MOOSONEE, Ont. — The days of Diamond Road are numbered.
Soon, the 150 km-long band of semi-precious ice will just melt away.
As he heads out alone on a shopping errand for his little girl, Mike Jolly knows that when he finally turns his truck around, the only driveable avenue back home to his community of Moose Factory may have vanished completely.
But casually munching from a half empty bag of potato chips, left open on the nearby passenger seat of his beefy vehicle, the I.T. technician isn't too worried. He has wisely pre-booked a return train ticket — for his truck.
For more than a century, northern Ontario towns like Moose Factory and Moosonee have been well travelled gateways at the edge of our northern frontier. Moosonee, at the railhead on James Bay, has fed smaller communities with needed supplies since its first days as a 1903 fur trading post. But during that entire time, no generation has ever been able to simply pile into a car or truck, and drive to the rest of Canada.
In fact, the rules and regulations of the Highway Traffic Act didn't arrive to keep order on the not-so-congested streets of Moosonee until 1993. Many people here still don't own a vehicle because the more than 6,000 residents of the greater region have been — other than by plane, train or snow sled — landlocked from the highways that stitch together the rest of a frantically commuting nation.
Then, about a month ago, the rest of Canada closed in. Or, at least, this region was suddenly able to reach out using a vehicle with good suspension. It includes — says the lore that has arrived along with the road — a woman who may have driven in using a Pontiac Sunfire.
With no fanfare or ribbon cutting, crews working for an Alberta-based contractor, Valard Construction Ltd., carved out an historic thoroughfare to the outside, using snow and ice, then layering it all with a soft bed of hay for comfortable traction. Since then, locals like Jolly — who is heading "down south" to buy supplies for the coming spring hunt, and the popular Guitar Hero videogame for his young daughter — have been able to use this very rough winter service road from Moosonee, straight out to the community of Smooth Rock Falls. From there, you can tuck your vehicle in between speeding tractor trailers on Hwy. 11, and, with white knuckles, head toward almost any address in Canada.
Winter roads are common in most northern corners of Canada. In the 1950s, a former Mountie, John Denison, famously pioneered ice bridges along a 520 km stretch from Yellowknife, N.W.T., to a silver mine on Great Bear Lake, near the Arctic Circle. And more than 3,000 km of seasonal routes are built each year in Ontario alone, connecting dozens of communities.
The people of Moose Factory, Moosonee and the other nearby towns — including Attawapiskat and Kashechewan — look forward to the social warmth the cold months bring, as they're able to easily reach out to one another across frozen waterways.
"The area really comes alive then," says Bob Gravel, a Moosonee councillor.
Across the great white, neighbours can drive to neighbours — to drop off kids to play hockey or to shop the stores of Moosonee. But never before, Gravel notes, has this particular expanse been crossed before.
"A first in history — being able to drive in and out as you please," he explains, sitting in the town's council chambers. "Some people are making the drive, just so they can say they did it."
But the road wasn't built for them. It's all for the diamonds.
Valard has needed the passage to help build a new power line into the De Beers Victor diamond mine project, carved out of the James Bay Lowlands, approximately 90 km west of the coastal First Nation community of Attawapiskat. This temporary road out is much like the first paths cut during the Klondike gold rush of a century ago — but this time, it has been created in the search for Canadian diamonds.
And while store ads may tell us that those gems are forever, the road to them is not.
As Mike drives to buy his child's videogame, and his own hunting supplies, the elements work to close off his return. In a matter of days — a week or two at the most — the spring sun will melt snow ramps on to and off of ponds, streams and even the mile-wide Moose River. From below that powerful waterway, melting ice and snow from three different systems now conspire to convene in James Bay — tearing away at the ice road from below.
There is no stopping the death of Diamond Road.
In fact, having brought power to the $997-million mine, the Valard crew will soon destroy the access road before it becomes a danger to their behemoth vehicles and 100 weather-beating workmen.
It's already — at the end of its life — no Sunday drive in the country. A 149 km run from Moosonee to Otter Rapids, where the sideroad into Smooth Rock Falls begins, takes more than three hours. In an often narrow snow track that slaloms through power poles, forest-mashing machines can suddenly appear out of nowhere.
So too does a large Canadian flag that someone has hoisted in the middle of a stand of stumpy trees.
Other than the workers, the only pedestrians are the foxes, darting from the treeline at the sound of an engine — knowing it may herald tasty trash tossed from a window.
Paralleling the train tracks used by the Polar Bear Express, the work road dips down into creek beds before shooting up over blind crests. To the north, after crossing the ice of Moose River, the passage is now an open wound of spring muck and tire-swallowing puddles. Bales of hay are broken up to offer some resistance to the pavement of slippery ice.
Pointing out the obvious, signs at both ends of the road warn: "Use at own risk."
MapQuest and a CAA card are useless out here. Snowbanks become rest stops.
The Valard crews, says company president, Victor Budzinski, have found a good number of vehicles stuck or broken down. The voyageurs are given safe haven and plenty of hot coffee in the work camps — before being helped to move on.
Used to working in remote landscapes, Budzinski, on the phone from Alberta, says: "We were a little surprised how isolated such a large community is."
Closing the work-road off to the locals was never an option, he adds.
Today, as Jolly heads out, Karen and Jassen Metatawabin drive back to remote, Fort Albany First Nation, which is 128 km northwest of Moosonee. The couple plan to open a restaurant there in the summer. They're on their third trip to buy supplies for it — though they still haven't even decided on a name for the eatery.
Paying $1.26 a litre for gas for their third trip out isn't a concern. Not when a return train ticket for an average family out of Moosonee — including putting a vehicle on board — is more than $500. And not when a case of bottled water in Timmins is $3, while it's $24 in Fort Albany.
"While the road lasts," says Jassen, a police officer, "it's really good to take advantage of."
Diamond Road may be fading fast, but Karen isn't so sure it will take another century to be able to make the pilgrimage again.
The local rumour mill is now turning out thick plots — that a secret, permanent road is already in the planning stages. That this taste has whet an appetite for more mobility. That north and south will, some time down the road, finally be united.
And while some look forward to that day, it's not as if thousands of locals?see Diamond Road as priceless. There's no gridlock in the rush to come and go.
"It's a curiosity, rather than a big thing," councillor Gravel says of the road. "I can't say the desire (for a permanent road) is as strong as some people would think."
The closest Moosonee home to the start of Diamond Road belongs to William Tozer, an outfitter for the past 35 years. Out on his front yard, dogs of all sizes roam around his 18-year-old son's yellow, wooden taxi sled. For $15 each, young Nolan Tozer shuttles people across the ice from Moosonee to Moose Factory.
"We've never been on the (new) road," says the father, standing at his front door — the warmth of the house spilling out into late afternoon. "We've been too busy. Now there's no time. That's fine."
It took more than a hundred years for an inroad to arrive here. But, as it melts away, there are those who find pride in not needing it.
In the rough of Diamond Road, some have found a welcome diversion. Still others, no reason to join the rat race.
