This First Nation has a new highway and a water-treatment plant that's 'like our Stanley Cup'

This piece is part of CBC Thunder Bay's special National Indigenous Peoples Day coverageMino Bimaadiziwin The Good Life.

You can find all of our coverage here.

People inShoal Lake #40 First Nation areproud of what they've accomplished in recent years.

The community in northwestern Ontario, near the Manitoba-Ontario border,built Freedom Road,connectingtheir once-isolated community to the Trans-Canada Highway,and completed awater-treatment plant that's helped them emerge froma 24-year boil-water advisory.

This spring, the community was honouredby the Ontario Public Works AssociationwiththePublic Works Project of the Year for Small Municipalities and First Nations awardfor their new water-treatment plant.

"This is like our Stanley Cup. It's taken 20 years of council saying the same thing every year," said Bill Wahpay, a band council member for Shoal Lake #40.

"It's not an individual award," he said. "It's a community-held award. I was just the guy who was on council at the time to receive it. It really took our whole community, lobbying the government, lobbying regular Canadian citizens, telling them that we need a water-treatment plant."

Shoal Lake #40has some 667 registered members, including about 300 who live on reserve.

WATCH | The 24-year fight for clean water in Shoal Lake:

Shoal Lake 40 First Nations transformational fight for clean water

2 years ago

Duration 7:59

Shoal Lake 40 First Nation ended a 24-year boil-water advisory last year, and won an impressive award for their work. But clean drinking water is only one of many new benefits in the community. Jasmine Kabatay visited Shoal Lake and saw how the construction of Freedom Road, completed in 2019, has led to the new water treatment plant, a new school and more jobs.

Getting a water-treatment plant wasa long-held goal for the community, but getting the road to accessibility was just as vital and important, he said.

"We wouldn't have had that opportunity if it wasn't for Freedom Road, the direction we received from community members. The leadership at the time took it very seriously to get off this man-made island," said Chief Kevin Redsky.

"Now that we have the water-treatment plant, we have the new school, we have Freedom Road, we're open for business. We need to move forward."

The community used to use a ferry, or barge, to bring community members across the lake to the mainland, which would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to maintain, along with using bottled water for their needs.

Now that the ferry is no longer needed and those bottled water costs are reduced, that money can go to other development projects in the community.

"We are now building houses for our members. And this is great for us. We haven't done it for years," said Wahpay. "One of the benefits is we try to keep local employment or keep labour local and keep our guys working."

Changing lives for the better

Throughout the project, 53 per cent of the workforce came from theFirst Nation,including19-year-old Cedar CopenaceRedsky, who is now one of the water-treatment plant operators.

CopenaceRedsky had lived under the boil-water advisory as a child until he movedto Kenora. Now,he's responsible for the upkeep of the plant for the community and ensuring the water continues to be safe.

"It's a pretty big deal for our youth, especially in our community. They don't have to experience the troubles the older guys had to,such as having no road and especially no drinking water," said CopenaceRedsky.

"It's a pretty big responsibility;I guess it's a pretty big confidence boost for me as well."

CopenaceRedsky said that over the past year, he's noticed community members are more "positive."

It's certainly the case for ConnieWhite, a community member and band council member. White's children have eczema, and when living under the boil-water advisory, she would travel to Kenora to rent hotel rooms or go to her in-laws' home in the town to bathe them.

If she did bathe them in Shoal Lake, it was a lengthy process.

"We would obviously boil water first and then we'd have to wait for it to cool down in order to bathe them so bathing them was like a huge process."

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White is grateful for the clean water and being able to do everyday tasks likebathing and laundry.

But community member Cathy Green is still a bit apprehensive to the change.

While she's able to use regular waternow for chores and laundry, Green said, she still uses bottled water. She said she suffered a long-term illnessfrom using the old water, and it still affects her today.

"[It's] something that I wouldn't wish upon people because it's painful to get used to it."

Green said she spoke at athree-day community meeting to encourage people to get checked out by a doctor to ensure they won't be facing any potential long-term illnesses linked to unsafe water before the new treatment plant existed.

New issues arise

While the community is moving forward and growing, other issues still need to be addressed, some members said.

Wahpay said the new water-treatment plant is pumping too much water into homes and is causing their already failing septic systems to overflow.

"I'd say about 70 per centof homes in our First Nation have the same problem with overflowing sewer systems because of the new [water-treatment plant]," he said.

"The amount of water that each house uses causes our whole intakes to go up faster than normal. And the overflow and the pumps don't worksometimes the fields aren't well maintained."

As well, when creating new builds,Wahpay said, it's sometimes difficult to find water lines from previous designs.

"Now when we do have a water-line issue, we are digging all over every scattered little section."

He said they're working on developing a new and updated system to fix such issues, but they need help to keep the community growing, and are hoping to get some funding from the federal government.

This piece is part of CBC Thunder Bay's special National Indigenous Peoples Day coverageMino Bimaadiziwin The Good Life.You can find all of our coverage here.