Hello I’m Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast fluffs up I call it doesn’t even snow like it used to snow so how use to snow well sometimes you get a real windy and hard pelting snow and I don’t see that anymore we get this fluffy little stuff here like this
Interesting Eh this morning we’re in Norman Wells in the satu region of the Northwest Territories the current producer Ben Jameson was just there speaking with folks about climate change and he joins me now Ben good morning good morning Matt what’s going on there with the walk out in the snow yeah so
That’s Ethel blond and Andrew so she’s this country’s first female indigenous Member of Parliament and now she’s working with the indigenous leadership initiative to protect land for future generations and we’re walking along the banks of the McKenzie river and you can hear it from Ethel there communities
Like this one are very much on the front lines of the climate crisis whether it’s fires droughts floods and more people are really feeling the pressure the bell’s been ringing but nobody’s paying attention last summer was very graphic how absolutely devastating it is when you see changes like the river it’s
Unreal and um when you see all those fires it was like the world was catching on fire so tell me a little bit about Norman Wells and where you were describe this place for me well it’s breathtaking the the river is such an important part of this place so really everyone wanted
To kind of take me down to show it off so on my first day I met with the the town’s mayor Frank Pope along the banks and of course I’m freezing cuz it’s minus 30 and he seems totally in his element but looking across to the other
Side you can honestly forget that this is a frozen River like it looks like this massive frozen field of snow but you know Frank does a better job actually of painting the picture that I can you can see the width of the river here it must be about a mile across to
The mainland to the other side as you see we’re facing the McKenzie mountains here about 25 miles away the Franklin range is behind us and we can sco up on top of there uh I’ve gone a day up here where I’ve seen moose caribou and muscs
All on the same trip because we were abundant with Wildlife around here it sounds like a magical place and you can hear the crunching of the snow too it sounds cold it was and it really does it is a magical place and so we’re we’re overlooking the river and the mountains
And you know I’m just imagining what it’s like to see a caribou in real life and then you turn down the river and you notice this other side of the place so you see from here the six artificial Islands bear Island go Island both with oil underneath them and pump jacks
Running all the time then they ship it across through these connections and then the central processing facility on the mainland here Imperial oil they process oil it goes through the pipeline to Z so Norman Wells is an oil town as well yeah with a long history back in
The’ 40s Norman Wells was the start of What’s called the canel trail it was a pipeline taking oil from um from Norman Wells to White Horse then onto the Pacific during the second world war and there’s been lots of industry and exploration since and as you heard
Imperial is still there sending oil down to Alberta what does that mean for the town well like all industry towns like there’s booms and bus and the town is at the mercy of that and now on top of that the community is dealing with another crisis outside of their control with
Climate change the road seems to be handling fairly well this year I know that the government set a date there for the 15th and they extended that date again and I’ve seen years where it’s been a lot worse than this I’ve seen years where it’s been better I mean
Where are you now Ben so you’re hearing Brandon Scott and he’s the town’s Fire Chief and he took me on a drive for What’s called the winter road around town and other than flying in this is the only way you can get in and out of the community during the winter what do
You drive in when that is the only way in and out on on a winter road well basically anything like a regular truck or a transport truck what have you we’re in uh kind of a small fire truck it almost looks like an ambulance and we’re
Weaving in and out trying to avoid these pretty big ruts in the road and of course as you heard it’s coming to the end of the season so the road is starting to show some signs of melting but so far so good uh this year I think we’re doing okay
The sun has been uh you know doing its thing but I don’t see any black patches in the road yet there’s no mud uh the vehicles are not coming back covered in uh you’ll know when the road is getting close to being done because every vehicle that you see will be covered in
Black there’ll be mud over everything so I think we’re we’re doing okay this year and people use these roads for everything they drive to other communities or down to Yellow knife and on top of that you’ve got these convoys of Transport trucks hauling everything from diesel fuel to groceries to even
Like whole prefab homes and and honestly the winter road is incredibly important what does it actually look like this road well I it honestly looks just like a road made of snow I was picturing you know going across a frozen lake or but we’re just you know we’re in the woods
Basically just on a road that that’s snow um and so I went out with Chris chivers actually who he works for hrn Contracting and um he builds these things uh we send out a couple of snowcats that uh that blade the the snow off and wind row it on each side and
They pull a couple of big tire drags which uh Drive some of the the frost into into the ground and then we uh we wait about a week or so and then we come out with a grater and we bring a lot of that uh pliable snow um back onto the
Road and and pack it down in some spots we uh we have to use water or we have to use water in lots of occasions if we don’t have enough snow at the the start of the year and uh we just keep working that back and forth till we get what you
See here something that’s uh you know winter Highway it sounds like a big job it really is and again it’s an incredibly vital one there’s about 10 weeks of the year that we you know we use to resupply in the wintertime it’s a it’s a Lifeline so a Lifeline in the
Winter what about the rest of the year well just as important as the road are the summer barges they’re huge and they carry everything here’s Norman wells’s mayor Frank Pope again anything and everything you can imagine in going into a store down south uh you’ve got Hardware you’ve got building materials
You’ve got buildings you got houses you got house building material you’ve got groceries you’ve got boats you got trucks you name it it’s on the barge it’s a Lifeline it’s a lifeblood because it calls such a large capacity the freight cost is cheaper once you start flying it or in smaller quantities like
The Winter Road price increases the barges are Lifeline I I’ve been dealing with with barges since the 60s when I first came North we always rely on the barge if you don’t get a barge you’re in trouble it’s interesting he also describes it as a Lifeline but that is
Starting to change yeah in a big way you can hear the stress in Frank’s voice there the barge is crucial for the town and Last Summer the unthinkable happened most of the barges didn’t actually come so there’s these two companies who barge Goods up from the southern part of the
Territory there’s a private company and the government and together there’s supposed to be about nine of these barges and last summer Norman Wells got three why three so pretty much it was like the The Perfect Storm of climate change issues first you had the wildfires further south in yellow knif
And hay river which complicated operations because of the evacuation orders and then on top of this the McKenzie river was actually incredibly low thanks to drug conditions so regardless of the fires the water was so low that the barges weren’t going to be able to make it up the river and so if
The barges are a Lifeline again for people in Norman Wells and the barges aren’t there what does that mean for people in town well on the most surface level everything gets more expensive with no barge you’ve got to fly pretty much everything in and that cost a lot
Of money and then once the Winter Road opened there were way more trucks coming and going to make up for what didn’t come on the barge so basically you’re in this position where you’re hoping the road holds up with all the extra traffic and of course remember you’re relying on
An infrastructure system that’s made of ice and snow so a few warm sunny days and you’re in big trouble that sounds super stressful yeah there’s like a real sense of not knowing with the future holds here there’s just so many things residents can’t control um so this is all kind of heated
Here as you can tell there’s boxes to the roof and this isn’t even all of it that has to still come in here cuz what we did is we’ve just had a Mad Dash of all our trucks we had six truck loads of goods coming last week which is cuz I
Plan I’m like all of a sudden you know what if we don’t get a barge I can not afford to fly this stuff in and the community can’t afford the goods at that point so we’ve got to trust in as much as we can so we made a Mad Dash so
You’re on the move again Ben where are you now so I’m standing with Josh Earls in the Back store room of rampart’s grocery store and this is one of the two places people can shop in town what does it look like well right now it actually looks pretty well stocked all the aisles
Are full there’s even some that are kind of overloaded in some cases and there are these stacks on stacks of more goods and these like Mazes of rooms out back but the reason it looks this way is because I’m catching Josh kind of at the
Tail end of an insane few weeks he was talking about this kind of mad dash what’s been going on yeah so he’s been working flat out honestly like while I was there it was hard to even catch him he was moving around so much and you can
Even hear it in his voice like he’s out of breath point because we’ve just been it’s like a Year’s worth of almost work is what happens and it all happens all at once yeah it was it was tough so even for Northern Communities planning to get
A full year of supplies in about 6 weeks is pretty uncommon but he’s doing it because he doesn’t really see another choice because as he said otherwise he would need to fly it in exactly and that puts prices through the roof so what there’s a 4 L 3.78 L um jug of orange
Juice which is $17.99 and that would go up to $34.99 just like that overnight because yeah we’d have to fly it in $34 for orange juice yeah and it’s not just food like almost everything here gets shipped in one way or the other things I’ve got
About 15 metal packages in front of you that’ll be metal roofing metal siding for the year uh we’ve got about 16 lifts of treated lumber going all the way back Matt that’s Jason Bas he owns boiler Controls Limited and what’s started as this plumbing company has morphed into
So much more him and his crew do it all from toilet repairs to building whole homes and like Josh she’s at the end of a hectic few weeks it sounds like you’re standing like in the Home Depot like in my local hardware store honestly like that’s exactly kind of what it looks
Like in reality what he’s been doing is getting everything he’ll need to cover him until basically next year’s Road opens because he doesn’t think he can rely on that barge anymore and I’m talking everything here like it’s not just building materials it’s screws it’s Nails it’s spray foam it’s toilets it’s
Dishwashers paints and tools like honestly you could just keep going every everything that you would need for a house exactly there’s no running to the store if you run out of something for a business like his flying Goods in isn’t really an option the flight costs are
Very expensive to reflect to a client like people can’t be spending $2500 on a tub that’s $599 on a Home Depot shelf because of shipping it really reflects on whether a project will go ahead or not and then people you know maybe live in a bathroom that has issues with it
Because they can’t afford to replace it until winter road so it puts the stress on us to cash flow that and cash strap the company to stock all the ccans and shops we have here in the yard the problem is I just Winter Road stocked and I’m already going into those
Materials so it’s already happening like toilets are cracking and splitting and bathtubs are leaking and I’m not one for casinos but I run a small business in the north I don’t see a difference I don’t see a difference in the gamble what do you mean comparing it to a
Casino well both Jason and Josh are out half a million dollars each from buying this amount of goods this far in advance and like they can’t predict the barge and even the road Seasons anymore so they’re taking on these huge risks up front I mean how would they this sounds
Like an obvious question but how would they know how much to order and what they actually have to order in the first place well that’s exactly it like that’s what they’re trying to work out and that is the gamble like what if they’ve ordered too much and now no one needs
That toilet or one of the jobs falls through or if they’ve ordered too little now they’ve got to front even more cash to fly that stuff in and like they know that jobs are going to come through and of course customers will be shopping at
The store but it’s still a huge risk for them and it’s really just like this trickle down effect of climate change that’s forcing them to honestly rethink how they run their businesses what does it forc them to think about the future in a place like Norman Wells when all of
Those risks are kind of presenting themselves yeah like that exact thing is on everyone’s mind and everyone has different takes like people like Frank the mayor or you know Jason like we just heard like they’ve been here for a long time and they’re not planning on going
Anywhere but I met the tag family melody and Peter and they both work for the town and they’re originally from the Philippines but have lived in Norman Wells for about 5 years now with their two kids I could imagine that Norman Wells would be a big change for them at
First yes but they’ve become very much a fixture of the community like everybody knows who they are they host these karaoke nights and their homemade spring rolls have become this local Legend did you have the spring rolls no I actually couldn’t have them because at the time
It was hard to get pork in town oh and that speaks I guess to what they’re up against in terms of trying to to actually have supplies well that’s exactly it like when you don’t know how much your groceries are going to cost or if you can get specific groceries and or
If like you the town’s going to have enough diesel fuel to even heat your home you start to feel the stress of living in a community that’s so remote I’m always thinking about my kids future do we going to survive here on their education do we going to survive your or
What they needs like Leisure and everything all those stuff we’re thinking about poor kids for us oh we don’t think about for us anymore we’re thinking about all for the kids and everything uh sad to say but that’s the reality here in Norman Wells I know we
Want to give the best stuff our future for the kids like we need to save for yeah not for us but most most of them we just prioritize for the kids so that’s why um at some point like we’re thinking if we’re like moving not really soon but
Most probably we’re planning for the sake of the kids this is something I heard a lot of from people around town people are thinking in terms of survival like that exact word surviving was something that kept coming up here’s Frank Pope again it’s a tough time right now and the cost
Of living here is is really hurting people the cost to just survive is bad but nobody after payday is got any free money pay their bills fill the groceries up there’s nothing left we are a well-paying community people earn good wages who do work here
But I think the cost of living went up I’d say between two and 300% in some Commodities and mainly groceries because of the the unreliability of delivery everything think’s getting flown in now everything is being flown in other than what’s on the WL that’s a tough mindset
To be in it is and we heard Ethel blonde and Andrew earlier and I asked her about people weighing their future in this place e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
E e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
In Canada’s North, the affordability crisis hits differently due to climate change. In Norman Wells, N.W.T., the community depends on an ice road and river barges in the summer to bring in food and construction — but a melting road and a low river are impacting shipping and raising prices of goods. The Current’s producer Benjamin Jamieson went to Norman Wells to learn more about how climate change is reshaping life in the North. Host Matt Galloway speaks about managing the effects of climate change with Charlotte Menacho, an elder in Tulita in the North, and N.W.T. Premier R.J. Simpson.
#Canada #ClimateChange #North
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