Thorunn Howatt
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 28/02) - It takes more than just heavy equipment, cold weather and water to build an ice road. It also takes meat, potatoes and nutritious snacks to keep the army of workers fuelled up.

Chef Marcus Vassos keeps the Nuna Logistics ice road crew fed and watered. He cooks at the ice road's Dome Lake camp. - Thorunn Howatt/NNSL photo

"You have no idea what it is going to be like in another month," said Kitikmeot Caterers' Paul Sine, referring to the storm of drivers who will soon be hauling on the Tibbitt Lake to Contwoyto Lake ice road. The catering company is contracted with the task of feeding ice-road builders and truckers who drive the road.

The winter road starts outside Yellowknife and runs North past the BHP Billiton and Diavik diamond mines. The nearly 600-kilometre road ends in Nunavut at Echo Bay's Lupin Mine. There are three camps on the route: Dome Lake, Lockhart Lake and Lac de Gras.

Last week's blast of cold weather was good news for the ice road, meaning it will soon be open to hundreds of heavy trucks. It's a busy time for camp workers.

"At any given time you can look outside and there will be 100 trucks out in the parking lot," said Sine. Last week crews were still at work finishing the final sections of the road. Commercial trucking traffic wasn't yet allowed to travel, but there was nervous energy in the air at Lockhart Lake camp -- Sine called it the calm before the storm.

"They'll be going 24 hours a day. They just come and eat and go and then a bunch more come through. It just never stops," said Sine.

Lockhart Lake camp is set up as a meal stop for truckers who will haul equipment and loads to the mine sites until April. Last year in a period of about nine weeks Kitikmeot Caterers served about 23,500 meals there. It is the busiest camp with most of the truckers stopping there. The first camp, Dome Lake, is for ice-road workers contracted by Nuna Logistics only. The third camp, Lac de Gras, is used mostly by truckers who are making the whole journey, all the way to Lupin Mine.

"It's very high-tension work," said Sine. It is a tough environment because it is always busy and there is very little privacy in camp, he said.

Kitikmeot Caterers is a joint venture partnership company 51 per cent owned by the Kitikmeot Association, the business development arm of the Kitikmeot Inuit Association. The other 49 per cent is owned by Pioneer Caterers. Mervyn Hempenstall, also of Nuna Logistics, is president of Kitikmeot Caterers.

The company employs 23 people at the Lupin Mine site where it operates catering services year-round. Recently it held a training program for Nunavut's Northerners.

"We just finished doing a seminar for them at Lupin just before Christmas," said Sine. Echo Bay donated the facilities to teach nine people the tricks of the kitchen trade, he said. "We gave them a three-week cooking course."

There are another 11 employees working at winter road camps and 18 staff work under a catering contract at BHP Billiton Ekati Mine's Misery pit.

"Staff-wise, it will be around 70 or more people once the winter road camps are full-bore," said Sine. Most of the camp workers are from Edmonton but return for the ice road season year after year.

"At Lockhart, when the trucks start hauling, I will have 10 people working there and at least six of those will be from Yellowknife," said Sine.

Every year nearly one million pounds of food are flown to Lupin Mine site.

About 8,000 pounds of food a week will be trucked to Lockhart camp once the road fully opens. Most of the food is ordered from Yellowknife.

"Dome, being the smaller camp, 99 per cent of our groceries are brought in from Extra Foods in Yellowknife," said Sine.

Kitikmeot Caterers is hired under contract by Nuna Logistics, the winter road's primary contractor.

"They pay us by month, a management fee," he said. "We order the groceries and then we just fax copies of the invoices to Nuna Logistics."

Nuna pays for all of the costs, including staff wages.

The kitchens at the camps are new and sparkling. Both Dome and Lockhart camps are less than two years old. Tempting pastries under plastic-wrap lined countertops and juices and other drinks filled fridges.

Many of the chefs working in the camps have training from community colleges or practical training from big hotels.

Staff are paid by the hour, working 12-hour shifts. They earn about $1,300 per week. "Anything after eight hours a day and 40 hours a week is overtime," said Sine.

Kitikmeot Caterers also looks after housekeeping for the camps. Housekeepers earn about $900 per week. The advantage to many of working in camp is the free rent and food.