Chief Larry Knott has been waiting months for 15 new homes to be delivered to Red Sucker Lake First Nation, a small community about 700 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. But now he's worried the houses might not come at all.
The problem has been a bout of mild weather that swept across Manitoba in late December and early January, delaying construction of several winter roads in the area. "I am getting worried," Mr. Knott said from Red Sucker Lake, which has about 1,000 residents. "We have families waiting on these houses."
Winter roads are a lifeline for dozens of remote places like Red Sucker Lake. There aren't many permanent roads to these communities, and supplies are typically flown in during summer and spring. In winter, roads are built on top of the snow and across frozen lakes and rivers, allowing large trucks to bring in items that can't be transported by air, such as heavy equipment, construction materials and prefabricated houses.
Manitoba builds roughly 2,300 kilometers of winter roads every year, the largest publicly run network in the country. Those roads link about 23 communities and 30,000 people. Some of the roads are more than 100 kilometres long and most cross a multitude of streams, muskeg or other waterways that have to be frozen for the road to be passable. Usually construction is well underway by now and the entire network is operational by mid-February for about 50 days.
Only a handful of roads have opened so far this year because of the warm weather and construction on the southern portion of the network is at least two weeks behind schedule. "Cold weather is essential for constructing winter roads, and mild temperatures back in December and early January did slow progress," said government spokesman Jean-Marc Prevost.
A couple of communities have run out of key supplies such as fuel, and Manitoba Aboriginal Affairs Minister Eric Robinson has said he may call in the military to start making deliveries.
"We're getting low on fuel," said Roland Hamilton, chief of the Bloodvein First Nation, about 210 kilometres north of Winnipeg on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg.
Normally the road across part of the lake would be open by now, but it has been too mild for the ice to thicken. In the meantime, the community is buying gas from a nearby construction camp, but it can only make deliveries in small trucks capable of negotiating the makeshift roads that run along the lake. The cost of bringing in fuel that way is about 20 per cent higher than via the ice road, which can handle large tanker trucks, Mr. Hamilton said. Flying in goods like food and fuel can cost nearly twice as much.
Mr. Knott said construction has barely started on a 64-kilometre stretch of winter road that links Red Sucker Lake to another road leading to two communities. It usually takes a few weeks to build the road, but the muskeg hasn't frozen thick enough in many places, bringing construction to a standstill.
"It seems it's getting worse every year," Mr. Knott said. Two years ago, the community missed out on the delivery of a new house because the winter road wasn't open long enough.
Manitoba has been trying to compensate for the warming trend by building more winter roads across snow-covered land instead of over frozen water. The province has also launched a $1-billion project to build all-weather roads along the east side of Lake Winnipeg that would connect several remote communities.
But for now, all people like Mr. Knott can do is hope for colder weather. "Everything was so mild at Christmas," he said. "But it has been cold this week so hopefully the road will open soon."