"The ice is not freezing as it should."

April 2, 2025 7:14 AM

In the time of climate change, the fragile ice roads that link Northern communities are under threat. (slTheGuardian)

Disgracefully, no Canadian government has addressed all the very pressing issues of First Nations communities with consistent actions. (Lack of clean drinking water, housing, food insecurity because food costs a ridiculous amount in places where incomes are low.)

posted by Kitteh (6 comments total)

if you know people who use ice roads, you have been hearing about this for years

I live in a community where you eventually run into (mostly) men who are in the trucking industry or in some aspect of resource extraction and things just aren't the same as the 90s and early party of the century.

a person's capacity to appreciate the rate of climate change is seriously hindered by how most of us mark things by lifespans. things are changing so fast but attitudes, not so much
posted by ginger.beef at 7:32 AM on April 2 [8 favorites]

The men (and women) that drive these roads in a good year are such tough-minded badasses. To drive knowing that the ice is going to be treacherous is beyond being badass and into thinking you're immortal. I don't watch much TV, but I have seen Ice Truckers, and the idea of being stranded miles from nowhere in sub-zero temps, losing your truck and shipment if the ice breaks, not being getting out of the truck if it sinks--horrific.

This climate change so totally sucks, but we never may see it reversed. I guess I'm not quite understanding what's going on. It looks like this year they were hoping for a 'normal' winter and didn't get it. But wouldn't the best assumption be that they're going to have the same or worse next year? They have at most, two months right now that the ice is frozen and they have to rely on airlift? So the other 10 months transport must be being done by boat. Is it a matter of gearing up to change the type of transport used, or...? Can not they not plan for no ice and double up on shipments before the ice freezes? Does it come down to poverty and living month to month as a factor not preparing to lose two months shipping?

No ice means the truckers are out of a job and their families suffer, but it sounds like the overall community would benefit if they prepared the five or six months ahead of the deepest winter. Not to minimize what's going on, but it seems like this is something that could be alleviated for next year, and the government should be acting in concert with the villages, no?
posted by BlueHorse at 9:59 AM on April 2

BlueHorse, these are communities who routinely get the short end of the stick by the government (hence my comment about how badly our government fails these communities constantly), the price of fuel for flying supplies is exorbitant already so upping those flights makes an expensive venture too expensive, it would be nearly impossible to fly out that much fresh food ahead of time because it would go bad (also too costly for those folks already).
posted by Kitteh at 10:07 AM on April 2 [3 favorites]

In these underserved northern communities, what's shaping up to happen is that climate change is going to place their precarious existence into untenable territory -- and it's going to happen probably just long enough for these communities to vanish. That'll probably happen not long before warming will then make a lot of these communities serviceable all year by boat or new causeway roads. Then the same people preventing us from putting the brakes on climate change will just take over any abandoned infrastructure for their fin de 21ème siècle company towns.
posted by tclark at 10:18 AM on April 2 [5 favorites]

Having all-year roads is the obvious solution but it will be expensive, it looks like it would just be around 100km to connect Eabametoong First Nation but there are many communities farther north to connect as well. The communities themselves wouldn't be able to afford either the cost of construction or maintaining the roads once built so that would be up to the Federal and Provincial governments to sort it out. In the overall scheme of their budgets it probably isn't that much money, especially as it'll take time to build out the roads limiting how much it would cost in any given year, but there are other priorities like mailing out $200 cheques to residents right before an election that need to be satisfied first.

I would think that the roads would have to be a boon to all the communities they connect. Suddenly the cost of goods becomes much less. People can more easily travel to and from their communities throughout the year for work, study, health appointments, and recreation. Plus just maintaining the roads will create a host of local jobs. Doing this probably wouldn't be viable in an economic sense but it's still something that should be done assuming the communities involved want it.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:20 PM on April 2

The men (and women) that drive these roads

on that, although women make up a small percentage of rig operators they certainly represent. I work with a young woman who handled heavy excavators and everything down from that, she did migrate back to town after a while doing remote work (the other kind of remote work) and camp life though somewhat improved is still not a great environment for women.. working close to town where a person can mostly come home every single night is worth the lower pay, at least for her. The other person (I also work with) is retired from long haul trucking but she'd go in tandem with her spouse, they'd take turns on the road and traveled lots together then settled for a family and that ended that

just a digression to make up for what may have seemed dismissive in the earlier post, it's mostly men but that doesn't tell the whole story
posted by ginger.beef at 3:07 PM on April 2 [2 favorites]