Mystery of the Missing Lake – Waswanipi investigates the sudden drainage of Lac Rouge

Patrick Quinn, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Nation

In the quiet hours of May 7, when many Waswanipi members had scattered to bush camps for Goose Break, a massive landslide hurtled towards Lac Rouge on William Dixon’s trapline W26. Two days later, his son Freddie Dixon discovered that the lake had completely disappeared. Eagles and crows scavenged the remains.

“It happened all of a sudden,” said tallyman William Dixon. “All that water went down to Doda Lake. Where we had a boat landing, it’s all sand and we can’t go out with the motorboat anymore. We used to go to Lake Rouge to get drinking water – that’s how clean it was.”

After a drone surveyed the damage, Waswanipi Chief Irene Neeposh called an emergency meeting with Cree Nation Government biologists, local witnesses and experts from Quebec’s Ministère des Ressources naturelles et des Forêts. A small plane sent out on May 20 revealed the destructive path the water followed to the much larger Lake Doda.

While Lac Rouge regularly flooded in springtime, the disaster forced the water along a new course as it swallowed ponds and creeks towards Lake Doda. The latter had become dark brown from the influx of sediment, with the extent of surrounding forestry and fires evident from the air.

Recent forest fires have exacerbated erosion, turning soil into clay and mud. After a fire burned very close to Lac Rouge in 2019, another four fires scorched the area in 2023. With newly planted trees ruined by the blaze, a scarification plan was submitted for 13,000 hectares, which Dixon repeatedly refused.

“I even made a map that said no cutting, but they still go there,” Dixon told the Nation. “It hurts when a tallyman sees the damage on his trapline. They still force us to say yes, but on that one I was thinking about the bear, the moose and the blueberries that would be good there.”

Scarification promotes quicker forest renewal by mechanically breaking the soil surface to remove obstacles that hinder tree growth and drainage. While the fires closed Dixon’s trapline to further logging, salvaging of burnt wood, tree planting and pre-commercial thinning has continued. He said work had been done in the month before the landslide.

Dixon asserted that the lake kept flooding over because there were no trees along the side to absorb water and stabilize the soil. Neighbouring tallyman Paul Dixon agreed, explaining that bigger “mother trees” can pull water from nearby creeks through their roots when there’s no rain, feeding smaller trees.

“William Dixon’s dad used to warn us that too much scarification makes the land weaker,” said Paul Dixon. “Those roots have been there thousands of years, holding each other together. Where there are forest fires, poplar and birch trees will grow up and we’ll have mooseyards – forestry companies consider these weeds.”

On May 13, Paul Dixon told local forest expert Allan Saganash about the environmental disaster, who informed the CNG. With everyone else on Goose Break when they first met with Chief Neeposh, Saganash and Paul Dixon assumed that disturbance on the trapline was the culprit, both from fires and from forestry.

However, CNG biologists and forestry engineers determined that scarification work had been done at a lower land level and too far from the lake to impact the washed-out banks. Elevation was higher on Lac Rouge, previously 2 km long and 1.5 km wide, than where the water drained out.

“This was the banks of the lake totally giving way like a dam because of the erosion,” explained Saganash. “Where the banks collapsed, it’s just a big open area. All the water completely flowed out with such force that it basically created a large river on its path of destruction.”

After fires remove tree cover, rains and melting snow more rapidly transform soil to clay, which naturally drifts to lower land as it liquefies. Provincial data reports about 100 landslides annually, which increase with extreme weather and spring melts. Recent landslides have occurred in Chisasibi and temporarily closed Mistissini’s walking trail.

While culverts drained excess water from Lac Rouge under the nearby road, William Dixon believes the pipe installed by the forestry company was too small. He blames its blockage for washing away the road. Ice and debris are frequent causes of blocked culverts, costing forestry companies millions of dollars in road repairs.

“Drainage is a contributing factor to many washouts, including Lake Rouge,” Saganash said. “There are so many questions about culvert size and placement. Of course, a beaver will block a culvert – it’s the fastest way to build a dam.”

David Bournival, who has been fishing and swimming in Lac Rouge for 25 years and was the first to alert the Dixon family about the disaster, said the lake was flooded by beavers. Freddie Dixon confirmed there were many dams. Bournival suggested the lake’s edges have steadily crumbled and with beavers blocking water flow, it was only a matter of time before the lake emptied.

“It’s completely natural,” said Bournival. “I hope the ministry will close the breach because the clay keeps flowing into the Doda. If they do nothing, the moose and woodland caribou could get stuck in the shifting clay.”

While Saganash is no longer on the joint working group intended to mend Cree conflicts with forestry, he said the current scarification project hasn’t even started on trapline W26, with about $800,000 already invested in road and bridge repairs.

Saganash believes that Dixon accepted with the condition that the company build a road to Lake Doda and not touch his designated protected areas. According to the agreement with Quebec, tallymen can protect up to 1 percent of their traplines as traditional “sites of interest”. Dixon lost three of these sites to the disaster.

“William’s never seen anything like this,” Saganash said. “Why now? We need the CNG to answer why scarification is not a contributing factor. We need proof that it’s only forest fires causing erosion.”

Facing concerns about ground stability and possible mercury contamination downstream, biologists are continuing to take water and soil samples. An update was expected June 9. William Dixon worries for the fish in Lake Doda, where he netted sturgeon that he fondly recalled cured his wife from sickness.

“I shed some tears about my wife in the meeting,” said Dixon. “I thought about if we ever can eat fish there again. It was a very good lake with very good fish. My hope is that sand would wash away before it gets to where I used to put out a net for sturgeon.”

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