Jamella Hagen's partner's Rivian charging at Meziadin. The roof keeps snow from falling on the car and on the far wall is a mural painted by local Gitxsan artist Michelle Stoney.Jamella Hagen/The Globe and Mail
The First Nations community of Iskut is nestled below a mountain bowl with a glacier that glints in the sun on clear days. For travellers, it’s a natural stopping point on Highway 37, in the northern part of British Columbia, about 300 kilometres south of the Yukon border. The Kluachon Store in Iskut has a cozy café that serves meals to locals and travellers alike on this isolated stretch of highway.
My boyfriend and I were just passing through. But unlike most of the drivers who were fuelling up and grabbing a snack one day last summer, we were passing through in an electric vehicle. As we ate egg sandwiches, retired locals and construction workers asked where we were headed, which led to questions about the EV pickup we’d parked at the new charging station outside the café: How far can it go on a charge? Does it work in the winter? Can you drive an EV to Whitehorse from here (a distance of about 730 kilometres)?
A year before, we’d had the same questions. When we first drove the EV home to Whitehorse from Vancouver in August of 2023, it was a challenge. We drove through southern B.C. relatively quickly, but then we discovered the incredible slowness and scarcity of chargers in northern B.C. at that time.
When a wildfire closed Highway 37 through Iskut, we had to chart a course up the longer Alaska Highway, which also runs from northern British Columbia to the Yukon and then onward to Alaska. We charged in Prince George (3.5 hours at 50 kilowatts), McLeod Lake (about an hour to top up at 25 kilowatts in a dark, empty parking lot), Fort St. John (three hours at 50 kilowatts), and Fort Nelson (22 hours at seven kilowatts). After Fort Nelson, we had 505 kilometres of range and 513 kilometres to travel to the next 50-kilowatt charger, so we crawled through the range-eating inclines of the northern Rockies at 80 kilometres an hour and just made it to the Watson Lake charger (three hours at 50 kilowatts). The lowest output for Level 3 fast charging is around 50 kilowatts.
Now on our second trip with the EV in July of 2024, we found the journey completely transformed for EV drivers. There were fast chargers well spaced along the entire route, and no nail-biting “are we going to make it?” moments.
Even more chargers have been installed on these routes since our trip, and by this spring there will be a new EV driving corridor to and from the north – enough chargers to make the trip easy in summer and doable in winter with careful planning.
The neighbouring jurisdictions of British Columbia and Yukon are both in the top three for EV adoption (along with Quebec), but until now it was a logistical challenge to drive from one to the other. Even though about one in 10 new cars sold in Yukon is a zero-emissions vehicle, according to Transport Canada, EV owners were effectively stranded in their home territory.
Iskut band manager Maggie Dennis with the new 200-kilowatt fast charger in Iskut, B.C.Jamella Hagen/The Globe and Mail
A big part of the reason are the sheer distances involved. Prince George is often called B.C.’s northern capital, but if you were to draw a horizontal line across the middle of the province, the city of 76,000 would actually be south of that line. The distance from Price George to Whitehorse is more than 1,600 kilometres, a few hundred kilometres shy of driving from Toronto to Halifax.
Between Prince George and Whitehorse, there are few people and even fewer places to fuel. The two highways that span this stretch both wind through forests of gradually diminishing trees, past mountain ranges, lakes, rivers, waterfalls and wildlife. I once counted 33 black bears on Highway 37, while the Alaska Highway has a herd of bison that graze the shoulders most of the year. Caribou, moose, deer, foxes, porcupines and eagles are common. But for most of the drive, there are no settlements or even buildings beside the roads. Signs that direct drivers to the next fuel stop read in the hundreds of kilometres.
When we think about the EV transition, stretches like this, where there is often no cellphone reception, provide some of the biggest challenges to public charging. Yet, this area is becoming an early model for how to provide rural EV infrastructure.
Certainly, it has been a collective effort. First Nations, utilities, provincial, territorial and federal governments, and private businesses have all contributed.
The first two communities to bridge the northern charging gap were Iskut and Meziadin Junction on Highway 37. In both cases, the local First Nation saw an opportunity they felt was good for their communities and for drivers.
Previously, there was a 786-kilometre gap between EV chargers from New Hazelton to Watson Lake that stretched the entire length of Highway 37. When Meziadin Junction, 200 kilometres from the south end, and then Iskut, 284 kilometres farther north, installed chargers, the remaining gap was only 339 kilometres, well within the range of most newer long-range EVs in warm weather. Not only that, both communities installed 200-kilowatt chargers, some of the fastest in the north.
“I look at our Tahltan territory, and I think of our future and generations down the line,” said Iskut band manager Maggie Dennis. “I think we sit at a perfect area. That’s why I want to not just stop at these chargers; I want to build it so when you come in here and plug in, there’s stuff that you can do.”
Her vision includes building a walking trail for tourists that leads around the lake that “tells you a story about our people, our area, our language, animals and then it brings you back to the store and your car’s done [charging].”
In Meziadin Junction, Mark Starlund, general manager of Meziadin Junction Limited Partnership, A First Nation-led partnership, explained why Gitanyow First Nation also chose to install an EV charger. “We talked to the chiefs. This is owned and operated by the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs and the Gitanyow Band,” he said. “We wanted to be on that leading edge of promoting sustainability. As First Nations, we make a lot of those types of decisions. It’s about our laws and our understanding of how we should be respecting the world.”
Both the Iskut and Meziadin chargers were installed by these communities in partnership with LeadingAhead Energy, a Vancouver-based EV charging consulting company. President Maxime Charron said the business model they used was designed so the communities would own the chargers and set the rates. The idea is to gradually replace gas station revenues and create new opportunities. Alisha Welsch, who was a project manager for LeadingAhead Energy at the time, said it was important to each community to hire local contractors where possible and to include local art and design, such as the custom mural behind the Meziadin charging station painted by Gitxsan artist Michelle Stoney.
Meanwhile, just weeks after the Iskut and Meziadin chargers went live, B.C. Hydro brought teams to the north to finish building charging corridors across the province from east to west, and from north to south. Since I travelled the highways this summer, they have further bridged the charging gaps on Highway 37, adding chargers in Dease Lake and Good Hope Lake, with another one coming soon at Bell 2. On the Alaska Highway, B.C. Hydro has added chargers at Bear Lake, Chetwynd, Fort St. John, Wonowan, Prophet River, Fort Nelson, Toad River and Lower Post, with more coming soon at Tetsa River, Pink Mountain and Liard River Hot Springs. All of these sites have two to six chargers in case one isn’t working, and most are 90 to 100 kilowatts. B.C. Hydro’s goal was to complete this corridor by the end of 2024, with chargers every 150 kilometres or so to enable year-round EV travel, and they have now achieved it.
Places like Yukon and northern B.C. have shown that EVs work well in northern locations for short daily commutes. For road trips, EVs still require longer wait times to charge and obviously more planning, but certainly have advantages. They are cheaper to fuel, can lead to pleasant chats with locals in cafés over breakfast sandwiches, and are quiet enough to hear a caribou’s breath when you stop to let them cross the road.