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Shores of James Bay
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The open road
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Lonely blue lake
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Camping by the lake
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Opinaca Falls below the bridge
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Steps of the overflow
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James Bay Harbour
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Story & photos by James Stoness
In 1610, Henry Hudson sailed into Hudson Bay seeking the North West Passage. Winter was approaching rapidly and he sailed south into what he hoped would be warmer weather for the winter. He ended up being frozen in the ice, in what would be called, James Bay. This discovery would be his last. The next spring his crew mutinied and set him adrift to be lost forever.
Hudson Bay and James Bay make a vast slash into Canada, yet are far enough north that southern travellers seldom get the opportunity to see them. Since the fur trade and James Bay were so important to Canada’s development I wanted to see the waters of James Bay.
For visitors to Ottawa, James Bay is about 1300 kilometres to the north. This may be the closest chance to get there by road, an option that was not available until the 1970’s.
Leaving Ottawa you head northwest on Que-5 bordering Gatineau Park. This is a very popular park and its hilly terrain and abundant lakes and rivers make it very scenic. Its 165 kilometres of hiking trails offer a mix of pleasant short walks, and challenging hill hikes. Many routes are used for cross country skiing in the winter. Some sections are used for mountain biking. The rivers and lakes are attractive for boating and canoeing with rustic campgrounds along the way.
The route heads north on Que-105, leaving the four-lane behind, winding through forest and fields and small villages until it meets Que-17 and passes into La Verendrye Reserve Park. Hills run to 5% grades and there seem to be lots of overloaded logging trucks which may be responsible for the sections of rough pavement. La Verendrye Park has over 4,000 lakes, a myriad of rivers and streams, making it a back country canoeist’s paradise. The 1,000 campsites attract people from all over.
We camped at the beautiful Lac Vielle Campground with great lake views from sites along the edge of the water. Strike up a blazing fire and watch the little sparks float into the sky while you listen to the lapping water at the shore.
Proceed north until you come to the more open terrain and the town of Val-d’Or. This is the first town we’ve seen for many miles. Gold is where you find it! And this was one spot where it was found. A preserved mine has tours at the Cite de l’Or where you can camp and visit the Winch Room and the Analysis Laboratory. In the lab you follow the process of sampling gold ore for its content. It started with crushing of the ore and at the end had a small bead of gold in the crucible after it left the furnace. If you wish you can ride a cart down an inclined tunnel to the 91 metre level. For this, you are dressed in authentic miner’s gear including a hat with a light. It can be claustrophobic down there!
Nearby Malarctic has a very good mineral museum showing local mineral samples as well as those from around the world.
The next town is Matagami on Que-109 and you fill your grocery bin here, and your fuel tank. When you enter the James Bay Highway you are driving on a road that did not exist until Quebec Hydro started damming rivers to the north and needed a road. You won’t need to worry about stop signs and traffic signal lights until you reach the town of Radisson about 620 kilometres ahead.
Matagami Lake campground has full service sites so there is a place to dump and fill before you head into the wilderness. You might want to camp at Ouescapis Lake which looks like it’s on an endless narrow road vanishing into the distance. We drove the car in first and found it tight but okay. It only had a couple of flat sites looking toward the lake, but the view was good. Other than the wild sound of a loon, we were all alone. What a great feeling, us and the stars, and no one about for miles.
Crossing the Rupert River Bridge you notice the dry rapids. The water has been turned into the La Grande system to run power plants to the north. In some places the pavement is rough and we took an early stop at Mirabelli Lake campground (Km-324). Fires had ravaged the area, but the campground was in a zone that the fires missed. As you continue north, the highway becomes a stripe of pavement bounded by the forest of black spruce and aspen with a few peeks at distant lakes. More dry rivers are crossed and at Km-381we find a fuel stop. It’s 200 km to the next one. This was in late summer and the numbers and varieties of flowers was very surprising.
Miron Lake campground, Km-503, had very small campsites so we used a wide spot in the road. At Km-544 you pass the entrance to a gravel road, the Trans Taiga Road, which takes the traveller 670 Km almost to Labrador in the east. For serious explorers only!
The Town of Radisson is reached at Km-617. This was named for one of Canada’s early explorers, Pierre Radisson, a French fur trapper and explorer of the mid 1600’s. Here we visited a huge generating station capable of producing 7722 Megawatts of power. For tours you need to book in advance. Just seeing the massive series of stone steps carved out of the granite of the Canadian Shield was worth the tour.
To reach James Bay you need to go west from Radisson, past the Cree Town of Chisasibi. Soon you reach a long beach where dozens of boats with huge outboard motors are pulled up onto the shore, well away from the water.
We walked to the water and dipped in our hands. Brrr… it’s sure not somewhere I’d swim. It was hard to believe that this was ‘James Bay’. To me it had always been something a long way north that I’d seen on a map, not somewhere that I would ever visit. The friendly people we met there, the mystery of the northern forests, and the flowers, made it a truly memorable trip.
For extra research:
For Radisson
For La Verendrye Park