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A helicopter carrying ballots is scheduled to land in Fox Lake — a remote community in northern Alberta cut off by melting ice roads and mud-slicked trails — in a last-ditch effort to make sure residents can vote in Monday’s federal election.
Hundreds of eligible voters are once again fighting for their right to cast a ballot.
In 2021, voters in the northern Alberta First Nation — accessible only by barge in warmer months or by ice road in winter — showed up on election day to vote at the local school gym, the location printed on their official Elections Canada voter cards. But the polling station never arrived. There were no staff, no ballots and no notice.
“It was during COVID so students weren’t in the building and we were teaching from home. I was going to vote during the day — it’s literally at my workplace,” said Kent McDonald, a resident of Little Red River Cree Nation and a math and biology teacher at Little Red River Board of Education.
“Turns out no one from Elections Canada had contacted the school at all,” McDonald said. “No one knew anything about it. It just didn’t happen.”
Residents were told to vote in John D’Or Prairie, the nearest polling station, accessible only across rough terrain and via a river barge that fits only two vehicles at a time. For those without four-wheel drive, the trip was impossible. After the rains, the roads turned to mud.
And for those determined to make it, the journey took hours — all for one vote.
With poor roads, heavy rain and a mud-soaked runway, many residents and the local school teachers were left disenfranchised.
"As a teaching community, we certainly felt rather dejected and left out," said Elizabeth Dunleavy, a high school teacher.
Similar issues have occurred in other fly-in First Nations, where polling stations or ballots sometimes fail to arrive on time, or advance polls are held instead of election day voting, which can rob residents of their right to vote.
This year brought new challenges for Fox Lake. The seasonal ice road that services the community was decommissioned on April 12 and the barge hasn’t started running yet. Advance voting wasn’t accessible either — the closest location was 100 km away and unreachable.
Mail-in ballots weren’t viable. Mail only arrives twice a week by plane — when it arrives at all.
“We joke about the ‘Grande Prairie black hole,’” McDonald said. “It gets scanned in Edmonton, reaches Grande Prairie and then disappears for days — sometimes weeks.”
That left air travel as the only route in or out.
With days left before election day, school teachers and community members pushed Elections Canada for answers. After initial delays, confirmation finally came that ballots would be delivered by helicopter and a polling station would be set up at the same school.
The chopper can carry one Elections Canada worker and physical ballots. But three trained staff are still needed to run the station. In a last-minute push, local teachers stepped up — one completing emergency training online the night before the vote.
“We’re still crossing our fingers the helicopter shows up,” McDonald said.
Over 2,000 eligible voters in Fox Lake are expected to be impacted if the plan fell through.
“I certainly hope that in the future this doesn't happen, doesn't become a regular thing,” said Dunleavy, "The people here in Fox Lake also deserve to vote, and that shouldn't be hindered."
Sonal Gupta / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
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