THE INDEPENDENTS: Connecting the north takes a community to build a network

By Ruby Pratka

THE NINE CREE AND FOUR francophone communities that ring James Bay in Quebec’s far north may be nearly 1,000 kilometres from major cities, but the rest of the world is only fractions of a second away in most of them thanks to a recent partnership between the Eeyou Communications Network (ECN), the locally run nonprofit which oversees telecommunications in the vast, sparsely populated territory, Toronto-based independent carrier Distributel and several other public and private partners.Alfred Loon is president and founder of ECN. He says the project was first conceived a decade ago as an economic development project with the Cree...