A Cree family spends Christmas night in a snowdrift between Chisasibi and Nemaska

On Christmas Day, Chisasibi’s Alice Pepabano set out to visit family, the same way a lot of people do. But unlike most people, she and three passengers made it only as far as Kilometre 381 on the James Bay Highway before they were trapped in a snowbank and forced to spend 18 hours in their car.

Leaving Chisasibi after lunch, Pepabano, her brother, her sister, and her three-year-old daughter were headed to Nemaska, planning to stop first at the EM-1 Hydro station where her boyfriend works. After gassing up at the KM-381 rest stop, they continued on their way, turning down Route de la Sarcelle. Soon, however, the weather began to seem threatening.

“We were at about KM-30 on the Sarcelle road and we decided to go back,” Pepabano said. “Usually they always fix that road. It was always okay. But on that day no one seemed to fix that road. The wind was getting stronger, and there were snowdrifts. I wanted to go back to 381 to make a phone call to tell my boyfriend we couldn’t go any further.”

There was no cellular network coverage, and with high winds and no trees, the road was being covered over in thick drifts of blowing snow.

“There were lots of drifts all over the road,” Pepabano said. “We were out in the open, and the wind was blowing so hard we couldn’t see anything, even though we were only driving 10 or 20 kilometres per hour. I didn’t see the snowdrift at first because of the wind. I stepped on the brake pedal – it was kind of slippery. That’s when I hit it.”

Before leaving Chisasibi that afternoon, Pepabano said she felt that a voice was telling her to bring a knife with her, or to bring a shovel. She ignored these impulses, though she did bring a blanket her daughter had been given for Christmas that morning.

What that meant was that her car wasn’t equipped with a shovel, flares or any emergency equipment. The only thing they had was Pepabano’s boyfriend’s hockey stick, which she was bringing him. Pepabano and her brother attempted to dig the car out using the stick and their boots, but they didn’t get far.

“We were outside for about 30 minutes. I told my sister to come help us, but we were getting cold, our pants were getting wet. We had to go inside.”

Pepabano said she wasn’t worried they’d run out of gas and freeze to death, but she was concerned about how long it would be until they were found. She was sure someone would be looking for them, though her brother suffered a panic attack at first. (Her sister and daughter remained calm.)

“Me and my brother were very worried,” she said. “We were talking about what to do next – what if we run out of gas and the vehicle stops running? My brother told me we would sit up in the back seat, cover ourselves with my daughter’s warm blanket, and hold each other in a circle with my daughter in the middle, so she wouldn’t get cold.”

At the Eastmain Hydro Station, Pepabano’s boyfriend hadn’t slept for worry. At 6am on Boxing Day, he told a co-worker he was leaving to go looking for them, and the co-worker informed their boss, who organized a search expedition.

Meanwhile, Pepabano knew someone would come looking. “I put the hockey stick behind the vehicle because the snow was about 6ft high,” Pepabano explained. “I put it there so someone would see it. That’s what the Hydro workers told me – when they saw the hockey stick, that’s when they knew they’d found us.”

It had been 18 hours: the car was still running, though Pepabano guesses they had less than an hour’s worth of gas left, and they hadn’t eaten since their stop the previous night.

“My daughter had snacks, she had milk and juice,” said Pepabano. “We had water. My daughter shared her snacks with us.”

It wasn’t the first time Pepabano had been stuck on the road – two years ago she was forced to spend the night at KM-381 with her mother, but she says that event didn’t leave her worried about travelling in the winter. However, this time was different.

“It’s scary when there’s a child involved,” she said. “I was more scared for her. She’s very small and doesn’t have the same temperature.”

Pepabano said that in future she’d travel with a shovel, an emergency kit and possibly a tarp to trap heat over passengers’ heads.

Pepabano told her grandmother about the voices she’d ignored telling her to prepare better for the trip. “My grandmother said, ‘It must be your guardian angel. Next time listen to them.’”