The James Bay Road exists essentially as a service road for a bunch of hydroelectric infrastructure that's part of Quebec's James Bay Project. I've never gotten past planning a trip up, but I gather much of the traffic on these roads are transport trucks delivering supplies to these remote locations (beyond what can normally be shipped up there by Hydro Quebec's aviation fleet, which as I understand is mostly wet-leased from Air Inuit and can land on many of the unimproved strips near the major project sites).
Anyway, little outposts like these might've been maintained by either Hydro Quebec on an emergency basis for these transports, or by volunteer (sort-of) trail associations, or by the province itself, or a combination of the three.
Someone, somewhere, has almost certainly gone there and done that, with pictures, documentation, and enough mentions of other things that you can look up for more details.
On that note, here's a 2021 trip from someone that I read a few months ago: https://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/riding-the-most-r...
-------
But for a quick summary of what I got out of it/minor additional research:
- A few company (Hydro-Quebec) outposts of a few buildings each for workers out there at the hydro sites that are why the road exists and some rural airstrips for the same purpose. Presumably like any other isolated worksite in that sense.
- An outfitters near the mid-point with lodging, supplies, etc that seems to serve both the workers traveling the route and some tourism. Looks like some very good fishing out there and I see other notes on the internet of people trekking out that way to fish - both indigenous people and tourists. (Also quite pretty if you like the taiga + lakes environment).
- There appear to be some other travel groups that have some private camps in the region and fly people in for fishing via floatplane, too.
- Doesn't appear to be any other permanent settlement along the road.
Not to belittle the remoteness of this road, but I just find it interesting that the farthest north point you can travel on a road in eastern Canada is further south than most of Sweden (not to mention Norway or Iceland, which also have very extensive road networks). Another reminder of how important the Gulf Stream is for the climate of Europe...
Canada's divided almost exactly in half with the top half (48% of the land area) being the territories (Yukon, Northwest Territory, Nunavut; collectively "Northern Canada") and the bottom half being the provinces.
When people say "Eastern Canada", they're referring to the Eastern provinces (Ontario, Quebec, the maritimes), and have already excluded the entire Northern half of the country. The nothernmost point of Eastern Canada is barely further north than the southern tip of Finland.
However if you look at Northern Canada, there's stuff like Alert, NU with roads and an air strip which is the northernmost continuously inhabited place in the world. It sits more than 1200km further north than the northernmost tip of Scandinavia.
My favourite Canadian geography fact: Canada shares borders with three countries. Two of those are land borders.
Whitehorse’s average daily low in winter is close to -20°, with common drops to around -40°. When I was a kid up in that area, I remember walking to school at around -30 to -40°. We also played outside in those temps, which seems a bit mad now.
Here’s the fun part: Whitehorse has the warmest climate in the Yukon.
I get that there are other factors, like coastal vs inland environments, but regardless, any disruption to the Gulf Stream is bad news indeed for Europe.
There's always so much room for pedantry with statements like that. If eastern Canada includes Labrador (which it generally does), the town of Nain (which is further north) has roads that people drive cars on: https://maps.app.goo.gl/b1saMzzXKDQrHZQy6
Nain isn't connected to the rest of Canada's road network though, so it depends if one really means something like:
"this is as far north as I can take a long road trip in eastern Canada" or "this is as far north as I can be in a car, on a road, in eastern Canada, even if it is just a 1km ride from the airport on one side of town to the hotel on the other"
If you're referring to just Northern Quebec, then sure, the area is maybe a bit larger than Sweden, but if you're referring to northern canada, meaning all of its territories above the provinces, then that's a whole different thing. You could fit much off central and western Europe into that region with room to spare.
In fact barely equal to the diagonal length of the country. How much ever one talks about fertile plains, tropical weather being able to support more people, this no is still bonkers to me
A few hundred kilometres south of the area in the article, is a vast clay belt of about half a million square kilometres. It's fertile. You can grow potatoes and oats and the usual garden vegetables up there. Somewhat settled on the Quebec side, and there are farms, but less than 5% of the area suitable for agriculture, is currently used for agriculture. It's a region about the size of France, and there are no large cities, and the total population is about 100,000.
You can even see the Quebec/Ontario border from space in some spots, because the Ontario side is wholly undeveloped: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.7805302,-79.5591059,52996m/
[edit] one reason in the US for those sorts of divisions has to do with water rights. I think that probably applies to my other two examples as well. Buy I don't understand how that would be an issue in the northern parts of Canada.
I feel like you've just given the Canadian Government some ideas
There are a few campsites along the way, and there is fuel at around the halfway point, and a town at each end, so it's not quite as far from civilisation as the Trans-taiga, plus you don't have to drive back the same way to get out! It's also significantly warmer, so much so that you want serious sunscreen and bugspray.
My understanding is that Northern Quebec and Ontario are similar, lots of very small indigenous communities that still follow pre-colonial practices. They would get supplies by plane or by boat. It's not surprising a settlement with 50 people is hard to find on satellite.
The google map pins are pretty approximate.
And I'm aware it's about Canada, which is why I said "I wonder what the answer to this same question is for the USA". :)
(Assuming nothing kills you in nature)
Edit: Wait, no. You could be extremely unlucky and be walking parallel to the closest road, lol.
Nerd snipe 2. Same without a compass or any sense of direction. Assume you can accurately make a 90 degree turn and count steps
Weather is the only likely natural hazard outside polar bear country (and to a lesser extent grizzly country because grizzlies are less likely to see you as food). And if you are in polar bear country weather is extreme.
But as the saying goes “there is no bad weather just poor clothing choices.”
eg: Lost while bore running- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7065113/How-two-boy...
https://www.smh.com.au/national/horrific-desert-death-parent...
no settlements or towns aside from Hydro Quebec's settlements for workers (these are private and are not open to the public - they will kick you out)
I've recently watched a Youtube vlog made by some tourists who went there on motorbikes and they stopped just to have a look at one of the Hydro settlement, they were invited in, given coffee and when they mentioned they wanted to find a spot nearby to pitch a tent they were told they could sleep in a hut that was unused at the time. So I guess they are indeed very nice with passersby, I guess they just have a general "rule" because they don't want travellers to rely on them.
In addition to the natural difficulty of cycling this extremely remote road (both ways), he was dousing himself in so much bug repellent that his heart was constantly racing (he thought he was going to have a heart attack) and he was hallucinating (IIRC) a giant bear that was stalking him.
He has taken the blog down, so I can't link it - presumably because he has published a book - https://www.amazon.com/Cycling-Quebecs-Trans-Taiga-Road-Wild...
Curious to know if something bigger was in the plans, or perhaps the road also have/had other uses?
Additionally, the reservoirs formed are important for making the system provide reliable power to match demand - demand for power in Quebec peaks in the coldest parts of winter, and the natural peak of runoff/river flow....is not then.
So, the generation out there is useful but is not the primary reason why the road was built all the way out to there.
--------
No special insight on the difficulty/expense of constructing the transmission, but ~788MW of extremely cheap power forever for constructing/maintaining ~130mi of extra transmission doesn't seem completely improbable to work out financially, especially at the time.
I'll also note:
- Vegetation maintenance costs are probably low given how slow things grow out there.
- This was constructed long before the modern era of cheap(er) renewables.
- Even today, Quebec's location, weather, and time of year of peak demand make the calculation for solar's cost-effectiveness a lot harder.
The average consumption of residential and agricultural customers is relatively high, at 16,857 kWh per year in 2011,[119] because of the widespread use of electricity as the main source of space (77%) and water heating (90%).[124] Hydro-Québec estimates that heating accounts for more than one half of the electricity demand in the residential sector.[125]
I think my first encounter with a website like this was for the movie Donnie Darko, which I found after I first watched the movie and was trying to understand the story. The website is still up! [0]
If anyone has examples of similar websites, I would absolutely love to read them.