The Inuit-owned Northern Transportation Company Limited (NTCL) provides cargo service from the inland port of Hay River down the MacKenzie River to Canada's Western Arctic and Alaska's North Slope, and from Churchill Manitoba to communities around Hudson Bay.
A company description of itself for a web page sponsored by Industry Canada (Northern Transportation Company Limited , March 27, 2008) reads:
NTCL's Head Office and principal marine facilities are located in Hay River, Northwest Territories. Regional terminals are located in Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, and there is a small loading facility at Norman Wells. Company regional offices are located at Halifax, Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet. NTCL maintains a marketing office in Anchorage, Alaska and Calgary, Alberta. The Port of Hay River is home to NTCL's mainline tug and barge fleet. Hay River is a large and modern marine terminal facility, accessible by both paved highway and rail. In fact, Hay River Canada's most northerly railhead. The terminal area covers 70 hectares and boasts 25 hectares of storage dedicated to the staging of customer cargo. Cargo is transported from Hay River across Great Slave Lake, down the Mackenzie River to Tuktoyaktuk. The Sahtu Region is served by the Company's agency and loading dock in Norman Wells. Two terminals are located in the Western Arctic: Inuvik in the Mackenzie Delta and Tuktoyaktuk on the Beaufort Sea. Tuktoyaktuk is NTCL's main Arctic staging and transshipment point. From Tuk, tugs commence their Arctic voyages to points as far west as Barrow, Alaska or east to Taloyoak on the Boothia Peninsula. Our agency in Cambridge Bay, Kitnuna Corporation, serves the Kitikmeot region, while our agency in Norman Wells, Hodgson’s Contracting, serves the Sahtu region. Our office in Rankin Inlet responds to orders for freight to the Kivalliq region, and loading services for the area are handled through the Port of Churchill in Manitoba. Opened in 2005, the Halifax office is the regional base of operations and administration for the Eastern Arctic and Eastern Canada. NTCL’s two Arctic Class II supply and anchor handling vessels are based here, and the tugs and barges servicing the Kivalliq region and any other customers throughout Nunavut are handled through this office. NTCL regards protection of the environment as a matter of stewardship. In large measure, environmental guardianship and safety are a matter of individual awareness and attitudes, which NTCL unfalteringly supports. Environmental protection and safety programs adhere to the highest of standards, both for equipment and for personnel. Strict procedures are prescribed for the handling of hazardous materials and for the loading and discharging of fuel from barges and tankers. Protection of the environment and safety involves continuous vigilance, a responsible approach to every assignment, compliance with standards of care and regulation, and due diligence in all tasks.
The Mackenzie River provides a route from the road and railhead at Hay River on the Great Slave Lake, deep in Canada's interior, to Canada's Beaufort Sea and Alaska's North Slope. John Burns took a trip down the river in 1988 on the tug Jock McNiven, and reported on it for the New York Times in 1988: Barges: Lifeline for the Far North (Sept 19, 1988). The barge traffic down the Mackenzie is crucial to the remote communities and the oil and gas operations in the north:
Counting the staff at its headquarters in Edmonton, Alberta, the barge company has fewer than 300 employees, many of them seasonal. Without them, however, most activity across the Canadian Arctic would quickly cease. Because many communities lie beyond the reach of roads and air freight is too expensive for all but the most urgently needed goods, everything from baby food to the giant steel superstructures of oil rigs must come north by sea - about 80 percent of it on the Mackenzie River barges....
''We keep the lamps burning across the entire Arctic,'' said Kirk Vander Ploeg, the company's terminal manager at Norman Wells, the site of an oilfield and refinery operated by Imperial Oil Ltd., the Exxon Corporation's Canadian subsidiary. During halts at the town, the barges take on almost all of the Arctic's fuel - millions of gallons of aviation kerosene, specially treated diesel fuel that stays liquid down to 60 degrees below zero, the bunker oils that fuel power generators and gasoline for everything from snowmobiles to the longboats used for Eskimo whale hunts.
Burns was writing at a time when business was slow for the NTCL. Burns was writing in 1988, shortly after the collapse of oil prices in 1985:
From its establishment by the Canadian Government in 1934, the company has ridden peaks and troughs in Arctic development. One boom came in the late 1950's when John Diefenbaker, then the Prime Minister, was pushing his ''northern vision.'' Another came with a surge of oil and gas exploration in the early 1970's, a surge that was repeated in the early 1980's when the Government granted more than $6 billion in subsidies to encourage exploration. Downturn in Amount of Freight
But oil and gas activity has slumped with world prices, and with it the amount of freight moving north.
This year Northern Transportation expects to ship a total of 178,000 tons, 55 percent less than the record of 399,000 tons shipped in 1972 and barely half of this decade's peak, the 383,000 tons shipped in 1982.
The company has also been hurt by the opening in 1979 of the Dempster Highway, a $100 million road that runs 450 miles from Dawson City in the Yukon to Inuvik on the Arctic Sea, and by the ''ice roads'' that mining companies extend across the frozen lakes and tundra in the winter.
With business down 20 percent this year alone, Northern Transportation has laid up all but 8 of its 30 vessels, and many of its 140 barges. Seasoned crew members have been forced to find work elsewhere...
Graham Chandler got to ride the tug Vic Ingraham as she towed six bages with drilling rigs and other equipment down the Mackenzie from Hay River to Tuktoyaktuk on the Beaufort Sea in the fall of 2001. He wrote about it in Canada's Legion magazine the following spring: Barging Down The Mackenzie (May 1, 2002). Chandler is more about the rythums of life on the river, and the challenges of navigating six barges, two football fields long, down the river:
The massive barge lowers in the water as a 40-ton forklift inches on board with the A-legs, one of the heaviest parts of the rig. I’m standing on a 1500-series barge, the largest on our trip—80 by 20 metres. It can take over 2,000 tons of cargo on deck or 20 rail cars worth of bulk fuel below deck or a combination of both. At this weight the gauge on the barge’s hull would show a draw of five feet of water, but for the shallower waters of September, crews usually load them to just four feet. Higher waters are great for barge loads, but disadvantages abound. “High water brings its own set of problems,” explains Norberg. “Debris from spring runoffs takes out buoys, clogs propellers and piles up in front of the barges.”...
Two more barges are added, one on each side of, and slightly behind, the first. This arrangement forms a niche from where the tug can push all three across the lake. I ask Helmer why they don’t tow the barges, like in the ocean. “You’d have no control over them following you in the current going downstream,” comes the logical answer....
Nearing Wrigley Harbour, a series of almost imperceptible bumps tells Power the water is shallowing so he eases back on the throttles to ensure the props won’t churn into the lake bottom. We’re nearing the entrance to the rapids, known as Danger Zone One on the Canadian Coast Guard river maps. Power reports entering the zone on the Single Side Band radio, so the Coast Guard can warn ships coming upstream. There are nine of these danger zones on the river.
An experienced kayaker would hardly call these rapids. There’s no whitewater and they aren’t even the fastest on the river, but to push three fully loaded cargo barges through them demands a complex set of skills. We pass through at 15 mph, tie the barges to shore posts and chug back to Fort Providence to board the affable skipper James Walsh, who takes us back to the barge tie-up. More clattering winches, growling engines and groaning cables and we’re hooked up again, this time to our full tug of six barges; three had been pre-positioned. The Vic Ingraham’s six rudders deftly turn her as Walsh skilfully reverses into the river, allowing the powerful current to bring the bow around and into the channel. I remark on his surgical precision. “Well I bin doin’ it fer 36 years,” comes the reply. The crews will go all night, using spotlights fore and aft to pick out the buoys and on-shore range markers; along with the radar...
Fifty miles shy of the Arctic Circle comes the journey’s highlight: The Ramparts, 672 river miles from our start.... This final set of rapids is where the Mackenzie slices through towering white limestone cliffs.... The Ramparts demand the undivided attention of the officer at the helm and an engineer standing by in the engine room in case a power boost is needed. First mate Power is driving as I feel the current push the tug faster. High silt deposits make a sinuous channel not much wider than our tug. The channel is marked by buoys but Power concentrates as he plans his turns. This is a 7,000-ton grand slalom and “she’s not gonna turn on a dime,” says Power....
Correction: fixed a reference to Port Hays so that it says Hay River. August 25, 2008.
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