Jon Thompson
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Ricochet
Ginoogaming First Nation has been forced to close a failing bridge owned by a logging company, cutting off the community’s access to the neighbouring town of Longlac.
A new engineering report commissioned by the First Nation shows the private bridge built for industry to access timber around the reserve in the 1940s has decayed beyond the capacity to safely support vehicle traffic.
“We’re asserting ourselves in our jurisdiction and our sovereignty to the land,” Ginoogaming Chief Sheri Taylor told a virtual press conference on Wednesday afternoon, held at roughly the same time as her community members were closing the road leading to the Making Ground River Bridge.
“We will do what we need to do to make sure we have a safe bridge. We have put in some timelines ourselves to keep them notified, that we’re not just going to sit there and wait for them to give us an answer. I gave two to three weeks to come up with some kind of temporary solution. I can’t go any more than that. We’re cut off from emergency services and essential services.”
Ginoogaming’s Chief and Council declared a state of emergency on Nov. 1, calling on higher levels of government to install an interim 120-foot bridge over the existing structure until a new one can be built.
Taylor said planning is underway to clear space for a helicopter to land in case of health emergencies. In the meantime, members will have to drive nearly an hour out of their way on logging roads to access goods and services in the town right across the river.
“Our people use this bridge every day, whether it’s for medical appointments, school, education, doctor’s appointments, getting groceries, going to check their mail, going to the bank,” Taylor explained. “Those things that maybe other people take for granted, we don’t because we have a bridge that has deteriorated before our eyes.”
Ginoogaming is in Indigenous Services Canada Minister Patty Hajdu’s riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North. An ISC statement claims Canada and Ontario are in “active discussions” with Ginoogaming to establish a working group that would repair the bridge, but insists the bridge is not on reserve land. A statement from Emergency Management Ontario claims the federal government is managing this state of emergency.
Thunder Bay-Superior North NDP MPP Lise Vaugeois called for the working group to immediately install the temporary shell Ginoogaming requested in the state of emergency resolution. She also called for the government to purchase the bridge from the company and repair it in the medium term. In the long term, she sees the federal government returning the land to the First Nation.
“It would not be acceptable for any other community to be cut off and simply abandoned,” Vaugeois said in a written statement. “And it begs the question: how long will it be before there is a tragedy because people can’t get in or out of the community?”
Jurisdictional juggling
Taylor has been lobbying all levels of government to repair the bridge since 2019, when she was first elected to lead her community of over 200 people — located 300 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. She says no one is taking responsibility for the community’s safety.
The original 1947 agreement between the Ontario government and the Longlac Pulp & Paper sawmill required the company to construct and maintain the road entirely at its own expense.
Writing to Ontario’s division of Land and Recreational Areas in 1948, provincial district forester U.W. Fiskar cites “the south end [of the bridge] will be on land in Indian Reservation No. 77 [now known as Ginoogaming]. The Company has an agreement with the Department of Indian Affairs covering this.”
The province sold the water lot to Longlac Pulp & Paper as a package with the adjacent sawmill property in 1949.
After exactly 50 years of logging around Ginoogaming, the last forestry permit to maintain and use access roads on the reserve expired in 1999. Eagle Logging assumed ownership of the bridge in 2006 and no branch of its parent company, Buchanan Group, has renewed permits since.
Responsibility for the bridge’s decay was already political in 2002, when an engineering report from Burnside and Associates recommended it be replaced with a precast concrete box beam. That report erroneously states the “ownership and ultimate responsibility for the bridge and its land has passed to the First Nation from Kimberley Clark,” the last corporate iteration of Longlac Pulp & Paper who owned the shuttered sawmill on the same property. Notes from Harold Demetzer, the manager of Northern Infrastructure Initiatives at the time, recorded then-Minister of Indian Affairs, Bob Nault, committing to upgrading the bridge.
Fifteen years later, the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry commissioned a new engineering assessment. The KGS Group’s 2017 report found “very severe rot” of piles, lagging throughout abutments, original piles at the piers, and lagging throughout the wingwalls.
KGS’ conclusion was a recommendation to “replace [the] bridge superstructure within two years.”
According to a spokesperson for MNRF, Ontario passed that report to Eagle Logging, “after inadvertently inspecting a bridge that was not owned by the province.” The ministry did not, however, issue work orders to the company, claiming MNRF, “is not in a position to comment on the actions taken by Eagle Logging regarding a bridge that is privately owned and not under provincial jurisdiction.”
Ginoogaming’s lawyers filed a statement of claim against Eagle Logging, as well as the governments of Ontario and Canada, in March. The statement accuses the company of profiting from its failure to maintain the bridge, while knowingly undertaking, “ongoing trespassing, interference with Gingoogaming’s ability to govern reserve lands, and ensure health and safety of its membership.”
The claim alleges Ontario had “no lawful authority to expropriate, appropriate, alienate or otherwise acquire or dispose of” reserve lands to build the bridge in the first place, while it calls for Canada to recognize that the bridge and southbound logging road have always belonged to the First Nation.
