SHUNIAH — Work continues to twin the Trans-Canada Highway between Thunder Bay and Nipigon, with a 7.6 kilometre stretch in McTavish Township reaching the detailed design phase.
The Ministry of Transportation held an open house at the MacGregor Recreation Centre on Lakeshore Drive Thursday evening where members of the public could learn more about the project and have questions answered.
Nicholas Escott owned a piece of land that is bisected by the existing highway before donating it to the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists last year. Escott, who is also a member of the organization, said the way the new four-lane design is laid out will likely mitigate traffic noise through the property — which is being maintained as a nature reserve.
“There are thousands of trucks going along there all the time,” he said. “There'll be a little bit less noise because the eastbound lane is going to be some distance away from the westbound lane, which is currently the whole highway.”
“So, we get both east and west traffic going through our property and after this is finished … it'll only be the westbound lane.”
Escott said he was told the segment, which runs from Pearl Lake east to a site west of the CPR overhead, would take about four years to complete. Another 14.4-kilometre part of the highway — from the intersection with Highway 587 east to Pearl Lake — is scheduled to be completed in September 2026. Once these two projects are completed, the Trans-Canada will be four-lane all the way from Thunder Bay to Dorion.
Officials on-site at the open house with the Ministry of Transportation and WSP, the company retained by the MTO to conduct the detail design and class environmental assessment study, declined to speak with reporters.
Escott said he purchased the property in 1990 and has been taking care of it since, doing things like keeping trails clean and conducting wildlife observation. He gifted the property to the field naturalists last year as “none of my children were interested in it, and we thought eventually, we'll have to give it up somehow.”
“We might as well make it a nature reserve.”
Another member of the field naturalists, Keith Wade, told Newswatch he was there to caution about the suspected presence of a species at risk, the northern brook lamprey, in Welsh Creek. The group has multiple reserves in the area, including in the McTavish Wetlands, but Wade said he doesn’t expect the twinning project to negatively affect them “unless there's a massive erosion and sediment incident.”
Escott said the highway twinning is a badly-needed project for Northwestern Ontario.
“I think it's a great idea,” he said. “We really do need a four-laner all the way to Nipigon, if not beyond, because it's a dangerous road to travel.”
“There are an awful lot of collisions even when it's four lane.”
