All-weather road to Fox Lake announced

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It will take three-years to complete, but the community of Fox Lake in northern Alberta will be connected to the rest of the province by an all-weather road. The announcement was made by Indian and Northern Affairs (INAC) Minister Robert Nault on May 9 during a visit to Edmonton.

The 60-kilometre road will be constructed on top of the winter road structure that currently serves the community. A short ferry ride across the Peace River will complete year-round access to Fox Lake.

The road will run over marsh and muskeg and connect Fox Lake, a community of about 2,000 people, to Garden River to the east and John D'or Prairie to the west. Currently, the only way out of Fox Lake in the summer is by air in small planes, or by a barge that carries one vehicle at a time.

After the road is complete, it will take about an hour to get to Garden River and 45 minutes to John D'or, where Highway 58 will give community members access to the larger centres of Fort Vermilion and High Level.

Aldophus Laboucan, a band council member with Little Red River Cree Nation at John D'or said the road will be good for the community in a lot of ways, particularly in the area of safety. He said that in the fall, air service to the community was often hampered by the fog and shut down for as long as a week at a time.

Laboucan also said the community is looking forward to the employment opportunities the project will provide.

"We have people in the community who've worked on road building before, such as operating graders and back hoes, etc. We have skilled people here who want to work," he said.

"Hopefully construction will begin as soon as possible, said Jim Starko, communications officer with INAC, "but there are certain things that need to be taken care of, such as getting final approvals, that kind of thing. There is a ferry that the Alberta government is currently not using, so they are going to bring it out of storage and it certainly is the intention that construction will begin this year."

Although the community has waited for more than two decades to see their dream of all-year access to the rest of the province become a reality, Starko believes that the major push to build the road came after Nault visited the community two years ago.

"Nault promised the chief that, somehow, they would get this road done, so it was a very proud day for him too to be able to come to Edmonton and have a news conference and actually announce that the vision would now become a reality," Starko said.

Fox Lake is located 556 kilometres, as the crow flies, north of Edmonton.