North Bay firm partners up to build First Nation homes: Innovative energy-efficient homes fit Indigenous lifestyle.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: CONSTRUCTION

A North Bay company is participating in a new partnership that will provide community members in Whapmagoostui First Nation with energy-efficient homes, reducing their reliance on diesel and supporting their traditional lifestyle.

SuperSHELL Homes of North Bay has been contracted to build two of its ultra-energy-efficient homes on the remote First Nation, located on the coast of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec, as part of a pilot project called Helping Homes, or Washkahagun Wechihitowin in Cree.

Whapmagoostui Chief Louisa Wynne said the community is currently facing a backlog of 90 new homes. In many cases, residents are living in overcrowded conditions, leading to social problems throughout the community.

The pilot project is designed as an affordable solution for lower-income community members who still want to practise their traditional lifestyle.

"About 35 per cent of the community still goes out on the land to hunt," Wynne said during the July 19 project launch in North Bay.

It's the traditional way of life, and these are the people that we're targetting for this pilot project.

Hunters and trappers in the community can be out on the land for up to seven months of the year, earning less than $35,000 in income annually, she noted. It's difficult for them to support two lifestyles --one that allows them to follow traditional customs and another that requires them to pay rent and maintenance costs on a home.

An economical, energy-efficient house that's cheaper to heat alleviates some of that burden, Wynne said.

"Our goal is to find ways for our people to afford energy-efficient housing, which would be a socioeconomic resolution for our people that are living in those situations," she said.

Representatives of Whapmagoostui and SuperSHELL first met in June, and from there the Helping Homes project was created.

If the pilot project is a success, Wynne said the community would look at building more SuperSHELL homes next year.

The key factor that makes the homes so efficient is insulation, and plenty of it.

Ross MacLean, who co-owns the company with his business partner Glen Chiblow, said a SuperSHELL home uses three times the amount of insulation of a traditionally built home, significantly improving the insulation ratings throughout the structure.

"SuperSHELL wanted to use standard building processes, because we didn't want it to be hard to build," MacLean said. "So we designed all our projects to be easily implemented: carpenter-friendly...