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Like a lobe hanging from an ear, James Bay lies at the southern end of Hudson Bay. ... #
In the 1970’s, Hydro-Quebec, a giant electric utility owned by the government of Quebec, began to divert rivers and flood land, changing forever the James Bay region of this peninsula. ... Much of this water - in fact a third of all the water flowing in Canada’s rivers - flows into James Bay and Hudson Bay, which occupy a low basin at the heart of the great sweep of rocks known as the Canadian Shield.#
Relatively few species of plants or animals can cope with the physical environment of the James Bay region, with its this, poor soil, and its cold wide-ranging temperatures. ... Along the eastern shores of James bay, millions of gobbling, honking geese have proclaimed the arrival of spring ever since the Ice Age. ... #
Along with the animals, the James Bay peninsula was home to Cree and Inuit peoples for hundreds of years. ... This period, when most Crees spend up to a month at hunting camps along the James Bay coast, is known as goose break. They spent summers fishing, and socializing in their villages - which, in the 1960’s numbered seven, each a cluster of shacks without running water, a church, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police office, a Hudson Bay Company post, and maybe a school. ... They were gauging the power of the rivers emptying into James Bay, laying the foundations for future hydroelectric development.# This was the beginning stage of what would be known as the James Bay Project, a development that would change not only the landscape and environment of the region, but would also destroy the homes, and lives of the Cree and Inuit people who called the area home.
On the evening of April 30, 1971, Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa stood in front of several thousand people and launched the James Bay Project. ... Bourassa called the project “The project if the century.”#
Phase I of the James Bay Project began on May 1, 1972, with construction on La Grande River. ... #
In order to build this massive project roads, airports, and camps were needed to house the workers and to get supplies and materials to them. ... Once the project was completed, the people who had worked there, and the hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel, food, and explosives were gone. ... Though not technically as challenging as the United States’ Apollo project, the per capita cost, for Quebecers, was 15 times greater than that, for Americans, of their venture to the moon. ... James Bay II was delayed for a time so financing and new markets for electricity could be found.#
Quebec announced plans to proceed with James Bay II, involving the damming of the Great Whale River and the diversion of two others into it, as well as diverting the Nottaway and Rupert rivers into the Broadback. James Bay II would have affected watersheds the size of France and created reservoirs the size of Lake Erie. On November 17, 1994, a panel of federal, provincial and indigenous representatives ordered the publicly-owned utility to rework an environmental study it had prepared for the project. The next day, Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau announced that the Great Whale project was no longer a priority of his government and would not be constructed after all. Death of the $13 billion James Bay Great Whale Project was postponed indefinitely by the Quebec government. However, the project could be reinstated at any time. ... This zone, where water and land overlap, is the most biologically productive in the James Bay region.
Approximate Word count = 2946
Approximate Pages = 11.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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