White Bear First Nation sets up all households with generators to combat winter power outages

Volunteers at White Bear First Nation in Saskatchewan handled a big delivery on Wednesday, as 180 generators arrived, one for every household.

Tanya Littlechief, a councillor in the community 215 kilometres southeast of Regina, said the decision to get generators came after a three-day long power outage in April 2022, following a winter storm.

"The furnaces were off, fridges were down, everything was down," said Littlechief.

Littlechief said the community called the SaskPower emergency line and recorded messages said crews were working on the lines and could take 24-48 hours.

"We thought it was just gonna be OK, no worries, we can do this," said Littlechief.

"Then 24 hours passed, then 48 and now everyone's panicking."

Meanwhile leaders were taking elders and families to hotels in surrounding towns that had power.

Littlechief said that the community all came together and said once this is over, they were going to get generators for every house on the reserve. She said there's at least four power outages each winter in White Bear.

"These will go to each individual unit, so that way our people will be safe," said Littlechief.

Heather Sparrow, a mother of three, received a generator earlier this week and said it will help deal with power outages like the four to five hour one she experienced in December.

"It was starting to get quite cold and I decided like I'm gonna put my kids to bed," said Sparrow, a cultural facilitator who sits on White Bear's education board.

"We had candles in various places in the house and I was just lucky to have enough bedding and warm clothing."

Sparrow said she thinks her 11-year-old daughter has some trauma from past power outages. Once at a store, she told her daughter she could get anything she wanted and her daughter chose an emergency survival candle.

Now with generators, she hopes her kids "don't have too much anxiety around the lights going out, especially during winter time, because really anything could happen," said Sparrow.

She said she was worried about people like her neighbour, an older woman who lives with her grandchildren and doesn't have a vehicle, but now with the generators, Sparrow said it brings a sense of security.

Littlechief said a community member will build boxes to hold the generators to protect them from the elements, and a plumber and electrician will show people how to hook them up and use them.

A statement from SaskPower said cold weather doesn't typically have a significant impact on power infrastructure but in some instances frost can damage power lines, though it is a rare occurrence.

"Unplanned outages occur in both urban and rural areas, with the key difference being in urban areas, there is more infrastructure present to re-route power to an impacted area," the statement said.

The statement said SaskPower is working to improve and update its infrastructure in rural Saskatchewan.