The owner of the general store is a sharp- featured woman with dark, curly hair named Laureen Nassaykeesic. She is a for- mer member of band council, well versed in local politics and firm in her opinions. Laureen speaks softly as she twirls a daisy in her hand. “We are prepared to fight to make sure they don’t come and develop the area. The only benefit would be a stumpage fee, which would be nothing. Then, what, wait 100 years for a new set of trees? I have grandchildren and I’d like them to enjoy the green forest and the natural way of things. We’re very lucky to live here.”
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TAKU IS WOLFING DOWN pork chops and mashed potatoes provided by our host Norman “Dude” Baxter. We are one week down the Albany at the Marten Falls First Nation. Dude is a fishing and hunting guide with a drill sergeant buzzcut. He found Taku wandering around the village and invited us in just as a ferocious side- ways storm swept in. Sixty years ago, his father would spend two weeks paddling from Marten Falls to Calstock to trade furs for supplies. There are no roads even today, just waterways. “The Albany is our
MODERN PICTOGRAPH ON THE PICKEREL RIVER
28 n C ANOE ROOT S fall 2008
highway,” Dude explains. “It gives us our fishing and hunting—it’s everything.” Despite the Albany’s status as a pro-
vincial park, the Ontario Power Authority has proposed that two major dams be built on the river by 2020, one of them at Kagiami Falls. The projects would carve up the surrounding boreal wilder- ness with roads and transmission lines as well as flood existing habitat and hunting grounds. A current agreement between the province and First Nations limits power projects above the 51st to 25 megawatts but as power demand in- creases, so does pressure to renegotiate the deal. Apparently everything is nego- tiable; everything is on the line. The first big boulder to catapult its way
into the region is the Victor diamond mine on Ontario’s Attawapiskat River, spear- headed by international giant De Beers. The project, already underway, will clear 5,000 hectares of forest, generate 2.5 mil- lion tonnes of leeching waste per year and pump 100,000 cubic metres of salty water from the pit into the Attawapiskat daily. In all, the entire project will affect an area 22 times the size of Vancouver. All for a mine forecast to produce for only 12 years.
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MAP: LORENZO DEL BIANCO
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