comment, as the COMEX process is still underway.
The Cree grand chief signed an accord with the Quebec government in July to preserve 9,134 square kilometers of woodland caribou habitat along the 450-kilometer Broadback, which flows through the taiga to the Arctic.
But Waswanipi trappers say the deal does too little to safeguard their land. They point out that half of the areas protected from logging under the accord were already off-limits to forestry firms.
Since the government of Quebec unveiled a conservation plan for the north that paradoxically opened the door to more logging along the Broadback river, the town of Waswanipi has felt under siege.
– Not ours to sell –
Forestry firm representatives have approached Don Saganash about his hunting lands in the area.
“They came to talk to me about building a bridge because the river is narrower here, but the Broadback is not for sale,” he said of the crystal clear river where sturgeon, pike and walleye swim.
Seeing trucks loaded with logs drive by “is like getting stabbed in the gut,” said the retired ambulance driver. [...]
