Territories | Tshiuetin, a train towards the future

Every corner of Quebec is full of stories that are as incredible as they are little-known. Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin takes advantage of the beautiful weather to explore some of them. Today, we board the “Innu train,” which connects Sept-Îles to Schefferville.

It is often called the Innu train, but its real name is Tshiuetin, “north wind” in Innu-aimun. It connects Sept-Îles and Schefferville, a journey of more than 500 kilometres as the crow flies, half in Quebec, half in Labrador, and entirely in Nitassinan, the traditional Innu territory.

Tshiuetin Rail Transport is North America’s first Aboriginal-owned and operated railway company (Innu and Naskapi). It can carry 300 passengers per trip, 15,000 per year.^⁠1.

This communication route is vital for the Innu and Naskapis. Unless you buy a prohibitively expensive plane ticket or go up the Moisie River by canoe for weeks, it is the only way to access Shefferville and the traditional territory.

This is no ordinary train.

When I called to book my ticket, I indicated that I was leaving on July 18 and returning on August 2.

“For the return, if I miss the train on the 2nd, can I take the next one?

— No problem, he will come on August 6th.

— Where are you getting off?

— At 177.”

It is important to know that Tshiuetin can stop anywhere on the route. Some places have names, including the camps of workers assigned to track maintenance: Oreway, Mai, Emeril, Esker, etc. To get off elsewhere, simply indicate at which “mile” you want to get off. “I get off at 177” therefore means that I get off at 177^e thousand from Sept-Îles. The train will stop at the indicated location, even if it is in the middle of the forest.

“The 177 exactly?

— No, 177.4.

— Ah, near So-and-so’s chalet?

– Yes. “

The staff, mostly Innu, know their territory!

The train will therefore leave me exactly in front of the path near the chalet in question (see the photo). It leads to the Embarrassée River (what a beautiful name!), which I will have to take to reach Lake Ashuanipi, my destination (the next text in this series, which will be published next Sunday, will be about my expedition).

“What are you bringing on board?”

— Three barrels of equipment, a canoe, two oars.

— Where are we picking you up on the way back?

— I should be in Oreway, but maybe a little before or a little after, it will depend on the strength of the wind on the lake.

— OK, we’ll monitor from Oreway to the north of Pitaga.”

You heard correctly. The conductor has noted the approximate location where I should be stationed for the return trip, two weeks later. At that time and place, the crew will be on the lookout to spot my canoe on the side of the track and let me board.

“There aren’t many trains like yours!”

“No, we won’t let you down,” Eddy-Antony Régis, the train conductor, told me, obviously proud of his work.

Two years ago, when I took the same train, a man over 80 years old, who had gone up to his hunting camp a few days earlier, was not there at the scheduled time for the return. The train waited for radio calls to be made to people who were in the area. After about ten minutes, the answer came. “Zachary has decided to stay in the woods a little longer, you can go.” Tshiuetin does not let anyone down and no passenger complains about the delays.

Tshiuetin provides access to the territory, a territory with multiple dangers where mutual aid is necessary and where helping each other takes time.

It takes about fifteen hours to make the trip between Sept-Îles and Shefferville. It’s long, so passengers organize themselves. We often see fitted sheets hanging from the backs of a set of seats, creating the effect of a tent. Adults sleep there, children play there. In fact, there are children everywhere, there is life. In addition, almost all of the passengers are indigenous and Innu-aimun, one of the most living indigenous languages ​​in Canada, is omnipresent.

During the first part of the journey, the train runs along the Moisie River, one of the most beautiful in Quebec, then the Nipissis River, one of its tributaries. The sometimes steep mountains that border them seem to mark the boundary between inhabited land and adventure. The landscapes are spectacular. It is beauty as far as the eye can see. “At 53, there is a rock where three waterfalls fall, I am amazed each time I pass,” the conductor tells me. For the beauty of the landscapes alone, the journey is worth it.

For several millennia, every fall, the Innu left the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, went up the Moisie, and spent the winter in their hunting grounds, where Tshiuetin passes. Aware of the perils of the journey, the traveling groups would get news of each other, inform each other of the dangers, and report the most game-rich places.

Tshiuetin is the modern version of this bygone past. The Innu did not adapt to railway technology, they adapted it to their needs, to their culture. Tshiuetin is more than a train, it is an Innu train.

Quebecers have had four centuries to build, from an almost pastoral society, an original modern nation, which resembles them. The Aboriginals have had barely a few decades to do the same thing, they are still working on it. The difficulty of the task is well illustrated by terrible verses from the poet Joséphine Bacon: “I need the present to be / I need the past to last / Tomorrow ignores me,” she wrote.

Tshuetin is a response to this observation. It shows that the future, that modernity, that tomorrow can also resemble the Innu. In this sense, Tshiuetin, the north wind, is a wind of hope.

1. Read the text “A train named Tshiuetin” on the Radio-Canada website

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