Quote:
Originally Posted by MonctonRad
I view an expanded Quebec north shore highway and fixed link to Newfoundland as purely an act of nation building.
By nation building, I mean projects without a solid business case, constructed only as a leap of faith, and/or as a necessary piece of civil defence infrastructure much like the Alaska Highway is.
In many ways, the only comparable infrastructure like this in North America would be the Alaska Highway.
If the Alaska Highway had never been built, places like Fort St. John in BC would be backwaters at the end of the road. Fort St. John is still remote, but at least it is viewed as being on the way to somewhere else, and as such, at least nominally part of the greater whole of North America.
Sept Iles is more or less the end of the road now in Quebec If there were a connecting road all the way through to Newfoundland however, then all of a sudden Sept Iles would be on the way to somewhere else too!! New service industries would set up including hotels and restaurants to cater to the travelling public. Truck stops would be built at waypoints along the way to the Strait of Belle Isles. Tourism along the Quebec north shore would increase by orders of magnitude. Isolated communities on the north shore east of Sept Iles would suddenly be connected directly to the Canadian mainstream. A whole new section of the country would suddenly be open to exploration.
Northern BC and the Yukon have benefitted immeasurably from the Alaska Highway. Why shouldn't the lower north shore of Quebec and the northern peninsula of Newfoundland benefit from a similar project as well.
If such a project ever were to be completed in my lifetime, and if I were still spry enough for the adventure, I would certainly consider doing the "great circle route" around the Gulf of St. Lawrence as a bucket list adventure.........
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I appreciate your point about road/infastructure building being nation building, but the history of the Alaska Highway is not quite the best example of idillic Canadian nation building.
The Alaska Highway was build as a counter-measure to the threat of a possible Japanese invasion to Alaska during World War II. It was constructed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, so it was more a result of
American nation building rather than Canadian, and its alignment to Dawson Creek was chosen because it would have been protected from Pacific-based enemy attacks and connected a string airbases that also served as an air supply route to the USSR. The highway was handed over to Canada in 1948. If the Alaska Highway was constructed during peace time, it probably would have had a very different route, either following the present-day Cassiar Highway between Hazelton, BC and Watson Lake, YK; or following the Rocky Mountain Trench from Prince George, BC to Dawson City, YK - both of which would bypass Dawson Creek and Fort St. John.
(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Highway)
Fort St. John has definitly benefitted from its location along the Alaska Hwy, and it's modern-day growth is in part because of the bridge across the Peace River that opened in 1957, and also due to the oil & gas development that followed. No Alaska Highway would probably still have resulted in the bridge and resource development, but as you mentioned, it probably would have been more at the end of the road.
As an aside, if we as a nation truely valued infastructure projects as a part of nation building, then why would the 3rd and 4th largest cities which are ~970 km apart (Vancouver & Calgary) still have a road connecting them that has significant 2 lane sections?
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