(p.112, 132, 163, 173, 246, 298, 344) Similarly, the Quebecois government was biased toward the over-estimation of future electrical needs, and quick to use unrealistic projections as justification for the scale of the massive James Bay projects. (p.33-4, 72, 76, 195, 280) Richardson convincingly documents the inadequacy of the environmental and social impact studies conducted by the government of Quebec, as well as their quickness to discount the importance of the land and the people reliant upon it. Richardson’s intimate account of the hunting lifestyle of the Cree contrasts sharply with the perception of the province that they had essentially abandoned their traditional practices and that the lands they inhabited were effectively empty. 22, 303, 329) The scale of work envisioned was indeed vast: the entire La Grande river would cease to flow below the blockage for an entire year as the reservoir filled. For Bourassa, the construction of hydroelectric capacity in the James Bay region was a vital measure for promoting Quebecois economic growth and thus the national integrity of Quebec. Now, his name is attached to a 7,722 megawatt generating station and a reservoir with a surface area of 2,835 square kilometres.
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Robert Bourassa – Premier of Quebec from 1970 to 19 to 1994 – did more than anyone to advance the James Bay hydroelectric projects.
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Quebecois nationalism and the northern Cree If anything, the contemporary parallels show how the tension between peoples seeking to perpetuate traditional lifestyles on territory they have held for centuries and others who wish to disrupt those lifestyles for economic or nationalistic purposes persists and how Canada has a poor record of reaching equitable outcomes through fair means. While the parallels between the James Bay hydroelectric projects of the 1970s and today’s oil, gas, and mining projects are numerous, it is not fully clear what the experience with the former can help us improve about the latter. The dynamic at the heart of the book – between First Nations people trying to maintain their most important traditions and an encroaching world hungry for natural resources – continues to play out in Canada. 204, 289, 290 paperback) Nonetheless, the account comes across as a sensitive, sympathetic, and honest one for all parties concerned – a text that both furnishes detailed observations of what has transpired and which engages in a nuanced way with the political and moral complexities that accompany them.
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Richardson is clear in his advocacy of the Cree perspective and is open about his willingness to edit his work to meet with the approval of his Cree subjects and rebut the arguments made by their opponents at Hydro-Quebec and within the Quebecois government. The book describes the traditional lifestyle of the Cree of northern Quebec, and the influence the James Bay hydroelectric developments had upon their lives between the inception of the project in the 1970s and the author’s return visits during the 1990s.
#DEVOUR THE 303 SERIES#
Boyce Richardson’s Strangers Devour the Land is not an academic text, but rather a series of personal narratives interspersed with selections of courtroom testimony.