Just imagine what it would be like if you couldn’t make a telephone call to anyone outside your local block. What would it be like if your community only had one telephone line to the outside world. Of course, this all seems silly in a modern age of incredible telecommunications and most recently the Internet. The fact is this is pretty much the current situation in the Wahgoshig First Nation near Timmins, Ontario.
We are a society that likes to pride itself on the creation of new technology on an ongoing basis, but you don’t have to go too far to see that a lot of First Nations communities have been left out of the loop when it comes to high tech. Heck, the first time I ever saw television was when my family got their first TV set in Attawapiskat on the James Bay coast in 1979. We got telephones around the same time.
The Wahgoshig First Nation is a community that developed in the mid-1980s and at the onset was made up only of tents. Gradually, through the hard work chiefs, councils and band administrators, a thriving community of modern homes now sits in the shadow of Ghost Mountain. Power was not brought into the community until only recently and, although there were efforts to develop a phone system for the community, progress was slow.
Thanks to the hard work and dedication of Wahgoshig’s current chief and council, band administrator and the Wabun Tribal Council, this First Nations community is finally getting a telephone system. It still isn’t a system that anyone of us would be happy with, but it is a step in the right direction. Jason Batise, of the Wabun Tribal Council, has been a strong voice in the lobbying effort to produce this telephone system. He tells me this SRS microwave line system should be in place in about nine months.
Right now the system is a radio phone system with only one line to the outside world. In an emergency it is necessary to access the community’s band office, which has the only phone with outside line. It doesn’t take much imagination to see what kind of problems having one line under lock and key would cause. This fact is even worse when you consider that Wahgoshig does not have a fire department.
A few years ago, phones were put into homes in the community but these phones did not have the capability to call outside the small, semi-remote First Nation. Even with the new system, Northern Telephone is estimating it will have to bill extra mileage charges to its customers in Wahgoshig. This pretty much means that people won’t be able to have a single line as the cost from that line would be in excess of $100. The community is lobbying to have this mileage charge waived, but if it is not successful it means residents will be on a party line system of three or four households to an outside line. So the fact is there will be a better phone system in place, but I really hope for the people of Wahgoshig that they will have the same kind of access to modern communications as we do.
By the way, the only reason this came out was through the aggressive lobbying of people like Jason Batise, economic development and technical services advisor for the Wabun Tribal Council, Gilbert Sackaney, a Councilor for the Wahgoshig First Nation, and the solid support of chief, council and band administrator Liz Babin. This is also a really good example of how First Nations people have managed to work together with government to do something really worthwhile. A big thanks goes out to Linda Fteever, of the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, and the good people at the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund and FedNor for their assistance, as well as Northern Telephone for bringing Wahgoshig online. Meegwetch also to CBC North for helping to give Wahgoshig a voice on this issue.
