(Notes on a cultus coclee trip to the North.) FORT SIMPSON — The last time I drove te Fert Simpson there was no road. In winter, there was a trail of packed snow crystals that wound through the low, stunted forest from Fort Providence on the Yellowknife Highway. You crossed the vast Mackenzie on the ice. When the snow melted, this road disappeared and Fort Simpson went back to its old status of a lonely little island, served only by bush planes and river ferries. A few years ago the govern- ments of B.C. and the Northwest Territories built an all-weather road, It starts near Fort Neilson on the Alaska Highway and joins the Territories’ Mackenzie Highway which runs from Enterprise, near Hay River, to Fort Simpson and is inching northward toward Wrigley, where there are even fewer people. Any new road in North America has to be interesting. It says so, right here in the notes. “ALWAYS TAKE A NEW ROAD, EVEN IF IT DOESN’T GO TO WHERE YOU WANT TO BE.”’ I did not particularly want to be here. Not as much as the 1,000 peopte who do live here, almost every employable person working for one level of government or another. As in many parts of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, the private economic sector is now part of the past, like such honored old-time citizens as Gus Kraus and Leo Norwegian. Founded at the end of the last century by the Hudson's Bay people, inhabited then as now mostly by people of the Dene Na- tion, in recent decades Fort Simp- son’s main role was to provide a name on what would otherwise be Paul St. Pierre PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES an even bigger unmarked area of the map of Canada. Also, once every 2,000 years, the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church conducts a mass here. But of the road, the new road that has replaced forever the Ice Roads of years past: Highway 77 B.C. (7 N.W.T.) leaves the Alaska Highway pave- ment 28 kilometres west of Fort Nelson. It is gravel road, wide with graceful, slow curves for the first 20 kilometres. Then begin the many five- and 10-kilometre straight stretches. It is a brown channel cut in the Canadian taiga. The trees, poplar and spruce, stand thick as the hair on a husky dog’s back on either side. The B.C. section is signed for 80 km/h and the N.W.T. section for 90. ft will turn out that on both northern and southern tips | shall average just about 80 in elapsed time, but anybody prepared to fight loose gravel on corners could average much higher. Whether they do I cannot say. In almost a thousand kilometres of gravel Fall is For Pianting! ALL TREES & SHRUBS TERRA COTTA STAINED CEDAR PLASTIC Friday, September 20, 1991 - North Shore News - 9 The real distance to Fort Simpson 44 At times the illusion is created that the car stands still while the trees on either side are a movie screen being drawn past by hidden motors. 99 road travel to and fro J encounter less than 20 trucks, two cars with canoes on top and one grader. Distances? There are five distances between Fort Nelson and Fort Simpson: the distance shown on maps, the distance shown on B.C. highway signs, the distance shown on Nor- thwest territorial highway signs, the distance shown on the car odometer, which came closest to the map distance and, finally, the teal distance. The variations are 15 te 20 kilometres. There is ample time for such futile calculations because driving requires no effort and the scenery causes no distractions. That's what happens with good reads, whether they are American six- laners through upper New York state or gravel roads in the Cana- dian north. The biggest danger is falling asleep. In the N.W.T. section a sign asks that you watch for stray buf- falo. It would be gocd to see any- thing. A squirrel or a grouse would help. They are there, of course, probably in vast numbers, but they kept off the road for two days... On the old ice road, stuck ina snowdrift and waiting for rescue by a following truck convoy, the world’s biggest lynx had walked stiff-legged to the car and tried to figure why it was there. | miss that lynx. By times the illusion is created that the car stands still while the trees on either side are a movie screen being drawn past by hidden motors. Fort Liard, five kilometres off the main road, is a pleasant hamiet and Blackstone Territorial Park campsite on the banks of the great Liard River is 2 delightful oasis which, this day, has only one of its 19 camp sites occupied. You hope to see the Mackenzie, one of the greatest rivers in the world, at the Mackenzie Highway junction, but it remains cunningly concealed. You do not glimpse water until 60 kilometres later when you cross the Liard at its junction with the Mackenzie on the good ferry Johnny Berens (home port, Edmonion, according to the life jacket). A causeway connects Fort Simpson to the mainland, it is no longer an island. tt has joined mainstream North America. Per- sonally, selfishly, I regret the passing of the ice road. TE 2 20% 50% ur POTS 30% o | re CONCRETE GARDEN ORNAMENTS 50% OFF KING ALFRED DAFFODILS 25 LARGE BULBS FOR as ' West Vancouver 2558 Haywood 922-2613 | END OF SUMMER CLEARANCE $1100°° » AIR CONDITIONING TO GO! 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