'Masters in our own house' ... and theirs, too

Growing up, Churchill Falls was always in the ether. I often describe it as a – if not the – great cultural wound of Newfoundland. When I first moved to Quebec in 2010, I walked into the geography department at UdeM and was faced with a wall-sized map of Quebec with the Labrador boundary marked as non-definitive. This was somehow unexceptional. The subsequent media storm over the Muskrat Falls project, however, really astounded me. Why so much anger? How could there be a sense of injustice in Quebec over hydroelectric developments in Labrador? How could such things be considered unfair to people in Quebec? Since then, I’ve come to understand that there are strong opinions on both sides of the border, but that these are often unfounded and unquestioned. One of these is that Labrador is some kind of abstraction in an interprovincial tug of war, rather than a place to which people feel belonging and attachment, people who merit respect and consideration.

One of my main goals was to put Labrador back at the centre of this story, where it belongs. This apparent dispute between two provinces concerns rights to exploit resources from lands where many of those making the decisions will never set foot and wouldn’t even think to do so. This is the first meaning of the title of the book. The second sense of the title is to destabilize nationalist narratives that portray development, or even emancipation, as somehow autonomous. Rather, these necessarily occur in relation to other peoples and places. Borders are not barriers but instruments that enable those in power to manage flows of goods and people to their advantage; they do not create fully autonomous spaces, they enable particular kinds of relations mediated by power. In this way, you cannot fully understand the history of Hydro-Québec, the Quiet Revolution, and thus of Quebec itself without Churchill Falls. It is an integral element of the history of Quebec, just as it is of Newfoundland and Labrador.

This is a very good question. Another good question is why the archives of a public corporation are hidden from the very public that it was established to serve. This, to me, is an extraordinary situation, and all Quebecers should rightfully be concerned. What might they contain? Related to Churchill Falls, I would expect that they would contain much important information regarding the corporate leaders’ knowledge of and perspectives on Labrador, their debates around the Churchill Falls development in the 1960s and since, Hydro-Québec’s acquisition in 1969 of shares in CFLCo [Churchill Falls Corporation Ltd.], its strategy regarding the contract while its representatives sat on both sides of the negotiating table, what its representatives really thought of the contract, their projections for what the results of such a lopsided deal might have been. Did they consider the Innu, Inuit and Métis peoples of Labrador? How have these considerations changed over time? Over the many years of conflict, what were the internal logics for repeatedly denying Newfoundland and Labrador access to additional energy from the dam? What were their discussions around their repeated demands for Newfoundland to cede large tracts of land in Labrador? Were there ever internal discussions of a fairer deal for Newfoundland and for Labrador? What internal justifications were used to normalize the status quo? What were the discussions surrounding CFLCo's near-bankruptcy due to the low-price regime in the 1990s? What have been the discussions around keeping the dam on life support? What is behind the consistent drive for further damming? I imagine there would be a wealth of information in the archives, not only on Churchill Falls but also on many other topics.

Some of those we talk about worked on the site in the construction of the dam; one person was even renowned for his expertise in maneuvering the bucket of the giant diggers on the earlier Twin Falls site. Some people worked in services; there was a nurse from Labrador, for example. In the 1990s, however, the first peoples of Labrador stopped a major expansion of the dam, the rerouting of other rivers, and new dams on their lands. These developments were all part of a deal between the governments of Newfoundland and Quebec, led by premiers Brian Tobin and Lucien Bouchard, in the late 1990s. What brought them to the table was the near collapse of CFLCo due to the lopsidedness of the 1969 contract. But when they flew to Churchill Falls to sign the new deal, instead of a victory lap, they were stopped in their tracks. Innu leaders and protesters were waiting for them on the tarmac. The premiers ended up fleeing the airport, and hid out in a cabin along the river. Eventually, they fled Churchill Falls entirely, without managing to sign a deal. Their picture, showing them surrounded by protesters – one sign reading “Hydro is a no-go without Innu consent” — is among my favorites in the book. Brian Tobin is wearing a seal-skin coat, a symbol of Newfoundland and Labrador culture and, I would say, resistance. Since that time, the Innu, Inuit and Métis peoples of Labrador, supported by environmentalists and others, have been active in resistance to Muskrat Falls as well as the proposals for new developments in Labrador related to the memorandum of understanding the then governments of Quebec and Newfoundland signed in 2024.

Beyond this, many people were affected by the damming of the upper Churchill River through the loss of the places where they trapped and fished, as well as broader environmental damage. On this subject, the Labrador Inuk journalist and documentary filmmaker Ossie Michelin is conducting important research. Our work is a start, but much remains to be done on the impacts of the Churchill Falls development, and Ossis’s work is truly inspiring. It is also worth remembering that to this day, the coastal communities of eastern Labrador have no access to the hydroelectric power generated on their lands and for which they have been forced to sacrifice so much. Polluting diesel-fired power plants, unaffordable electricity bills and widespread energy poverty are the result.

Frankly, I’m quite concerned. There are only 15 years left until 2041, when the 1969 contract under which Churchill Falls power is currently governed expires. On the one hand, a lot can happen in 15 years; on the other hand, 15 years can go by quickly. A new level of understanding is needed between all of the peoples – not just the “parties”– involved, one that allows our leaders to transcend all-too-elusive promises of economic growth and development. There’s a quote in the book by Jerry Bannister, a history professor at Dalhousie University, from a 2012 article he wrote titled “A river runs through it." It goes like this: “If the original Churchill Falls contract taught us anything, it is to be extremely wary of megaprojects in general and predictions of future power costs in particular. It should also have taught us to be wary of those who advocate a future unconstrained by the past.”

The 2024 deal was, once again, based on making new developments in Labrador and undertaking a major expansion of the reservoir on the Upper Churchill. At the time, Premier François Legault was promising to make Quebec into a green-energy giant, and Labrador, as always, was a means to the ends of those who were otherwise disinterested in its future, its present and its past. Since then, the promise not only of the deal but of Quebec’s green-energy future seems to have gone up in smoke, along with the $7-billion Northvolt battery-plant project.

Where to go from here? I would suggest a much more modest path. Before embarking on another round of massive flooding of Labrador, let’s fix the deal and how we relate to the dam that we already have. How can we imagine that we can get massive new developments right when we cannot seem to fix the one we have? Let’s first make the Upper Churchill fair for all of the peoples affected. Let’s try to fix our past, and maybe, just maybe, it won’t continue to shape our future.