North to James Bay by Thomas C. Jamrog (published Motorcycle Tour and Travel Jan '95) Imagine a massive expanse of Northern boreal forest the size of New England where four great rivers merge into one collective reservoir. Nine hundred miles north of Montreal lies the Grand River, flowing five hundred miles from the desolate interior of Northern Quebec to its final destination at James Bay, the southern tip of Hudson Bay. The Le Grande hydroelectric complex is one of the largest in the world, but the real draw for the motorcycle adventurer is exploring the easily accessible but uninhabited taiga that is a direct checkout line from life as you know it. You don't need a dual sport bike or knobby tires to get there because this tarred road is motorcycle friendly, empty, and just waiting for your fast passage. I spent a week last July experiencing the awesome desolation of James Bay. Four other Maine BMW riders accompanied me on our annual "End of the Road" tour. Steven Horton and David Rice were on one week leave from their electricial business on mid-1970's vintage machines. Alan Mackinnon left the leather shop behind in his blue R80RT's dust. We even brought along the doctor-Lloyd Roberts on his R60 sleeper with the 900 cc engine. I was on my bumble bee black and yellow R100GS. Each summer, we pull out the maps and target a terminal Northern American destination. We stuffed camping gear, polypropelene underwear, and heavy-duty rainsuits in waterproof canoe bags, and strapped supplementary gas cans wherever they would fit. We were extra cautious in bringing stove fuel, spare parts, and critical emergency medical supplies due to the remoteness of our journey. Remember your electric vest and winter riding apparel, as we encountered below freezing temperatures, with occasional early morning scraping sessions to remove the ice from our seats and windshields. All week long we easily found cheap or free campsites. Be sure to bring the insect repellant and a mesh headnet because when it isn't raining, there's the black clouds of blackflies and mosquitoes to contend with. Leather jackets and pants help. Our group's travel habits have coalesced after years of being together. We jump start out of bed at about 6:30, and hunch over the picnic table with some cold cereal or fruit, washed down with hot coffee or tea boiled up on our small gas stoves. We clocked 140 miles that morning before we pulled into a greasy spoon for the real breakfast. We had reached the small town of Val-d'Or on Route 117 north of Montreal. Back on the road, the macadam below my feet was ideal for making time, but the straight uninhabited road soon had me fighting highway hypnosis. I set my eyeballs to tracking the red afterglow of Lloyd Roberts' tailight. Years of habitually riding with my index and second fingers resting on the brake lever paid off when I instinctively squeezed as I saw his brake light brighten. The brown hunk of the forest that was moving into the road materialized into a huge moose that lumbered right into my path. I safely dodged left to miss him as he crashed back into the forest. The consrtuction of this road began in 1971 when an army of men and machines left Matagami and laid down one kilometer of road per day, reaching the first work site on the LeGrand River two years later. Truckers continue to haul hundreds of thousands of tons of food, fuel, and construction materials but we saw less than one transport vehicle per day. We soon rolled into Matagami on Rt. 109 due north. This small newly constructed mining town is the gateway to the James Bay Territory, which ranges from the 49th to the 55th parallel. We were headed for Quebec's hydroelectric energy center, the source of cheap renewable power that is now shopping for customers in New York and in New England. Matagami is your last chance for the next day and a half to provision food and fuel, so stock up at the supermarket there. Heading north out of town you soon reach the Hydro Quebec checkpoint. You must register your group before you are allowed to proceed. Stating your name, address, citizenship, purpose of visit, and proposed length of stay results in a sanctioned document that grants the blessing to go north. Shedule your party for the English-speaking tours of LG-2. They only happen twice a week, and are not to be missed. Ask for the Territory of James Bay map, too. Just as you pull out of the checkpoint you face a huge sign that warns of no facilities for the next 381 kilometers (231 miles). No facilities in the US usually means no hotels or restaurants, but up here it means there's nothing. That's where the supplementary gas cans come in. I patted the red plastic gallon jug bungeed to my luggage rack, confident that I had done well to think ahead. My R100 GS BMW is supposed to be able to cover 200 miles with its topped-off 5.6 gallon tank, so I was confident that with the extra gallon I dumped in part way up I would make it. While it is impossible to get lost on the one thick black line ahead, there is only one concession to civilization in the next 440 miles. Halfway to Radisson is a gas pump, truck repair garage, restaurant, and utilitarian complex of trailers that serve as sleeping cubicles. This Road Warrior- style village is smack dab at kilometer 381 - "Relais Routire" or "Stopping Place" for you English speaking folks. We ate at the restaurant, and while shocked to pay almost ten dollars for a breakfast, we didn't realize until we were walking out that you order anything you want and as much as you can eat for one price. I sputtered out of gas some five miles before reaching Stopping Place. Increasing speed decreases mileage, and the thrill of this beautiful motorcycle road with no driveways, houses, crossroads, or police had me cracking abit much throttle much too frequently. I was rescued by Alan Mackinnon who had the good sense to carry two and a half extra gallons that he had poured into his BMW's R80RT tank. He pulled off his fuel line and drained off enough fuel enough so that we all made it to Stopping Place. Camping all along the route is free, permissible and primitive " au savauge" complete with 22 sites that are clearly identified. The sites are found on kilometer mileage markers on your map that match well- placed roadside signs along the way. But don't expect bucolic streamside tentsites. Be satisfied with those pads of rough gravel on the side of the road. Some are down a short side road and most come with a picnic table and sometimes an outhouse. No caretakers, no fees, no nothing. The further north you go the more bleak and lonesome the landscape becomes. Small stunted black pines, none more than fifteen feet in height frame innumerable small dark lakes and ponds. There is little vegetation due to poor glacial soils, inadequate sunlight, and meager rainfall during most of the year. Early the next morning the air smelled clear and cold. I put my rainsuit on over all of the clothes that I had and plugged in my electric vest for the 150 mile ride to Radisson. If you live there, you are probably a Hydro Quebec employee. The town looks like a prefabricated college town, with most buildings in shades of brown that make it difficult to tell the bank apart from a residence. We ended up eating our breakfast and lunch in the only restaurant in town. After kicking tires and sprouting rally lies, Steve Horton became alarmed at the sucking sounds emanating from the engine of his vintage machine. He soon found that the choke housing had detached itself from the main assembly of his right carburetor. All four retaining bolts had completely unscrewed themselves, with three lost to the Lord of the White Line with one bolt left jammed against the carb tensioning spring. Steve walked into the all purpose trade store and made a connection with a machinist who carted him off in his pickup truck. The chance of finding the correct thread pitch/length bolt was pretty slim in Radisson town, but one half hour later, a smiling Steve bolted the choke assembly together and off we went. Forty miles west of Radisson on the confluence of the Le Grande River and James Bay is the Cree settlement of Chisasipi. The village was created fifteen years ago to house the native inhabitants because their ancestral home at St. George Island was due to be submerged by the increased outflow generated by the LG-2 reservoir. We were stopped at a checkpoint before we reached the village. We were not carrying alcoholic beverages. Alcohol had decimated these people, and the native government has outlawed alcohol on this reservation. Inside the reservation we spoke with two young Cree who manned the gas pump at the vehicle repair station. Our motorcycles cut through the cultural barriers. The Cree wanted to know all about our trip and details about the motorcyles- Size, speed, parts availability. They all have snowmobiles, but motorcycles are less frequently used. Traditional activities continue to occupy a large part of these peoples' lives, which still follow the annual cycle of hunting, fishing and trapping. The men we talked with spoke articulate English, and were resentful of their outsider status in Quebec culture, and their inability to obtain work at the burgeoning hydro projects. In 1975 the Quebec government paid 225 million dollars in compensation to the Cree and the Inuit of the far north. The land was divided into three regions, with full year-round hunting and fishing rights in Category 3 lands, nomadic construction rights are added in Category 2 and outright ownership in Category I. The Quebec government proceeded to invest the first $1.4 billion to generate 10,000 kilowatts of power from several La Grande hydroelectric powerhouses. The investment now stands at over 21 billion Canadian dollars. We were surprised that the Cree were unable to speak French, which they attributed to the government school's policy to educate them in English. Quebec's French culture virtually guaranteed the Cree outsider status in Quebec's growing economy. The gas attendants questioned the need for more development. They said that the rivers and hunting grounds are sacred to them. They were also concerned about the high levels of mercury that are showing up in the bodies of Cree who eat the fish caught in the waters of the newly created reservoirs. The mercury is the unexpected by-product of the decomposing vegetation on the bottom of the reservoirs. The tours of La Grande 2 and 2A sites took all day. This project is documented by the numerous pamphlets, posters, and booklets which are freely distributed by Hydro Quebec and which should be studied beforehand in order to be truly prepared for getting the most from your trip. Many motorcyclists are fascinated by technology, but this project is a technophile's nirvana. LG-2 is the most powerful of the hydroelectric powerstations with a capacity of 5,328,000 Kilowatts. It is also the largest underground hydroelectric powerhouse in the world. It produces 36 billion kilowatts per year, equivalent to the annual power consumption of a modern city with a population of over four million people. Above ground the huge spillway from the reservoir dominates the sparse landscape, with 8 rollergates (some heated for winter operation) 40 feet wide and sixty feet high. If needed, these gates can be opened to dump a volume of water twice the flow of the St. Lawrence River at Montreal. There is no OSHA in Radisson. We were amazed at our freedom of access to construction. On our tour we were able to walk right into one of the chambers housing one of the 8 LG-2 rotors. Our tourguide told us that we needed to hold on to our hardhats, because the turbulence in the chamber was so great that our headgear could be ripped off of our heads and sucked into the centrifugal force of the rotor. The experience of standing within arm's length of whirling 612 ton rotor the size of a house cranking out 300,000 horsepower is like being in a room with 4000 big Harley twins. The were no preventive safety housings between me and that rotor, and I could of touched the whirling behemoth at any moment. That week I saw only one monument to submerged Cree history. High on a bleak and windy bluff overlooking the inland ocean of the LG-2 reservoir is a bronze plaque affixed to a man-sized red igneous rock. Its shape reminded me of a teardrop. In English, French, and in their recently created Cree pictography read the following. "This monument is erected in the memory of our Cree ancestors, who having lived off this land for thousands of years, now rest under the waters of the reservoirs of the LeGrande Complex." On our return, I paired up with Alan, and we took advantage of the hundreds of miles of completely desolated highways before us. This is probably one of the last few places in North America where you can hit a well maintained asphalt road and accelerate to 100 miles per hour, leaning into the sweeping open turns as far as you dare, and cracking the throttle open, over and over. We made the 138 miles back to our evening campsite in under two hours averaging 69 miles per hour. If you have not read about James Bay youprobably will. The increasingly political battles make for good press. But go see for yourself. This trip is accessible on wonderful roads, albeit in an stark unfamiliar landscape. When I first returned from James Bay I did not think I would go back. It was too stark, even for me. But I've recently changed my mind and may even try to travel past Radisson to explore the dams and the wilderness upriver. Maybe I'll see you up there in '95. Look for the big guy on a bumble bee BMW with a license plate that says Vacationland.