https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Elected officials stabbed at muddy ground with clean shovels at the official groundbreaking on the Tlicho all-season road in Whatı̀, N.W.T., on Saturday. For Whatı̀ Chief Alfonz Nitsiza, the moment was the culmination of decades of effort.
Speaking to reporters in a scrum, Nitsiza said that decades ago two elders — including his own uncle, who is a former chief — survived two plane crashes in the Tlicho region.
“They quickly realized, this is too much, and there’s a lot of people going in and out of the community for medevac, we need to get a road here. That’s when it all started — almost 30 years ago.”
Whatı̀ is about 170 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife, and is a fly-in community for most of the year except when it’s accessible by winter road. The 97-kilometre, two-lane gravel road will connect Highway 3 to the small Tłı̨chǫ community year-round.
North Star Infrastructure — which is made up of Kiewit Canada Development Corp. and the Tłı̨chǫ government — with Peter Kiewit Sons ULC, Hatch Corp. and Thurber Engineering Ltd. as design and engineering partners — will be responsible for the construction of the road.
For the rest of this article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/tlicho-all-season-road-construction-begins-1.5257674