Who opened the Whitefish Bay ice road?
For weeks people had been saying contractor George Mathias of Bear Island plowed the 25-kilometre ice road from Bear Island to the north end of Lake Temagami. The road appeared in early March and terminated at the old Red Squirrel Road access point on Whitefish Bay on the North Arm. Mathias was a surprised as anyone to see it. Peter Healy had been on his way back from a visit to the Diamond Lake pictographs and came across the “highway” by accident. “It was incredible,” he said. “A trip to Diamond took 45 minutes from the Hub.” So who plowed the road? Prospectors from outside the area. They hired Berub Repairs to open the road for their daily trips from town to stake their claims. “It took a couple of hours and two trucks and we were done,” said Ray Daneault. Plowing the Red Squirrel Road had been the prospectors first choice, but the ice road was considerably less expensive. From the end of the lake they continued to their claims by snowmachine. “Ice conditions were so good,” said Dan
