I’ve spent 18 years documenting Prairie life in western Manitoba, mostly photographing the people who make up the province’s small towns, farms, Hutterite colonies and First Nations. As photojournalists, we are constantly in and out of people’s lives, which is an amazing privilege — but it can also be exhausting.

This year, I decided to spend my time with bees.

Photographing people can be exhausting. So, this year, I photographed bees, including at my friends’ apiary.

My friends and apiarists Andrew and Hiltje Vander Velde happily agreed to allow me to come and go from their hives, letting myself in and out of the electric fence meant to deter bears looking for honey. I spent hours at a time in the early morning and late evening watching the honeybees work, collecting pollen from near and far and bringing it back to the hives. I got to see the different colours of the pollen up close.

I wanted to capture the detailed lives of bees, including macro-lens portraits. This was not an easy task. Macro lenses have narrow depths of field — and flying bees move quickly and erratically, usually coming in and out of my focal plane faster than I or the camera could register. I wanted photos that felt like portraits, so I set up backdrops, relying on crafting or scrapbooking items I purchased. I’d pick a colourful piece of cardboard paper, line it up vertically against a side of a hive and focus my camera on the action just outside the entrance so I could get bees returning to their home or heading out on their missions. It might sound simple — but it required taking thousands of photos each sitting to get a few that were in focus. 

A leafcutter bee collects pollen and stores it on its scopa, a patch of hair on its abdomen. Leafcutter bees are solitary pollinators and crucial for crops like alfalfa.

I wanted my photographs to resemble portraits, so I set up colourful backdrops and waited for bees to fly in front of them.

I sat in the grass, my face and camera lens inches from the upper entrance to the hive, my neck and shoulders contorted into uncomfortable positions. And I photographed, while enveloped in the droning sound of thousands of bees at work. Sometimes I listened to podcasts, other times I listened to the songs of the western meadowlarks, bobolinks and least flycatchers. 

Some days I’d wear the full beekeeper suit that Andrew and Hiltje lent me, other days just a T-shirt and shorts. Aside from one poor bumblebee that inadvertently got pinched in my elbow crease, I was only stung less than six times in total, each when I was wearing my beekeeper suit. Most were just one sting at a time, on an exposed bit of wrist or ankle. 

Sometimes, I wore a full beekeeper suit. But when the bees were calm, I would go unprotected. I was only stung a handful of times all summer.

Once I had a group of angry bees following me back to my car. I’m not sure how I inadvertently caused them stress that day, but I could register their agitation in the change of pitch in their buzzing — the wing vibrations they use to communicate. 

The mesh head covering, which hung off a rimmed hard hat, was a pain in the ass to photograph through so I’d often ditch it, especially in the evenings when the bees were calmer. Over the years I’ve learned to follow beekeepers’ leads. My friends at Deerboine Hutterite Colony rarely wear any protective covering so if I’m around them, I also don’t wear anything. When I came across apiarist Mike Clark, director of the Manitoba Beekeepers’ Association, pulling honey boxes from hives amid a strong late summer wind, he also wasn’t wearing any protective gear. Meanwhile, thousands of honeybees, blown out from frames of honeycomb with a leaf blower, filled the prairie air with chaos. 

“Shallow breaths,” Clark told me. “They’re attracted to carbon dioxide.” That day was magical. Dozens — if not hundreds — of bees explored and rested on my arms, legs and torso while I photographed their hives shortly after their honeycomb was collected. I didn’t get stung once; I gently brushed them off my body as I changed positions. 

Honeybees congregate on a drone comb to collect pollen and nectar at sunset.

A female worker bee carries collected pollen back to its hive. Pollen colour varies from flower to flower.

A honeybee with specks of pollen on the back of its abdomen zeros in on the entrance to a hive.

The backdrop to all of this, of course, is that bees are under threat. Canada is home to more than 800 species of wild bees, many of which are rare. The threats to them are many: pesticides, invasive species, climate change and more. Honeybees are also under threat. Mites and the viruses they spread led to 30 per cent of honeybees dying in Canada last winter, according to the Canadian Honey Bee Council, though not all apiarists experienced this same level. However, the conversations around the threats are nuanced and complicated. Beekeepers tout the importance of honeybees in pollination and how they can benefit wild bees and wildflowers. Not to mention, the harms versus benefits are situational, based on competition for pollen and other factors. 

But this project wasn’t about the big picture. It was about looking closely, and enjoying the moments with a tiny insect many of us never turn our full attention to. It was a case study in zooming in and slowing down.

There’s something beautiful about getting to know a subject beyond the surface level. I spent hours watching bees such as these ones, climbing and leaping among flowers.

A bumblebee leaps from one flower to another at a urban flower garden in Souris, Man.

Summer evenings at the hives were especially beautiful. The low sun backlit the bees, still active in the airspace above their hives, with trees in shade providing a dark backdrop to their glow. There’s something beautiful about getting to know a subject beyond the surface level. I spent hours watching bees take evening naps on plants just outside their hives, or casting shadows on and through the delicate petals of poppies in the garden at Deerboine Colony. 

Honeybees fill the air at an apiary west of Brandon, Man. Bees are facing compounding threats around the world. Pesticides, invasive species and climate change are putting their populations at risk.

The beauty was in the details: leafcutter bees store their collected pollen on the bottom of their abdomens using specialized hairs called scopa to grasp the powdery plant fertilizer. When leafcutters plunge themselves headfirst into flowers, their pollen-covered back ends stick out. Bumblebees, of which Manitoba has several species, sometimes climb out of flowers looking like they fell into a vat of pollen, with it clinging to every part of their fuzzy, barrel-shaped bodies. Patches of goldenrod and fireweed were the bee equivalent of a Manitoba social. 

As dusk approached each evening, the bees’ activity would slow. They would enter their hives for the night, congregate on nearby honeycomb or rest on the plants in the field. I stood and watched, and felt peace.

Some evenings at the hives, shortly after the sun had set, coyotes filled the air with their cries from every direction. Activity slowed as bees entered their hive for the night, congregated on discarded honeycomb or rested on plants in the field. 

The occasional firefly would glow alongside the bees still moving across the dusk-blue sky. 

I sat and watched the activity slowing — and felt lucky to be there in that moment.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A variety of crops — millet, ryegrass, clover, hairy vetch, sunflowers and more — grow together in unlikely harmony in a field in south-central Saskatchewan, surrounded by the gentle buzzing of insects and birds on an early August day.

Accompanied by the gentle cacophony, Calvin Gavelin shovels up a sample of dark-coloured topsoil, still damp from the morning’s rain and heavy with thick plant roots, forms it into a rough ball the size of his hand and holds it out.

“That’s carbon!” he says, giddy like a little boy. 

Rich, dark soil is not common in this lonely region of the province, accessible only by single-lane highways lined with wild sunflowers.

If you were to go just down the road, the topsoil probably looks very different: sandier, drier, lighter in colour. That’s the type of soil that fares poorly in drought conditions — which this region has seen a lot of in recent decades.

Calvin Gavelin’s farm, like those of many Saskatchewan farmers, has been hit hard by drought in recent years. But his soil is now rich, dark and teeming with life — all thanks to the regenerative agricultural practices he and his wife Marla have implemented.

It was during one of these recent drought years, in 2018, that Gavelin noticed something in the fields that changed the way he and his wife, Marla, managed their fourth-generation farm. 

“Where I had monoculture grass, it was burnt right out. I went to the native grass, and you had the variety of the forbs [flowering plants] and the shrubs [and] when you looked underneath it, everything was alive and green.”

“Our soil biology was dying.”

He came to Marla with his epiphany.

“I’m so stupid,” he told her. “I’ve been doing this process of killing our soil for all these years.”

That same year, Gavelin decided to adopt practices from what is commonly called regenerative agriculture: minimizing soil disturbances, keeping soils covered year-round, maintaining living roots in the soil, integrating livestock and enhancing biodiversity above and below ground.

In 2019, he planted his first cover crop (vegetation used to keep the soil covered, fertile and productive between main crop seasons or on unused land) — a mixture of legumes and cereals. The results, he says, were mind-blowing.

The Gavelins have planted cover crops on their farmland — vegetation that keeps the soil protected and productive between main crop seasons and can increase biodiversity. Some of their fields now contain up to 20 different plants, including cereals, brassicas, legumes and forbs (flowering plants). Bo, the family dog, likes to gallop through the millet and barley.

A hailstorm came in July that year that killed everything, and while his monoculture crops didn’t grow back, his one cover crop field did — enough to feed his cows through that fall and into the following spring.

“We’ve never done that before.”

Two years later, he seeded three different forage crop blends, custom-designed for the area. That year turned out to be one of the driest in the last 20 years, but despite the conditions, Gavelin says these three cover crops fed his 200 cows when everything else was dead in June. He also observed increased ovulation levels in the cows grazing on the blends, which generally translates into more calves — and more profits for cattle farmers.

Since then, he has continued to plant diverse cover crops, with some fields containing up to 20 different plants, including cereals, brassicas, legumes and forbs. The diversity is key, he says, as the different crops work together to protect the soil — capturing and retaining moisture and creating a canopy to keep the ground cooler.

And there are many more benefits, he says. The ground cover helps reduce erosion, for one. But having cover over the soil also means animals can graze there during the shoulder season, too. And the soil improves, to boot. Not to mention the biodiversity above ground.

Gavelin’s cover crops have proved much more resilient to drought and climate challenges than his monocrops, as they retain moisture and keep the ground cool. After a devastating hailstorm wiped out most of his farm in the summer of 2019, his cover crop field grew back enough to feed his cattle through the fall and spring.

Like Gavelin, many farmers are experimenting with regenerative practices — which are not to be confused with organic farming, though there may be some overlap.

Gavelin still uses synthetic fertilizers in his operations, meaning his regenerative farm is not organic. In Canada, organic farming means growing food without using synthetic chemicals or genetic engineering and following certain ecological practices.

The idea of regenerative farming is to use techniques that can be applied on a small or large scale to make soil healthier — and therefore also help the economics of farming. And while some worry “regenerative agriculture” is just a buzzword, or too impractical to take root, others are jumping at the chance to make changes.

Regenerative farming can be challenging — but even some bigger farms are trying it

It’s tough to say how many Canadian farmers are integrating regenerative practices on their farms. There’s no hard, official definition for the concept, or any accredited certification process in Canada (as there is for organic farming).

And while the majority of Canadian farmers employ methods like no-till farming, which could qualify, many of the other practices commonly considered to be regenerative are much less realistic for modern farming practices, because of biophysical barriers like soil type or climate, or operational barriers like cost. They’re not practical to implement — especially in larger-scale operations. 

But that hasn’t stopped some Saskatchewan farmers. 

A couple hours west of Gavelin’s farm, Mark Hoimyr and his wife Laura have completely revamped the cattle-grazing methods on their 5,500-acre beef operation in line with regenerative practices.

Hoimyr became interested in rotational grazing — moving livestock between different pasture areas to feed instead of the more common practice of using the same spot all season — after the couple took over the operation from his parents. It was a practical decision.

“It was obvious to me that we were going to struggle to purchase our way into expanding, so I wanted to try and expand by improving the efficiency of what we already had,” he says.

Mark and Laura Hoimyr have used regenerative agricultural practices to revamp their 5,500-acre beef farm. They’ve implemented rotational grazing — allowing cows to graze on different parcels of land for short periods of time, then leaving the land to rest and recover — which has helped strengthen the farm’s soil and made for happier cows.

After years of trial and error in grazing techniques, he began to graze animals intensively in small areas for a short time, then leave the land to rest for a long period, allowing time for regrowth. He now grazes pastures once a year and native prairie every two years, letting cattle eat most of the grass and trampling the rest to enrich the soil.

So far, they’ve been happy with the results, he says.

“We could see that our land was doing better, and we were really happy with how healthy our cattle were.”

Rob Wunder, who farms in east-central Saskatchewan, is also happy with the results of his outside-the-box efforts.

‘Treat the land right’: B.C. farmers search for solutions as another year of drought looms

After watching his parents, who previously ran his farm, adapt their practices to survive some challenging times — including the years of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as “mad cow disease,” which cost Canadian cattle farmers an estimated $2.5 billion in losses — he says that his fourth-generation farm is always open to trying new things.

Wunder started experimenting with regenerative agriculture in 2013.  

“I just kind of got tired of being reliant on and having big bills, as far as input bills,” he says, referring to the various inputs farmers rely on: fertilizers, pesticides, livestock feed, seed, energy and fuels and more.  

Rob Wunder, a farmer who lives near Foam Lake, in east-central Saskatchewan, examines the roots and soil of his cover crop fields. He’s been open to experimenting on his fourth-generation farm and says it has paid off.

He later became interested in the idea of composting — using waste from his farm to fertilize and treat crops.

He now uses a custom compost turner to mix and cool compost made from animals’ bedding, wood chips, straw, oats and more, then spreads it on cropland. He also produces vermicast — nutrient-rich compost made from worm poop — and applies the microbe- and nutrient-rich liquid right into the soil with the seed to boost early growth.

“It didn’t take long to, for lack of a better term, fall in love with it all and start to see some benefits,” he says of the new techniques.

What’s better for the soil can be better for the bottom line, too

Many experts agree widespread adoption of regenerative practices could have substantial environmental and social benefits.

But farmers primarily make decisions based on economics. And while sometimes there’s direct, measurable payoff for adopting regenerative practices on a farm, often it’s more complex.

Gavelin says using cover crops to feed his cattle on pasture costs half as much as feeding them in a pen, saving him about $200 per acre. 

Honey bees work outside their hives in a crop of borage at Rob Wunder’s farm. Wunder rents the bees to pollinate the borage flowers.

For Hoimyr, the economic payoff is less clear.

“It is really complex — even with all of the positive things that we’ve seen, we’re also constantly learning and trying new things, and with that comes making mistakes,” he says.

For him, the greatest benefit has been the mind shift. For one, he and his wife have started selling their beef directly to consumers as a means of capitalizing on the value they believe they are adding to the finished product. 

Healthy soil means more resilient plants and fields. Farmers in Saskatchewan have noticed economic benefits from their regenerative practices, including reduced costs of feeding livestock and reduced input costs.

“The old adage of ‘you are what you eat’ — well, it applies to the things that we eat, too. It really does just keep snowballing until you become completely overwhelmed with how interconnected everything is,” he says. 

On Wunder’s farm, he says he’s been able to cut back on his input costs by up to 70 per cent as a result of his regenerative practices — and that number could be even higher for other farmers, depending on their practices and goals.  

However, the practices require additional time and effort, he says. On top of his time spent learning and trying new ways of doing things, the compost operation requires one dedicated person working part- or full-time during seeding, which is why he has partnered with a neighbour to run it.  

‘Buzzword’? Agriculture professor argues ‘regenerative’ is yet another marketing ploy

While most agree that regenerative practices have potential benefits for farmers — though they may not be viable for every operation — not everyone is convinced the ideas are actually new. 

For many, like Hoimyr, the term is just a punchier reiteration of an old idea — rebranding previous agriculture trends like “holistic management,” “soil health” and “sustainability.”

“It’s all the same people, all the same concepts. It’s just that ‘regenerative’ is pretty catchy.”

Fighting for food sovereignty amid worsening wildfires

Stuart Smyth, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Saskatchewan, agrees.

“Everybody wants to brand the latest buzzword to consumers. It was ‘sustainability’ for a while and I think it’s going to be ‘regenerative.’ ”

He believes these types of terms are largely championed by the food-processing sector.

“They’re constantly looking for the words that resonate with consumers, so [they] can brand their products accordingly, and then that ripples back up the supply chain. And really, it’s semantics, because it’s the economics at the farm level that are driving change, nothing else.”

Smyth also believes the term captures something farmers are already doing: making small, incremental improvements on their farms to boost efficiency and productivity — and this might include methods that do not fit tidily into images in consumers’ minds. For example, using crops developed with biotechnology, such as gene editing and genetic engineering.

Borage, winter triticale, phacelia and sage grow on Calvin Gavelin’s farm. While some see “regenerative agriculture” as just another catchy buzzword, environmental stewardship is at the core of the approach — something farmers have been practicing for decades.

Smyth also believes the emphasis on trendy concepts like regenerative agriculture can drive distrust of the agriculture sector, and overshadow how progressive Saskatchewan farmers have been in the area of environmental stewardship in recent decades. 

For example, he says a pre-publication study he co-authored shows Saskatchewan soils have seen a 40 per cent increase in soil organic matter over the last 35 years, because of the widespread adoption of no-till farming. Another recent study shows Canadian farmers produce some of the least carbon-intensive crops in the world. 

“I would argue that 97 or 98 per cent of our crop-producing land would align with that regenerative terminology or program,” Smyth says. “It won’t align with organics, but it certainly aligns with sustainable and regenerative.”

‘No farmer wants to be completely dependent on a chemical company’

For the farmers in the trenches, though, the labels don’t matter. They are thinking about economics, taking care of their farms longer-term and how to best balance these two priorities.    

“I think the reason so many of these practices are able to take hold is because most of them make sense,” Hoimyr says. “No farmer wants to be completely dependent on a chemical company or completely helpless as soon as the rainfall doesn’t fall at exactly the right time. These types of things just help move everybody in the right direction. Everyone can do a little bit better.”

For Wunder, regenerative techniques are just another “tool in the toolbox.”

“It’s about building soil health and resiliency for generations to come, and it’s going to look different on every operation. And everybody’s tools are going to be a little different.”

Rhys Gavelin, 13, is one reason her father sees regenerative agriculture as part of a larger process of stewardship for the next generation.

For Gavelin, introducing new practices on his farm was worth it for another reason — one that goes deeper than finances or crop yields. While he’s not sure if his two daughters — Rhys, 13, and Quinn, 12 — will want to take over the farm one day, he says he firmly believes he’s just taking care of the land until the next steward comes along.   

“We’re all worried about our pocketbooks, but we’re all depleting our soils. Our soils are going backwards. I did this for soil health.”

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It had been a tough game for the boys from Brandon. A crushing 15-6 defeat in their first playoff matchup of the day left the Heritage Co-op team with one more chance to avoid last place in the tournament. Not to mention the weather was an opponent all of its own, with air temperatures dropping to -30 C on the open expanse of Manitoba’s Minnedosa Lake, made even colder by the whipping winds.

Still, spirits are warm inside the heated, green canvas tent serving as the tournament’s makeshift locker room.  

At the annual Skate the Lake tournament in Minnedosa, Man., a canvas tent provides a bit of relief from -30 C temperatures and icy winds.

“It’s cold, the other team had a few more skilled players than we did today,” Brenden Chudley says, tongue in cheek, as his teammates slump onto a row of straw bales to unlace their skates and catch their breath.

“It’s fun, everybody’s here having a good time — and how often do you get to play pond hockey outside on the lake?”

Many of the weekend’s players have played for the town’s junior hockey team, the Minnedosa Bombers. While indoor rinks are the norm for organized hockey, playing on outdoor ice is a quintessential Canadian tradition that’s helped even NHL legends hone their skills.

Things are more jovial — though no less frigid — just a few feet away, where their opponents, the Integra Tires, crowd around one of a few tubes pumping warm air into the tent.

They’re excited about the win, but what’s really made the day special, player Nick Cameron says, is the people.

“Everybody gets back for one weekend and they all have fun,” he says.

Spectators watch as pond hockey players play in the A-Side championship match during the 2025 Skate the Lake pond hockey tournament on Minnedosa Lake.

Like the Co-op crew, most of the Integra team is from out-of-town, but they grew up playing organized hockey together in Minnedosa. They’ve come home for the February long weekend to take part in Manitoba’s largest pond hockey tournament: Skate the Lake.  

Pond hockey is synonymous with Canadian winters: kids lacing up skates on a pond, lake, river or creek, to pass a puck around and shoot at a patchy net, or a gap between a pair of boots.

The tournament is contested on 10 snowbank-lined rinks, where four-player teams face off, without goalies, over 30-minute games, aiming to score on specially made nets just a few inches tall.

“For us to have this kind of ice in our veins and collective experience of outdoor sport and play in that context is unique and special,” sports ecologist Madeleine Orr says in an interview. 

“Nothing quite transcends like hockey, and part of that is shinny. It’s not by yourself, it requires community — and that’s the magic.”

Heritage Co-op and Integra Tire players, including a frosty Carter Hedley (left), brave the cold on a blue-sky Sunday morning on Minnedosa Lake.

Shinny is said to be a precursor to ice hockey, evolving in Canada out of a combination of Indigenous and Scottish ball-and-stick sports. Even as hockey grew into an international phenomenon, the tradition of an informal pick-up game among friends on a patch of wild ice remained at the heart of the sport. Even hockey icons like Sidney Crosby have fond recollections of honing their skills on outdoor rinks.

“[For] small-town prairies … it’s a winter social activity,” Tanis Barrett, part of the original Skate the Lake organizing committee, says.

The weekend’s extreme cold warning meant some teams opted to shorten or forego games, but many still relished the chance to play among friends.

There’s no doubt outdoor ice rinks provide a sense of community and an opportunity for people of all ages and backgrounds to learn a new skill, though it’s not as ubiquitous as it used to be, her husband, Wes, notes. Fewer farms have resulted in smaller rural communities and fewer opportunities for a bit of impromptu shinny.

“For most of these kids, they’ve never had this opportunity to play outdoor hockey,” Wes Barrett says. “Giving kids these kinds of opportunities is maybe a little bit of a look back in time.” 

Bundled-up young hockey enthusiasts play in an under-seven match during the Skate the Lake pond hockey tournament.

It’s not just the decline in rural populations that threaten the future of pond hockey. While this year’s tournament, with nighttime temperatures well below -30 C, wasn’t threatened by what are known as “lost winter days,” climate change experts say unseasonably warm days are becoming more common. So too are more variable freeze-thaw cycles and less predictable snow cover — all of which could put an enduring image of Canadiana on thin ice. 

Multiple generations out together in a longstanding Canadian tradition

Described as a homecoming, a town reunion and a big party by attendees, Skate the Lake has been a Minnedosa fixture since 2007, when a group of families came together to plan a unique fundraiser for the town’s minor hockey teams.

The Barretts remember their friends Dan and Gaylene Johnson mentioning Plaster Rock, New Brunswick’s annual shinny fest — dubbed the World Pond Hockey Championship — and asking: “Well, we have a lake, why don’t we use it?” 

Skate the Lake has been a Minnedosa fixture since 2007.

They recruited volunteers from the minor hockey community, gathered around the Johnson’s dining room table and set to work planning what would eventually grow into an annual tradition for the town of 2,700.

“We were lucky enough to be involved from the beginning and it’s been great to see,” Tanis Barrett says in a phone interview the week before the event. 

“Getting to see my kids coming back as grown-ups is super satisfying.” 

Under the glaring sun and unending, winter-blue sky, Minnedosa Lake has a magic quality about it. Clusters of colourful ice-fishing shacks flank the makeshift hockey rinks; quaint cottages line the far shoreline.

Minnedosa Lake is not deep, and previous years have seen temperatures so warm that the rink turned to slushy puddles.

The lake is only about six metres deep, and at 94 hectares it’s “in that Goldilocks correct size,” Tanis Barrett says.

It’s human-made, created in the early 1910s as a reservoir for the small hydroelectric dam that would eventually make Minnedosa just the second Manitoba town to generate its own electricity.

After the dam was phased out of service in the 1930s, the lake grew into a destination for swimming, camping, boating and picnicking. It gained some international fame in 1999, playing host to the rowing, canoeing and kayaking events during the Pan American Games.

That legacy carries on in the canoe clubs, kayak clubs and dragon boat teams that use the lake through the summer months. Events like Skate the Lake give the town another way to appreciate the lake in the winter, too.

“It gives people a connection to the community and to the water,” Wes Barrett says. “It’s just a great way to celebrate the winter.”

Barrett says the last few years have come with more weather unpredictability. It’s gotten windier in the shallow topographic bowl where the lake sits; it’s gotten difficult to predict how much snow they’ll have to work with.

One year the tournament had to be postponed because a windstorm had sent the military-grade tent flying down the beach and mangled the metal poles. Another year was so warm the ice turned to slushy puddles, and the afternoon games had to be moved to the town’s indoor rink.

Wes and Tanis Barrett are among the original organizers of the annual Skate the Lake and Rock the Lake tournaments on Minnedosa Lake.

The tournament is contested on 10 snowbank-lined rinks, where four-player teams face off, without goalies, over 30-minute games, aiming to score on specially made nets just a few inches tall. There are separate round-robin draws for mens’, womens’ and youth teams. Everything is run by volunteers — mostly minor hockey families who commit a few hours of the weekend to work the bar, serve food, maintain the ice or keep score.

About six years ago, organizers added curling to the weekend festivities and the Rock the Lake championship has been just as hotly contested (mostly just for fun) ever since. As a bonus, organizers made room for what Barrett calls the “over-60 crowd” to compete in the rousing stick-curling “pondspiel.”

Rock the Lake, a curling tournament, is a newer addition to the annual event. The annual stick-curling “pondspiel” has brought another generation of players into the weekend’s festivities.

Arlene Almey and her husband Nelson — competing under the team name “Slide Show” — are second-time competitors, popping in from their home across the lake. Their daughter and son-in-law are playing this year, too. Arlene is 70, and despite the cold, she says, “it’s just as much fun” as the year before. 

“I love when we have a grandma and grandpa playing curling, a mom and a dad playing hockey and then their kids,” Barrett says. “Three generations — that doesn’t happen very often with a sport.”

Even the smallest kids are playing out in the bone-chilling cold

By mid-day, a misty fog has descended on the lake. There are only a few games underway; pucks crack against sticks, the ice groans as it shifts and the cheerful cacophony of kids at play drifts along the wind.

Anthony Mousseau is standing at the side of one rink, frosty balaclava pulled up to his eyelashes, cheering as his six-year-old son, Ares, sporting a Winnipeg Jets jersey, fires the puck.

Extreme cold temperatures don’t deter hardy young Manitobans.

“Half the team are gone because they’re cold,” Mousseau says, his voice muffled behind the balaclava.

But Ares and the rest of the half-dozen under-sevens still on the ice don’t seem too bothered by the weather — they’re just thrilled to be playing outside.

“It motivates them, they want to go out. It gets them off the electronic devices — rare to see that these days,” Mousseau laughs. 

A young hockey player is carried off the ice after an under-seven match. Parents say the tournament gives their children a chance to get outside and have fun with other community members.

In the tent, 10-year-old Nash Pomehichuk shrugs off the “pretty cold” conditions. This is the Minnedosa minor hockey player’s fourth Skate the Lake tournament, and the part he cares most about is spending the weekend playing among friends.

“You get to play against kids that you know,” he says, listing what makes the event special. 

Ten-year-old Nash Pomehichuk isn’t put off by the cold and looks forward to playing shinny with friends.

Nash’s mom, Julie Pomehichuk, helped organize this year’s tournament — and played on the championship winning women’s team, Mid Ice Crisis.

There’s something special about seeing “Canadian kids playing on the great big ODR [outdoor rink],” she says. “And our beautiful Lake Minnedosa is the perfect spot for it.”

A month ago, Skate the Lake organizers worried the event would be too warm, not too cold 

The outdoor rink tradition, so dear to Canada’s cultural identity, could be under threat, research warns, and the global hockey community — from pond hockey enthusiasts in Finland to the NHL — have been sounding the alarm.

In Minnedosa, despite this year’s event being “colder than we’ve seen for the last several years,” Tanis Barrett says, a month ago, organizers were more concerned about the heat than the cold.

A tractor “zamboni” cleans a sheet of ice between matches.

An unseasonably warm December meant the ice on the lake was too thin for town staff — typically in charge of initial ice clearing — to break out the heavy equipment needed to prepare the rinks. The ice was eventually prepared in stages and only completed after colder weather arrived a few weeks before the event.

It’s the mark of a trend seen across Canada and the rest of the global north: warmer, shorter winters are becoming more common and the outdoor skating season is shrinking as a result.

How is climate change affecting winter on the Prairies?

“We’ve lost, in every part of Canada, somewhere between 20 and 40 skateable winter days in your average season,” Orr, the sports ecologist, says. 

The most glaring example is Ottawa’s Rideau Canal, a popular skating spot for locals and tourists alike, which has lost about a week’s worth of skating days every decade since the 1970s. The longest-ever skating season on the canal was 91 days in 1971. In 2023, for the first time ever, it didn’t open to skaters at all.

In Manitoba, Winnipeg’s Nestawaya River Trail was only open for skating nine days last winter due to unseasonable warmer temperatures.

It takes at least three days of temperatures below -5 C for ponds, lakes and even backyard rinks to harden enough to safely support skating enthusiasts, Orr says. As Canada feels the effects of climate change — warming at double the global average — those sustained cold spells are fewer and farther between.

“The data that we have uniformly shows that access to natural ice is really steeply declining since the 1990s,” she adds.

Researchers at Wilfrid Laurier University have run a citizen science tool, called RinkWatch, to track conditions on North America’s outdoor rinks for the last decade. The team’s latest report found the winter of 2023-24 was “one of the most challenging and unusual” since the project began, with frequent freeze-thaw cycles and unusually warm early winter weather leading to shorter skating seasons and “especially treacherous” ice conditions across the country. 

Climate Central found more than one-third of northern countries, including Canada, lost, on average, at least a week’s worth of winter days (defined as days between December and February where temperatures fall below 0 C) each year in the last decade.

Coastal cities in British Columbia, as well as some parts of Ontario, lost upwards of two weeks of winter days in the same time.

While Manitoba’s typically frigid climate has experienced fewer losses than other regions (Winnipeg lost just one winter day per year), the trend across the global north is worrying for winter sports.

Orr explains hockey participation has been on a downward trend in recent years, in part because it’s an expensive sport made more costly by rising fees to access indoor ice.

“There’s not really an option to play outdoors anymore in the same way that there would have been in generations past, where, yes, there was an indoor rink, but if you were under the age of 10, you probably were playing outside,” she says. “The middle class is getting squeezed out of this sport.”

Orr spoke to Winnipeg-raised former NHL player Colin Wilson for her latest book about the impacts of a warming climate on sport. Wilson remembered honing his hockey skills on ponds and backyard rinks, she says. Now, he worries Canada could lose its competitive edge as a hockey nation as the next generation loses access to those extra hours on the ice. 

“Shinny, historically, is a bit of an equalizer in the sport of hockey,” Orr says. “It’s the accessible, low-cost, low-equipment version of the game.”

Skate the Lake brings together a rural community despite the weather

Back in Minnedosa, most attendees are taking shelter from the extreme winter weather inside the beach pavilion, a cozy, glass-walled room with a panoramic view over the ice below. The room is heated — courtesy of the event’s propane sponsor — and outfitted with a small bar and canteen. Hundreds of people stop by the pavilion throughout the weekend, squished shoulder to sweater-clad shoulder around rows of folding tables. Volunteers stand over steaming crock pots piled high with smokies, pulled pork, baked potatoes and handmade perogies.

Inside the beach pavilion, a cozy, glass-walled room, players, volunteers and spectators warm up and share smokies, pulled pork, baked potatoes and handmade perogies.

“As a family event, it’s pretty amazing,” Laura Lamb, the canteen co-ordinator says. It’s something that brings our community together, but it’s also proof to me that it is an amazing place to live.” 

In the midst of the action, Jared McNabb flits from the scorekeeping boards in one sunny corner of the room and a small speaker in another. He’s the tournament’s draw master, in charge of timekeeping, totting up scores and tracking each team’s progression through the championship.

Organizer Jared McNabb on the ice during the 2025 Skate the Lake tournament.

It’s his first year in this volunteer position, but far from his first time in a starring role at Skate the Lake.

McNabb says he can’t remember exactly what year he first played, but “chances are,” it was the inaugural tournament. He was part of a team called the Burgess Quality Dudes, which had, in his words, “a fair bit of success in this tournament.” 

Players with Dirty Mike and The Boys are photographed with the A-Side championship trophy.

From a quick count of the names engraved on the winner’s trophy, the Dudes, as they’re called, won the very first event — and then 10 of the next 15. The team has collected a closet’s worth of the custom jerseys the town designs each year for the championship winners.

“We kind of figured the game out,” McNabb laughs during a brief break between games. “You’ve got to be ready to pass the puck around and deal with some conditions that aren’t 100 per cent between ice and weather, but it’s about having fun and being with your buddies.” 

Now that he’s hung up his own skates for the weekend, McNabb is cheering on his two sons as they compete in the under-nine and under-seven games.

“They had a blast and they were happy to be skating on the lake,” he says.

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

The landscape is the stuff of legend.

Lush boreal woods, pristine lakes and roaring rivers blend into steaming, soggy muskeg and merge with the sparse, icy tundra of Manitoba’s Arctic coast. 

It’s described as an untouched wilderness — Travel Manitoba calls it “mostly still wild” — but flying toward the northern Manitoba industry town of Gillam, there’s a crack in the mirage: an unnatural, linear scar across the snaking rivers and undulating woods. 

More than 70 per cent of the province’s electric power travels on the Manitoba Hydro Bipole transmission lines, a high-voltage highway that links a series of northern dams to urban neighbourhoods across the south. 

From the ground, its presence is all the more imposing. While powerlines can feel at home in urban centres, where they’re strung along tree-sized posts next to busy roads or through back alleys, in the midst of the boreal forest, power infrastructure is more looming than familiar. 

Steel transmission towers stand some 40 metres — taller than two city buses stacked end to end — in a clearing as wide as 50 highway lanes. The towers dominate the skyline, connected by a dizzying web of power cables that dangle above the wild tangle of wetlands and woods. 

Hydroelectric generation — the source of more than 95 per cent of Manitoba’s power — is celebrated as low-emission and low-impact energy. While its emissions profile is comparatively low, in northern Manitoba, its impacts on the landscape and the people who live here are impossible to ignore.  

Manitoba Hydro power lines lead away from the Kettle Generating Station along the Nelson River just outside Gillam.

The Narwhal and Free Press visited the area around Gillam in September to attend the launch of a protected area proposal by the York Factory, Fox Lake, Tataskweyak, War Lake and Shamattawa First Nations. All five communities have felt the impacts of Manitoba Hydro’s developments on the land, the people and the rivers.

Daily trips to Fox Lake’s culture camp on the banks of the Nelson River offered an up-close look at the heart of Manitoba’s power supply.

Provincial Road 280, the half-gravel, half-paved highway that connects a string of northern towns, crosses the river on the Long Spruce Generating Station. 

A road runs across the Manitoba Hydro Long Spruce Generating Station on the Nelson River northeast of Gillam.

To one side, the placid forebay waters lap at the edge of the roadway. On the other, past the long concrete powerhouse and towering spillway gates, the ground drops away. Down a 26-metre slope, the river reappears in a row of churning whirlpools, byproducts of the largely hidden mechanics that turn the river’s flow into electricity.

Through a series of lakes, rapids and falls, the Nelson River, called Kischi Seepee in Cree, descends more than 200 metres on its nearly 650-kilometre path from Playgreen Lake, near Lake Winnipeg, to Hudson Bay. 

The Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek Fox Lake Cree Nation Culture Camp is situated in forest close to where the Limestone River flows into the Nelson River, just downstream from the Limestone Generating Station.

For generations, its waters served as a vital transportation link for northern Cree (or Inninew) communities, who paddled between home settlements, hunting and trapping grounds across the northern coast. Its abundance of fish served as a source of both sustenance and economic opportunity. Its clear, pea-green current served as a constant source of drinking water.

But Manitoba’s power planners had been eyeing the Nelson as a source of power since the early 20th century. The elevation changes — that once gave the river a reputation for challenging navigation — appealed to engineers who estimated the power of its roaring rapids could be worth more than $1 million per day if electricity cost just one cent per kilowatt-hour.

The Kettle Generating Station, seen here, took advantage of a 30-metre waterfall at Kettle Rapids, near Gillam, Man.

“The rivers are no longer the rivers that we once knew them as — they’re extension cords.” – Robert Spence, Tataskweyak Cree Nation

Many of Manitoba’s dams are considered “run of river,” meaning they rely on natural flow rates to generate power. The mechanism is fairly simple: water in the forebay (upstream of the dam) flows into the powerhouse through intake gates, which funnel the water down a steep drop into a row of scroll cases — spiral-shaped rooms — that each house a massive turbine. 

The Manitoba Hydro Kettle Generating Station spans the Nelson River.

The shape of the scroll case forces the water into a swirling movement that spins the turbine, which in turn spins a large electromagnet to generate a current. The water bubbles back out to the river and continues downstream, while the current is sent along a network of transmission lines. Fish — including the iconic lake sturgeon — are unable to swim upstream past the dams, meaning they can’t travel the length of the river.

Manitoba built its first hydroelectric dam on the Little Saskatchewan river near Brandon in 1900. By 1955, it had tapped all the available hydroelectric power on the Winnipeg River with six dams. Another was built at Grand Rapids on the more northerly Saskatchewan River in the late 1960s. 

But the Nelson was, as described in a 1990 Winnipeg Free Press article, “a modern El Dorado — the last great hydroelectric resource on the continent.” Hydro estimated its hydroelectric potential was about 14 times greater than that of the Winnipeg River.

There are no fish ladders — passageways for fish to pass by or through dams — in place at Manitoba Hydro Long Spruce Generating Station on the Nelson River, meaning fish cannot traverse the length of the river.

Not only could its naturally powerful flow generate enough electricity to meet rapidly growing demand in southern Manitoba, it was sure to provide enough surplus to make Manitoba Hydro a major player in the North American energy export market.

“ln a world belatedly becoming aware that fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas will one day be completely gone, the value of water power is appreciated more and more,” the utility wrote in a 1975 informational pamphlet.

“When the last ounce of mineral wealth is wrested from the ground, our water resources will be intact and worth more than ever.”

The Manitoba Hydro Limestone Generating Station on the Nelson River northeast of Gillam.

One dam — Kelsey — had already been built on the Nelson, just upstream of Split Lake, to power a nickel mining operation and burgeoning company town in Thompson. 

Any further development on the Nelson had been stalled by one major obstacle: it was too complicated and costly to transport power over hundreds of kilometres of rugged terrain to reach the population hubs in the south. 

Steel transmission towers stand some 40 metres — taller than two city buses stacked end to end — in a clearing as wide as 50 highway lanes.

In the 1960s, Manitoba Hydro, then a newly created Crown utility, developed new transmission technologies that would make it feasible to dam “the mighty Nelson.” 

Each dam brought permanent overland flooding that destroyed hunting, trapping and fishing grounds for the First Nations along the Nelson’s shores, and altered river ecosystems.

“That water that you see held back behind the Hydro dams, that’s not the liquid that we drink, that’s fuel for their generators,” Robert Spence, an environmental monitor and former councillor from Tataskweyak Cree Nation, says in an interview. 

“The rivers are no longer the rivers that we once knew them as — they’re extension cords.”

Manitoba Hydro lines reflect off the Kettle River, a branch of the Nelson River.

To control water levels on the Nelson River, especially in the fall and winter when natural flows are lowest and Manitoba’s power demand is at its peak, the utility built dams and diversion channels where the river flows out of Lake Winnipeg, turning the lake into a massive reservoir for its power stations. 

Along with the dams, Manitoba Hydro built two parallel powerlines capable of carrying high-voltage power. These Bipole lines transect approximately 900 kilometres of boreal forest and interlake wetlands from conversion stations near Gillam to another just north of Winnipeg. In all, Manitoba Hydro cleared an area about a quarter of the size of Winnipeg for the Bipole lines. 

Forest borders the Limestone River just upstream from where it flows into the Nelson River near Fox Lake Cree Nation. The natural flow of many northern rivers have been significantly altered by hydroelectric dams.

Hydro saw potential to generate more power — and more export revenues — by re-drawing the natural pathways the water had carved through the northern bedrock over many millennia. 

In the early 1970s, the Crown utility opted to exploit the hydroelectric potential of the Churchill River, which runs parallel to the Nelson, by holding back its flow in Southern Indian Lake and blasting a new channel from the lake into the Nelson river system. 

The impacts were monumental. 

Though it increased generating capacity on the Nelson by 40 per cent, raising the level of Southern Indian Lake created significant flooding, O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation was forced to relocate from their home along the lakeshore, and still navigates unpredictable water levels as a result of the diversion to this day.

A sign near the Kettle Generating Station reads “Askiko Powistic — the land and the people are one.”

Tataskweyak Cree Nation, on the shores of Split Lake, suffered the decimation of their water quality as silt and mercury levels increased. Tataskweyak has operated under a boil water advisory since 2017. 

The diversion destroyed commercial fisheries, decimated the once-abundant Churchill River sturgeon population, changed animal migration patterns and hamstrung local Cree economies and cultural practices. Sturgeon numbers — a critical food and economic resource — plummeted. Spence says there is just one sturgeon population left on the lower Churchill River. 

“They killed off whole populations. It affected all the fish, it affected how animals moved through the area,” he says. 

In the 1975 information booklet, Manitoba Hydro predicted the diversion would change fish and animal habitat and force some homes and businesses to relocate, but calculated “that the net resource gain far outweighs all other considerations.”

“Certainly the greatest impact upon residents of the affected areas will be the end of their isolation,” Manitoba Hydro posited. 

For its part, Manitoba Hydro says it is working toward addressing its legacy. “We acknowledge the impacts of our projects and operations, and have entered into a range of agreements with Indigenous communities and organizations to address those impacts,” Peter Chura, a spokesperson for Manitoba Hydro, said in an emailed statement. “We are continuing to work collaboratively to address adverse impacts and to strengthen and improve our relationship with Indigenous communities.”

Years after the Churchill diversion, the province and the Crown utility recognized the devastating impacts of the project on First Nations and signed an agreement to compensate communities for the damage. Actual implementation of the agreement was tied up in courts for several decades; First Nations would not see any compensation until the 1990s. The settlements would total more than $400 million by 2000. 

Development on the Nelson carried on. 

Manitoba Hydro struck an export deal with a U.S. power company in the 1980s, allowing for the development of the Limestone dam — Manitoba’s largest generating station.

The Limestone dam is Manitoba’s largest generating station.

In the years since, the utility has ramped up its export contracts to the United States, Ontario and Saskatchewan. The latest hydroelectric generating station in the province, Keeyask, was built on Stephen’s Lake in the Nelson River system between 2014 and 2022 to fuel further power exports. 

The Kettle, Long Spruce and Limestone generating stations (seen here) all dam the Nelson River between Gillam and Hudson’s Bay.

Power sales made up a quarter of Manitoba Hydro’s electricity revenue over the last 10 years, totalling nearly $6 billion.

But the looming electrification of heating and transportation is expected to increase local demand on the Manitoba Hydro grid, according to the utility’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan, and in turn prompt a drop in extraprovincial power sales. 

“Manitoba Hydro’s energy and capacity resources are limited. We already anticipate not renewing some of our current contracts for exports of electricity as that surplus energy will be increasingly required to meet your needs here in Manitoba,” then president and CEO Jay Grewal wrote in the introduction to the report.

Light from the setting sun illuminates hydro transmission towers stretching over the forest, bogs and rivers in northern Manitoba.

Regardless of the need for more power, there are no immediate plans to build another dam.

In the meantime, the string of dams along the Nelson River have already left their mark on the land, water, wildlife and the people who live along its banks. 

The sun sets behind Manitoba Hydro transmission towers in northern Manitoba.

“All those dams have had a major impact,” Spence says. “Not just environmental, but social impacts as well. We’re still reeling from the effects of those dams.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

Five First Nations in northern Manitoba’s Hudson Bay lowlands say an era of healing, hope and self-determination is on the horizon.

As the first brisk winds of fall arrived, members of York Factory, Shamattawa, War Lake, Tataskweyak and Fox Lake First Nations gathered at a cultural camp on the banks of the Nelson River northeast of Gillam, Man., for a landmark event.

After four years of patient work and community consultations, the five Cree — or Inninew — nations were ready to launch their proposal to establish an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) across their shared homelands.

Called Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek, which translates to “the land we want to protect,” the proposal would recognize the nations’ long-time stewardship of the region and offer an historic opportunity to formally manage and protect the land and waters under Indigenous laws and governance.

Devastated by Manitoba Hydro, five Cree nations are working together to conserve traditional lands

More than 50 Indigenous-led conservation projects like this one have popped up across Canada since the federal government introduced funding in 2018, in an effort to preserve biodiversity and nudge the country toward its goal of protecting 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030.

For the five Inninew nations, Kitaskeenan is about a lot more than meeting conservation targets. The nations were once a single community living along the coastline around York Factory, at the mouth of the Hayes River.  But they have been separated from each other — and their homeland — as industrial developments expanded across the north.

Most impactful: a series of hydroelectric developments on the Nelson River that came with what Fox Lake’s leader, Morris Beardy, called “devastating” consequences.

Manitoba Hydro dams along the river caused widespread flooding, erosion and mercury contamination. The Nelson was once a key transportation corridor for the nations, as well as a source of sustenance and clean drinking water. Today it’s too dangerous to travel on and too polluted to drink.

“We’re a resilient people. We’ve been through much,” Beardy says. “We just have to adapt.” 

Kitaskeenan offers an opportunity to do just that. While any formal protected area designation is still many years away, the nations are hopeful the project could help to mend the divisions of the past and redefine the region’s future by preserving the land, water, language and culture for generations to come.

Here’s what the project — and the land — means to those who hope to protect it, in their own words.

Jimmy Beardy, a York Factory First Nation Elder

All my life I’ve been fighting for the northeast section of Manitoba, to keep it away from any more destruction than what I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’ve seen these Hydro dams go up. I want to keep one section away from any kind of development for the future generation. I used to go out on Split Lake back in ‘65 and travel around with my father and my brother, and we used to be able to drink from the water. Today I wouldn’t even touch it, I buy bottled water. I don’t even trust the water treatment plant, that’s how bad the water’s got and it’s going to get worse.

When I was 18 or 19 years old, I was living in York Landing, working there. They asked me if I wanted to go up [to York Factory] with an older gentleman to train me as a guide. I fell in love with that land. I couldn’t believe how pure it was. The air was clean. The water I could drink right out where it ran off the creeks. And I always thought I would never ever let that get away from us.

I took young people [to York Factory] over the years and they didn’t want to come home. They fell in love with it. … It’s rough country, people think you can go up there and build things — you can’t. The seasons are different. Wintertime gets very cold. In the springtime when I used to take people up there, we were walking through four feet of snow sometimes, so we had to hunt along the shore to get our geese.

We have to protect our land. We were given that task, a responsibility, to protect Mother Earth. We’ve seen enough destruction in our lands. I’m tired of seeing it. I talked to people at home and we will not let any other development happen in our territory. I know there’s ideas of what they call economic development planned for that area, but I can’t see it completely destroyed — the last of our fertile land.

Nelson Henderson, a Manitoba Hydro journeyman from Wabowden

This is where I learned everything. When you’re out here, you’re not alone. Even though you are alone, if you’re not with anybody, you’re not alone. It’s going to sound weird but I sit in the bush, I make a fire, have a coffee and I can talk to people. I hear people talking to me. I don’t know if it’s spirits or just in my head but it’s so relaxing, tranquil. I can hear my brother laughing.

Look at these little ones. That’s what this is about.

Phyllis Sinclair, a musician based in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., with family from Kettle Rapids

It’s really important to come back and to honour what the [ancestors] did and to protect what they did because nothing came easy. We come back to ensure that this place is always honoured in their memory, out of respect for them and for what we have to leave our children.

In the non-Indigenous way you think of everything as a right. … In the Indigenous way of thinking, sure we have rights but more than that we have responsibility. When people come in to develop, they don’t have an intimate connection to the land. When they come driving out here, all they see are big vast areas of land, trees … it becomes a commodity. We don’t see things as commodities, we see things as our responsibilities. It’s important that our people who have this connection are the stewards of these places. That’s why self-governance is important. Somebody coming in will not have the same interest, the same connection to the land that we do.

Lillian Spence, Kitaskeenan community coordinator representing War Lake First Nation

I grew up on the land. We had plants, berries, animals that I knew where they came from, I knew it was their home too and we had to share. Keeyask was the first dam I really encountered. There were all these consultation talks and then all of the sudden it was right there. It was kind of a shock that they just put it up there, I felt that we were not consulted enough.

I don’t want the government or any other agencies to develop any more projects within our territory because it’s already affecting our wildlife. Our caribou used to walk right through our reserve, now they walk way over there, we don’t even see them. We’re lucky if we see even three moose in the hunting season, they don’t hang around where we are. Our fish? The mercury [and] the zebra mussels are there. We’d never heard of zebra mussels 20 years ago. The mice that live there, the insects, when they built Keeyask, where did they go? The bears, the foxes, the wolves — that was their land too, we shared. The trees are limp, they’re dead. The berries that once grew big are just tiny. Our medicinal plants, you can’t see them anymore because there’s not as many as there was before.

I’m glad this project is moving forward and maybe now we can get more lands protected before Manitoba Hydro or the government tries to take over. That would be my wish or my dream. We want to protect everything within our territory — that’s what I want to do.

Jimmy Lockhart, a Gilliam-based member of Fox Lake Cree Nation who works on environmental impact assessments

They tried pushing us out of here way back in the day — I wasn’t born yet but I heard a lot of stories passed down about how development tried to push us out. And we stayed. We all come from the one York Factory, we were all split apart by the government. They gave us pieces of land to fight amongst ourselves. It was this way to divide and conquer. I know we’re not going to be able to stop development … but I’d like for us to be part of the planning process and have a voice to be heard, not just pushed aside.

What matters so much is that we have land and areas, not just for our children but their children and the children after them. That it’s not all destroyed and getting developed.

Sophie Lockhart, councillor with Fox Lake Cree Nation

I was born at Whitefish Lake, I was registered at York Factory, but I went to live in Shamattawa. We moved from Shamattawa in 1959. When we first got here, we came by two little boats — my grandpa, my dad, my mum and my sister, Mary. We stopped over here, Mile 352, and that was the first time I saw the train. I was so scared, crying and everything when this train came by going to Churchill. That’s where we lived, in Churchill, and then we started going to residential school from there. I think I was eight years old [when] they put us on the train all the way to my first school [in] Brandon. I’m from Shamattawa. I’ll always be from Shamattawa, even though I transferred to Fox Lake. All the Elders you see there, they’re my relatives. 

I get along really good with everybody. I like to joke around, make friends and, you know, being in residential school and then over here living where the three dams are built, it was really devastating. Our land was destroyed. But you get used to it when you live around here. You go on your healing.

Morris Beardy, Okimaw (leader) of Fox Lake Cree Nation

We use the water for navigation, we used it for hundreds of years and now we can’t do that. We used to go from Gillam all the way to Shamattawa, to York Factory and all the way to Churchill. My mother was telling me how when she was a little girl, with my Uncle Robert, they used to start around here [Fox Lake]. [Her dad] would be hunting and fishing around here and go in his canoe with my mum and Uncle Robert all the way up the coast to Churchill on a boat to go work on the train over there in Churchill. After the summer was done, he would come back again. He did that for years. Those waters that we’re talking about are very crucial to our livelihoods. Those are our roads. 

Fox Lake has been impacted by flooding. We all know that. It’s devastating. We live with that every day. There’s very little water to use to launch our boats when we go to Conawapa. Five years ago I went to Conawapa and I walked three-quarters out on the river just in my running shoes … three-quarters of the way on the Nelson River, that’s how shallow the water was. We couldn’t go hunting or fishing or moose hunting … there was no water.

We’re being told that we can’t eat some of the fish out of the Nelson River … because of high mercury content. That’s very concerning. The fish are our livelihood. The animals … that’s what’s sustained us for thousands and thousands of years, and now look where we are. We’re having to fight to protect what we rely on.

We’ve been fighting 76 years to get our land back. Our footprints are all around here.

Matthew Naismith, a resident of Gillam, age 13

I just started [learning to fry fish] today. I learned that I had to cut out the blood vessels, I learned how to actually cook a fish and I learned that trout is really good.

Whenever there’s events I usually come [to Fox Lake’s culture camp]. Everybody is together, making friendships and bonding. [I like] sleeping in the tents, dancing and helping the Elders. It’s somewhere I can come and feel welcome, be nice to other people and they’re nice to me. It’s somewhere I can go and be myself.

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

The boat saws left, kicking out a tail of spray that sends a flock of 70-odd geese fluttering into the northern Manitoba sky. Ryan West watches from behind the wheel as they soar over the treetops and the maze of transmission towers that stand like steel scarecrows in the boreal woods. For a few moments, the flock keeps pace with the little aluminum fishing vessel, their reflections dancing on the glassy surface of the Nelson River. 

West is leading a group of visitors on a tour of the river, showing off its mesmerizing beauty and lamenting the damage it has sustained over many decades of industrial development. The Nelson is the lifeblood of this corner of the province — for generations it served as both a well-travelled highway and a key source of sustenance. Now, its slow decline has prompted members of five nearby First Nations to band together to protect what remains of the sprawling watershed.

As the geese fade into the distance, West turns and shouts over the din of the outboard motor:

“Well, I’d like to take you a lot further, but I guess we can’t — somebody’s put a big dam there.”

A little ways upstream, the path is cut off by the Long Spruce hydroelectric dam. It’s unassuming from here, dwarfed by the sheer breadth of the river. Still, West doesn’t venture much closer. It’s time to turn around. The former Manitoba Hydro millwright — who now leads land-based education programs for youth in his home community, Fox Lake Cree Nation — says the river didn’t always look this way. His grandparents would paddle its churning rapids and precarious falls all the way to the Hudson Bay coastline to hunt, fish and trap. The water was crystal clear then, and good to drink.

Nowadays the Nelson is a swollen, sluggish thing. West reckons if you could peer beneath its murky grey-green surface, you’d see the tops of trees drowned by repeated flooding from the dams. Erosion has eaten away at the banks, swallowing trees and spitting them back out as driftwood on the beaches.

“It hurts,” West says, his voice barely audible over the motor.

Like many of those who live in northeastern Manitoba, Ryan West has worked for Manitoba Hydro over the years and has seen its impacts on the Nelson River up close. Today he leads land-based education programs for youth to help encourage the next generation to develop a relationship with the land.

It’s not long before he steers toward shore. He couldn’t go further downstream if he wanted to. Manitoba’s largest dam — the Limestone — looms ahead, marked with “danger keep away” signs.

Past the Limestone dam, the river flows unencumbered into the Arctic Ocean. But between here and its source at Lake Winnipeg it’s been choked off at six points, its powerful flow squeezed through successive turbines to generate electricity for Manitoba Hydro and its customers in Ontario, Saskatchewan and the United States. Today, three dams here generate approximately 70 per cent of Manitoba’s electricity.

The Limestone dam, built between 1976 and 1992, is Manitoba’s largest hydroelectric generating station. Progress stalled on the dam in the early 1980s, but resumed after Manitoba Hydro signed a deal to sell power to the United States.

Back on the shore, Fox Lake Cree Nation’s Okimaw (leader) Morris Beardy looks toward the Limestone dam — a project he worked on as an electrician — and recounts the challenges since Manitoba Hydro began damming the Nelson in the 1950s: flooding, a loss of hunting and fishing lands, declining water quality, new animal migration patterns, new bugs and pests.

“We’re a resilient people. We’ve been through much,” he says.

Beardy knows there’s no going back; climate change is only bringing new challenges.

“We just have to adapt.”

Through the 1960s and ‘70s, Manitoba Hydro homed in on the Nelson river as an abundant power source for the growing province — and its customers. The hope was to harness its size, power and steep elevation changes (it drains a one million square kilometre watershed and drops some 217 metres from Playgreen Lake to Hudson Bay.)

Since 2020, Fox Lake and four neighbouring Cree nations — York Factory, Shamattawa, Tataskweyak and War Lake First Nations — have been working toward just that. Burgeoning funding and public support for Indigenous-led conservation has offered the nations an opportunity for recognition of sovereignty over their traditional lands and the chance to safeguard them for generations to come. Spearheaded by York Factory, the five nations are working on a proposal for an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) called Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek, which would recognize the nations’ longtime stewardship of the region and leverage federal funds to formally manage and protect their shared homelands under Indigenous laws and governance.

Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek, which translates as “the land we want to protect,” is one of more than 50 IPCA proposals that have sprung up across Canada since the federal government began funding these critical conservation efforts in 2018. Indigenous-led conservation has, in recent years, been recognized as key to preserving biodiversity and meeting international goals to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030.

Like other proposals, Kitaskeenan isn’t without its challenges: the waterways have been flooded, re-routed and polluted in the name of hydroelectric development, prospectors have surveyed for underground minerals and politicians have floated plans to use the northern lands to pipe crude oil, lay fibre internet cables or build new ports. All the while, the nations have been divided by displacement, flood settlements and the erosion of their rights to hunt, fish and trap on their own lands.

But the five Cree — or Inninew — nations are hoping Kitaskeenan will help to mend the divisions of the past and redefine the future prosperity of the northeast coast by preserving the land, water, language and culture for generations to come. The proposal, they say, is a chance to come together with one voice to decide what comes next for their traditional lands.

Members of the five nations arrived at Fox Lake’s culture camp by train, plane and truck to celebrate the launch of Kitaskeenan Kaweekanawaynichikatek. On the first morning, the crowd gathered in the main hall to listen to stories from elders — in English and Cree — and to hear speeches from leaders like Morris Beardy (bottom left).

In early September, the five communities have gathered northeast of Gillam to officially launch the proposal, joined by political representatives, Manitoba Hydro staff and First Nations leaders. On the first morning, the crowd settles around folding tables to listen to stories from elders and speeches from leaders.

“It fills my heart with pride and joy that we are coming together as five nations,” Beardy says to the 100 or so people gathered more than 750 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

“If you look around Fox Lake, we’re no stranger to development,” he continues.

The road here crosses the river on the Long Spruce dam and winds through the seemingly endless sea of trees that is the northern boreal forest, broken only by rows of transmission towers. Manitoba Hydro, Beardy says, “is all around us.”

He points to his two granddaughters and acknowledges the many children packed into the hall.

“This is what we’re trying to do: protect the area for them, so they can enjoy the land, the waters and everything that we offer.”

FISHING

As evening light starts to fade, Jimmy Lockhart sits at a picnic table, flipping through a vision book outlining the five nations’ hopes for Kitaskeenan. The book compiles learnings from the last four years of discussion among the nations about what their protected area might look like. It will take many more years to define the boundaries and decide on tourism opportunities, educational programs and the fate of industrial developments.

Lockhart traces a finger over aerial photos of the region, pointing out lakes and river bends he’s visited to hunt and fish.

He’s here as part of the gathering at Fox Lake’s culture camp, originally built as the community’s goose hunting and spring gathering camp. It’s nestled in the crook of the Nelson and Limestone rivers, less than two kilometres from the massive Limestone dam. A handful of buildings, a row of platform tents and a communal fire pit are shrouded on three sides by lush woods. Snarls of pine, spruce, alder and birch reach skyward; wild roses, low-bush blueberries, willows and fireweed blanket the terrain below.

There are already a handful of protected areas along the Hudson Bay coast, mostly in the form of provincial and national parks or wildlife management areas. Other parts of the region have been heavily impacted by mining, hydroelectric generation and other industrial developments.

These woods form the southern edge of the Hudson Bay lowlands, a unique ecological region that extends along the northern shores from Churchill, Man., through Ontario, to the edge of James Bay in Quebec. The low-lying silt is pockmarked by lakes, bogs and creeks, fed by major rivers like the Churchill, Hayes and Nelson. It’s the third largest wetland — and second largest peatland — in the world.

Lockhart has lived here all his life; he knows its waters like the back of his hand. His first job was with a commercial fishery at Kettle Rapids, near Gillam, hauling walleye, pickerel and trout.

“It was beautiful, the rapids, we’d fall asleep listening to them all night,” Lockhart recalls.

In time, the rapids would disappear, swallowed by the Kettle dam and repeated flooding. The fishery closed. Lockhart had planned to pass a licence on to one of his three children someday, but “there’s no commercial fishing out here now,” he says.

Jimmy Lockhart spent the week in charge of the fish. He manned the frying pans and the wood smoker, preparing trout, sturgeon and goldeye, and passed recipes on to some of the younger boys. His nephew, Matthew Naismith, eventually took over the frying pan.

Lockhart’s story is one echoed by elders, leaders and community members throughout the week in Fox Lake: Manitoba Hydro’s arrival on the Nelson River in the 1950s marked the beginning of many decades of devastation. As the waters changed, so too did each community’s economy and way of life.

“When I was a little girl … it was very clear water. You could take your pail there and get water from the lake. You could go fishing there down the lake and it was good,” Martha Spence, an elder and Anglican priest from Tataskweyak, shares on the first morning of the gathering.

The animals and fish in the region have changed since the dams arrived, says Martha Spence, an Anglican reverend and elder from Tataskweyak. There aren’t as many birds or caribou, the animals they trap — like rabbits — don’t taste the same. The fish aren’t as firm or meaty as they used to be.

Spence was a child when work started on the Kelsey dam — the first hydroelectric development on the Nelson, about 40 kilometres upstream of Tataskweyak — in the late 1950s.

“In the 1950s, the mentality of our country was so different — we didn’t matter,” Phyllis Sinclair, whose ancestors are from Kettle Rapids, chimes in.

“There was no consultation. All of the sudden you’re living in your community and you start seeing all these things happening and you really don’t have much of a voice because nobody’s listening to you.”

The Kelsey dam flooded more than 56 square kilometres of boreal forest, destroying hunting grounds. Hydroelectric development on the river only accelerated.

The Kettle dam came online in 1970, tripling the size of what is now called Stephens Lake (named after a Manitoba Hydro chairman) and flooding more than 200 square kilometres of land — including Cree harvesting and cultural sites. Construction quickly began on the next dam, Long Spruce, 16 kilometres downstream. Long Spruce flooded a further 13 square kilometers of Nelson River shoreline. The Limestone dam would soon follow.

At the time, Manitoba Hydro was looking to generate more electricity, both to meet growing demands and to sell power to other jurisdictions. According to a company document, it received permission from the provincial government to re-route “most of the flow” of the Churchill River, which carries five times more water than the Red River, into the Nelson via South Indian and Split Lakes.

The impacts on northern First Nations were, as Beardy says, “devastating.” Water levels at South Indian Lake, almost 200 kilometres northwest of Tatskweyak, rose an average of three metres. The members of O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation, who lived on its shores, were forcibly relocated. The commercial fishery that once thrived on the lake — in its time the third-largest in North America — was destroyed.

Hydro appropriated more than six square kilometres of Tataskweyak’s reserve land for water storage, and drained more than 415 kilometres of the Churchill river shoreline. The diversion dumped new silt and sediment into Split Lake, muddying the waters, altering fish habitat and increasing the mercury content.

The Kelsey dam flooded more than 56 square kilometres of boreal forest, destroying hunting grounds.

Hydroelectric development on the river only accelerated.

Map: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

The Kettle dam came online in 1970, tripling the size of what is now called Stephens Lake (named after a Manitoba Hydro chairman) and flooding more than 200 square kilometres of land — including Cree harvesting and cultural sites. Construction quickly began on the next dam, Long Spruce, 16 kilometres downstream. Long Spruce flooded a further 13 square kilometres of Nelson River shoreline. The Limestone dam would soon follow.

At the time, Manitoba Hydro was looking to generate more electricity, both to meet growing demands and to sell power to other jurisdictions. According to a company document, it received permission from the provincial government to re-route “most of the flow” of the Churchill River, which carries five times more water than the Red River, into the Nelson via South Indian and Split Lakes.

The impacts on northern First Nations were, as Beardy says, “devastating.”

Water levels at South Indian Lake, almost 200 kilometres northwest of Tatskweyak, rose an average of three metres. The members of O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation, who lived on its shores, were forcibly relocated. The commercial fishery that once thrived on the lake — in its time the third-largest in North America — was destroyed. O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation is still impacted by flooding today.

Hydro expropriated more than six square kilometres of Tataskweyak’s reserve land for water storage, and drained more than 415 kilometres of the Churchill river shoreline. The diversion dumped new silt and sediment into Split Lake, muddying the waters, altering fish habitat and increasing the mercury content.

The iconic sturgeon, which can weigh up to 140 kilograms and is critical to several northern fishing economies, began to dwindle. Many First Nations say the sturgeon is now endangered, though it has not been formally recognized as such.

“Our ancestors were always concerned about it … because that was their livelihood,” Spence says of the waterway. “Now it’s always muddy and there’s no peace.”

Sturgeon is rare delicacy these days. The Inninewuk manage the fish population by only harvesting when the sturgeon are plentiful and fully grown. Most fishers only take one sturgeon at a time, sharing it with elders first. Morris Beardy warns that anyone who isn’t used to sturgeon should only take a small portion — not only for conservation, but because the fish is so rich, it can upset the stomachs of the uninitiated.

Manitoba Hydro and the provincial government eventually recognized these projects for their devastating effects on what they call the northern flood bands — York Factory, Nelson House, Split Lake, Norway House and Cross Lake.

In the late 1970s, the government began negotiating compensation for the damage wrought by the Churchill river diversion. The eventual deal, called the northern flood agreement, made several land use promises, including four hectares of reserve land for each hectare flooded by the diversion. But the vague language in the agreement left room for debate on how it should be implemented. The communities spent nearly 20 years fighting for compensation and would not reach final settlements until the 1990s and 2000s. 

Formally establishing a protected area around their traditional hunting, fishing and gathering places, the nations say, would mean an opportunity to have power over future land use decisions. 

“We have had it with people coming into our land and telling us what to do,” Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee, who is from Cross Lake, says in a barnstorming speech on the first day of the gathering. 

“No one will dictate what we do on our territories and our lands. Our children are counting on us, our grandchildren are counting on us. We will not let them down. We will never give up fighting for our land.”

FAMILY

The week’s festivities have been charged with excitement. It’s been warm and sunny after several days of rain; the campground has been alight with shrieks and laughter of children, who spent the first day of the school year taking in lessons from elders and community leaders.

Flora Beardy is taking a moment’s quiet in the glow of a sacred fire lit in the heart of camp.

“It took us over four years to get to where we are today,” the York Factory elder says softly. “Now the hard work begins.”

Nelson Henderson (second from right) grew up hunting and fishing in the northern boreal woods. For him, a protected area is about giving the next generation of youth the opportunity to experience the peace, quiet — and hard work — of life on the land.

She was first introduced to Kitaskeenan at a community meeting in Thompson, about 250 kilometres west of Fox Lake, in 2019. Soon after, the nascent initiative’s organizing team was looking for members from the five nations to serve as liaisons between the project team and the wider community.

Flora Beardy had just retired from a career in York Factory’s band office, where she ran heritage programming, helped author an oral history of the nation and represented York Factory on land use committees. “So I said: ‘Ooh, right up my alley,’” she chuckles.

Kiarra Sayies, Aleigha Massan and Rayleigh Sayies were among many children who spent time at culture camp learning from teachers and elders.

Payge Beardy and Taylor Beardy of Fox Lake Cree Nation learn caribou tufting — a decorative art that evolved out of traditional moose and caribou hair decoration and European needlework.

Progress moved slowly by design, she says.

“The most important thing was to be able to trust … and respect each other again as five nations,” Beardy explains. “We were pulled apart so many times by the government with money and projects.”

In between COVID-19 interruptions and restrictions in those first years, co-ordinators hosted community meetings, sat down with elders, visited schools and held meetings with community leaders and regional resource management boards.

“When we first started I could tell there was doubt, but as time went on we started to build up knowledge,” Beardy says. “You don’t just do community visits once, you have to keep going back, make sure they understand the project and feel comfortable with it.”

For many members of the five nations, Kitaskeenan is as much about conserving the land as it is about restoring connections between the communities. Being united, many say, is crucial to seeing this area protected in the long term.

Last fall marked a significant moment as representatives from the Inninew nations came together at Troy Lake, in Tataskweyak, to adopt a vision statement.

“It was the first time ever to have the five nations come together in unity to talk about the land, how we felt about the land and how we wanted to protect the land together to make us stronger,” Lillian Spence, community co-ordinator for War Lake, says. 

Spence initially felt reluctant about the protected area project, she shares after a few spirited rounds of bingo on the last night of the gathering. The Keeyask dam, Manitoba’s latest hydroelectric development upstream of Gillam, had already begun construction; Limestone, Long Spruce and Kettle had already left their marks. 

“What else are we going to protect?” she remembers thinking at the time. 

“As the program progressed I learned more about how we have to protect our lands, we have to talk on behalf of the animals that live there, the plants that grow there, the berries that are there,” she says.

“I grew up with the land, my family’s always lived off the land,” Flora Beardy says. But in nearly 30 years she’s lived in York Landing — today the home of York Factory First Nation — she’s watched the land and river change. “Our children can’t swim in our river, they break out. And the fish, I wouldn’t eat it. They have to get fish from a ways out. There’s so much pollution.”

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“I grew up with the land, my family’s always lived off the land,” Flora Beardy says. But in nearly 30 years she’s lived in York Landing — today the home of York Factory First Nation — she’s watched the land and river change. “Our children can’t swim in our river, they break out. And the fish, I wouldn’t eat it. They have to get fish from a ways out. There’s so much pollution.”

The Cree of the Hudson Bay lowlands historically lived, hunted, trapped and fished “​​from the Moose River in northeastern Ontario to the Churchill River,” according to an oral history of York Factory that Beardy co-authored. It’s only in the last century they have been split into distinct nations.

“We’ve been here since before history began,” Robben Constant, a project support worker for Kitaskeenan, says. “Our families are from here. Everybody that you see around us, we’ve all been disconnected from our homeland at York Factory.”

Long before the disconnection, 17th century English traders established one of the first Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts at York Factory, near the mouths of the Hayes and Nelson Rivers.

“We helped them gather food, we helped them get furs, [we helped with] trapping. We helped them establish their initial economy,” Constant says.

The Inninewuk formed settlements near York Factory and hunted and trapped for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Successive interventions from the young federal and provincial governments — treaties, trapping restrictions and industrial developments — however, would drive wedges between the nations.

“We were all split up into these different groups because of jobs: some people worked on the railway to Churchill, some people were working at different dams, a lot of them started going to the cities too,” Constant says.

Robben Constant wants to see York Factory re-establish a presence in their original home — the Hudson Bay coast.

In 1957, the fur trade had become so dismal the Hudson’s Bay Company decided to shutter its long-standing trade post at York Factory and the town store that had been built along with it. For reasons still unclear, the government told the Inninewuk they would need to relocate some 250 kilometres inland to what’s now known as York Landing.

“My great-grandparents were Amelia and Joseph Saunders. What [the government] told them before they left York Factory is that there would be things provided for them in York Landing: a church, a school, housing. All these things were promised to them. So they left York Factory in 1957, they got to the location where the government put them and there was nothing there for them. They just had to start from scratch. They couldn’t go back for their stuff — they had their babies with them, other families depending on them,” Constant says.

“When she first came to York Landing [my great-grandmother] wept. She cried because nothing was familiar. The water was different, the land was different, the food was different. This is the injustice of being relocated from our homelands.”

Manitoba’s registered trapline system came into effect in 1940 in an effort to settle land use conflicts with southern trappers. The system hamstrung many Cree economies, restricting their abilities to trap and trade to earn a living. 

York Factory First Nation was not able to secure trapping rights because the lands had already been allocated to other First Nations. They attempted to return to York Factory to hunt and fish but the province had taken the land over as the Churchill and Kaskatamagan wildlife management areas. To this day, York Factory members still share a single registered trapline.

“We are a people without land and without resources,” former Chief Thomas Beardy wrote in a 1978 letter to Manitoba’s premier.

Kitaskeenan is the first initiative since the relocation to bring all five communities together in pursuit of the same goal: not only to have a powerful voice in what happens to the land, but to make those decisions together.

“For me, this project represents our reconnection back to that land and our reconnection back to each other,” Constant says. “Re-learning who your family is, who your people are, who you belong to.”

FUTURES

Under a brisk, overcast chill heralding the coming of a northern fall, Dylan Bignell leads a small group of the week’s guests through the brush on the outskirts of camp.

“This one here is fireweed,” he calls out, motioning to a stalk of wispy pink tendrils at the edge of the woods.

“When it blooms, it starts at the bottom … and works its way up. This is a good indicator of how much time you have left in the summer, how much time you have left to pick your medicine. By the time the fireweed is done growing, as you see here, the season is already beginning to change.”

He stoops to pull stems of yarrow, aster and clover. He pauses at a tangle of wild roses, explaining how the red-orange rose hips can be dried and ground into a powder chock-full of vitamin C.

Understanding the medicines that the land provides has offered Dylan Bignell a way to escape what he calls “destructive outlets” that are “far too available” to youth in the north. His non-profit, Tapwewin Health, uses on-the-land learning to make space to talk about grief and trauma, he says.

Bignell was born and raised in Thompson, though his family is from Cross Lake, near the mouth of the Nelson. He struggled with his mental health growing up, weighed down by intergenerational trauma, he says. In a season of isolation, Bignell turned to the land, remembering the stories he had been taught about traditional medicines.

“This is what changed my life,” he says, looking out over a clearing above the banks of the Nelson. “This was a positive, constructive avenue that was available to me, and it’s available to all of our people — not just First Nations people, but everybody.”

Bignell is passionate about passing these teachings on to the next generation. He started non-profit Tapwewin Health as a path toward mental and physical wellness centred on land-based education. Through Tapwewin, he runs a berry farm, keeps bees, makes jam and leads workshops and plant walks to help youth reconnect with the land. Protected area initiatives like Kitaskeenan, he says, are critical to making sure this healing path is available long into the future.

“With the mines around my town, you can’t pick any of the medicine,” he says, referring to the nickel and other base metal mines in the Thompson region. “We don’t want that to spread to the point that we can’t even live off our land, we can’t hunt, we can’t fish, we can’t forage — and that’s very possible. Our land is very vulnerable and it needs us to protect it.”

Unpredictable water levels, silt and high mercury contents have made the Nelson River a poor place to fish. But smaller rivers and remote lakes throughout the watershed — like the Limestone River — are chock-full of trout.

The relocation of York Factory, the destruction of the Nelson River and the loss of fisheries and traplines have left painful scars on the Inninew nations. The nations face housing shortages and insufficient infrastructure; several communities do not have access to an all-season road and fluctuating water levels can make the ice roads unpredictable and perilous for communities around Split Lake.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak has spoken out about the youth suicide crisis in several northern First Nations. Tataskweyak (Split Lake) and Shamattawa have been without access to clean drinking water for years. (Federal lawyers recently responded to a class action lawsuit launched by Shamattawa’s leadership by claiming the government has no legal obligation to ensure clean water on First Nations.)

But members of the five nations agree: time on the land is a balm for many ailments.

“The land is truly a healer and a lot of our people need healing,” Flora Beardy says. “We need to keep those land-based programs going because I know they work.”

Though it’s yet to be finalized, land-based education will be at the heart of Kitaskeenan. Robben Constant would like to see the handful of existing cabins at York Factory transformed into a multiplex where families can seek healing resources, hunt, trap, fish, learn about traditional medicines, the river systems and the history of the lands.

“The overall goal of the project in my mind is re-establishing a presence in York Factory,” he says. “We want to go back now. We want to reclaim what we lost.”

There are some, like Beardy, who want to see the whole of the nation’s traditional territory protected from any kind of industrial development, while others believe some development is inevitable.

“I know we’re not going to be able to stop development … but I’d like for us to be part of the planning process and have a voice to be heard, not just pushed aside,” Jimmy Lockhart says.

Companies and governments have pitched plans for pipelines, ports, mines and power infrastructure that would cross into the Inninewuk territories. Delivering official remarks on behalf of the province, Eric Redhead — a former Chief of Shamattawa, now MLA for Thompson — notes Manitoba is “working towards removing barriers to ensure that Indigenous people are recentered to a position of strength in the economy” and highlights the potential for eco-tourism.

Whatever comes next for the region, all five communities are united: it should — and will — be up to the Inninewuk to decide.

The symbol of the five arrows is incorporated in Kitaskeenan’s logo. The child holding the sixth arrow represents an invitation to other nations in the region who want to add their voices and solidarity to the project, leaders say.

Fox Lake’s leader, Beardy, points to the symbol that has guided Kitaskeenan through its development: a bundle of five arrows the communities have brought to their gatherings since the vision statement was signed last year.

“One arrow you can bend it, you can break it. If you put two arrows together it gets stronger. When you put all five arrows together, just like the five nations that are doing this, you can’t break it,” he says. “It is strong.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

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