Nunavik’s second big park prepares for sightseers

Kuururjuaq national park (PHOTO BY ROBERT FRECHETTE FOR NUNAVIK PARKS)

KANGIQSUALUJJUAQ — A rocky mound on the outskirts of Kangiqsualujjuaq offers a spectacular view over the George River.

It’s a fitting site for an interpretation centre for the future Kuururjuaq park, the “parc national Kuururjuaq,” a natural oasis spanning the Torngat mountains through to the Nunatsiavut border.

Nunavik’s second provincial park, 4,400 square kilometres of undeveloped territory, will soon be dotted with cabins for the hundreds of visitors expected to visit over the next few years.

And, as the park’s development takes off, Kuururjuaq’s management is gradually making its move from an office at the Kativik Regional Government building in Kuujjuaq to Kangiqsualujjuaq, where park director Annie Baron will be based full-time when the interpretation centre is built is 2011.

The centre’s future interpretation centre will house an exhibit of the park as well as offices for its five staff members.

Tenders for its construction should be submitted by the end of the month.

And while the winning design hasn’t been announced yet, Scott Heyes, a landscape architect from Ontario, submitted a building design to the Quebec government for consideration.

It’s shaped like a whale emerging from the water and incorporates myths and legends from the region, this design would cost about $1 million to build.

For now, park director Annie Baron spends her visits to Kangiqsualujjauq in a makeshift office in the park garage, its walls covered by park maps.

On one map, Baron follows the Koroc River with her finger, pointing to places she visited on a rafting trip last summer.

“It made me realize I’ve never had the opportunity to see all of this if I hadn’t been involved with the park,” she said.

At certain places along the Koroc, tiny rapids turn to white water, she said.

Baron points to the top of the Koroc River, where it meets Ungava Bay. Kuururjuaq means “becomes a very big river,” she explains.

Baron’s mother was born in that area, a place her family still visits often to camp and hunt.

“It’s a beautiful place, and it’s home in a way,” she said. “I hope people will have the same enjoyment of it as my family does.”

The Koroc is the centrepiece of the new park, flowing 160 km through a valley until the open sea.

The Torngat mountains make up the eastern border of the park, one of the biggest mountain ranges in eastern Canada. At its highest peak, Mount D’Iberville rises to 1,646 metres.

“When they look at the mandate to create a park in Quebec, they look for significant natural features,” Baron said. “And we have that.”

There is still no official date for the official opening of Kuururjuaq, although it’s likely to happen soon after the park’s interpretation centre is finished.

Kuururjuaq started off with $6 million in infrastructure funding from Quebec’s department for sustainable development, environment and parks.

Now the infrastructure costs look to be higher than originally thought, Baron said, although it’s still too soon to say.

The infrastructure for the Pingualuit park cost $5.9 million. Managed by the KRG, the park now operates under another funding agreement with Quebec.

Quebec calls its parks “national” because it says they follow international standards that their counterparts in other Canadian provinces do not.

The major difference is that industrial development is not allowed in Quebec’s national parks, said Michael Barrett, the KRG’s associate director of renewable resources, although they are managed by an agency under the provincial government.