Telus tower closes big gap in cellphone service on Highway of Tears
Credit to Author: Denise Ryan| Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2020 22:23:54 +0000
A new Telus cellphone tower has closed a 20-kilometre gap on Highway 16, previously one of the longest stretches of the so-called Highway of Tears without cellular service.
The $1 million cell site is about 60 kilometres west of Terrace on the highway to Prince Rupert. Construction finished in December and after testing, the site went live recently.
“This is good news and will improve safety,” said Rosemary Craig, executive director of the Terrace Women’s Resource Centre. “The cellphone coverage to date has been quite spotty and that has an effect on people travelling.”
Sharon Bryant of Northwest Inter-Nation Family and Community Service, who lives in Kitsumkalum, said that the highway is windy, dark and often blanketed in rain, sleet and fog and spotted with cellphone dead zones.
Since 1970, dozens of women and girls, a disproportionate number of them Indigenous, have disappeared or been murdered along the Highway of Tears, the 725-kilometre stretch of Highway 16 from Prince George to Prince Rupert, B.C.
Families in the remote community use that stretch of highway every day, said Craig. Despite the warning billboards many still rely on hitchhiking to get around simply because there are few options.
“Even just being able to let someone know when you are leaving your house and when you arrive somewhere is important,” said Craig, who has travelled the lonely stretch of highway countless times.
“In Kitsumkalum people will be standing at the gas station hoping to find someone they know to get a ride with, and if they can’t, they have to hitchhike,” said Bryant. She said she will pick up hitchhikers whenever she can, but only if it’s a family or a girl. “I will pick them up and remind them it’s not safe,” she said.
Craig said she is feeling encouraged. “We are trying to shift from tears to hope, and this year we were involved in a healing walk on February 14, that in previous years had been a protest march. We are getting some acknowledgment of the issues and as community agencies there has been a sense of forward motion and working together.”
While she is pleased that cellphone service is expanding, Bryant said bus services, particularly on weekends when there is no bus service, still need to improve.
“A cellular signal is an important lifeline when you’re on the road, especially in rural and remote parts of the province,” the minister of said citizens’ services, Anne Kang.
Telus said it hopes to eventually close all the gaps in cell coverage between Prince Rupert and Prince George.