Why Canada Doesn’t Care About These Towns

Schefferville is an old mining town of only 213 people in remote northeastern Canada. The train station is the communities lifeline to the outside world, but once the mines dried up, the trains stopped servicing Schefferville, leaving its mostly Indigenous inhabitants isolated.

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Faultline is produced by:

Executive Producer/Story Editor/Host: Andy Burgess
Story/Research: Jamie Elms
Editors: Vivek Manoharan & Andy Burgess
Motion Graphics: Andy Burgess
Artwork: Tim Burgess of Wild Tales Illustration

Archive Maps from David Rumsey

Sources 🔗

Time Stamps:

0:00 - Welcome to Canada's most isolated Town
1:00 - History of the region
2:10 - What's it like living here
2:48 - Schefferville's Mining boom and bust
3:56 - A Railway to the outside world
5:00 - Why the QNSL left a community isolated
5:31 - The Tshiuetin Rail Transportation
6:24 - The train journey takes how long?!
7:37 - The future of this Indigenous Railway

#canada #railway #geography

[Faultlinevideos]

Let us know the longest train journey you have ever been on and what it was like? 👀🚂

[masterseems]

My niece is a school teacher in Schefferville & has been there for 5 yrs. She is originally from the Eastern Townships, Quebec & speaks English, French & the two main Innu languages of Northern Quebec. She regularly takes the train down to Sept Iles in order to meet up with family & friends who live even further south. Non natives may find a 14 hr. train ride something to be endured. The Innu in Schefferville & up & down the line view it as a way to connect with their friends & family so these train rides are more of a social occasion. The Innu now own the railway & the tracks & also Air Inuit so no one is stuck up there. The Canadian Govt. doesn't ignore these people, but simply allows them to run their own affairs which they do very competently. Most of them don't want govt. meddling in their affairs anyway. So just because they don't live like the rest of us do, who is to say their way of life is not a good one. The Brit who made this video has forgotten one very important thing & that is many native peoples are not poor, run their own affairs & want to keep a more traditional way of life.

[aldore]

As a Canadian that use to live in Northern Quebec, not as far north as Schefferville. I appreciate you making this video shining a light on the story of people that reside in Northern Canada. Also impressed how you were able to say Sept-Îles properly. 👏

[MaltGambit]

I grew up in Labrador City and briefly worked for QNS&L, weird seeing it discussed by someone from across the pond lol. The old fella cutting cake at 2:54 was a good friend and neighbour of my father and the longest-working employee of IOC at 52 years. He started working in Schefferville in the late 50s and later moved to Lab City, he sadly passed away some years ago at age 75....his name was Jean Goulet.

[heronimousbrapson]

This is what happens to mining towns: once the mineral deposits are mined out, they die unless some other economic base can be established. British Columbia has numerous "ghost towns" that have either been completely abandoned or have a fraction of their peak populations. These once bustling communities were not all in the northern part of the province either.

[pierreolive]

Very interesting video!
You forgot to mention the regular air service. I’m a flight attendant at Air Inuit, and we operate multiple weekly flights to Schefferville from Montreal via Quebec City and Sept Iles. People from the town can travel to Sept Iles in just over an hour, or make it all the way down to Montreal in an afternoon. Airlines are a huge contributor to the survival of small communities, but perhaps Schefferville’s case is more interesting and unique due to the unusual nature of Canadian passenger railways. Looking forward to flying back already!

[FightSceneFilmSchool]

A doctor friend of mine recently volunteered in Northern Ontario and the town was only accessible by small plane. There are a lot of places like that in Canada - I was surprised trains were even an option for Schefferville. 🙂
Keep up the good work!

[sagefaribole]

Thank you for making this video! I've lived in Canada since 2015 and had no idea about Scherfferville and this train line operated by indigenous folks! It's important to shine a light on this ❤

[ryanpugh]

Air Inuit flies from Sept Iles' regional airport to Schefferville at least twice a week. It's definitely not cheap, but if you need to get there quickly, it's the way to go.

Schefferville is not quite as isolated as the video would lead you to believe.

Tata Steel operates near town and another major operation, Joyce Lake, is going through environmental assessment. It's only going to get busier.

[Hamsteak]

I didn't even know this rail line existed and I'm a Canadian geography nerd. Thanks for the video

[BCATC.r]

As a Canadian who lives in the BC North I can say this is more common than you think. Cambridge Columbia there are so many secluded little villages that don't even have roads to them you have to take ATVs or boats or airplanes to get to them there's secluded little villages that have religious people in their beliefs hidden away from the public. Along the Alaskan highway you'll see a lot of things like this

[haroeneissa]

To be fair. You can't really expect the Canadian government to spend millions of dollars on a really long nationalised railway that leads to a town of only 200 people. That wouldn't be fair against the taxpayers in the rest of Canada. Imagine your government announcing that they are gonna spend 30 million on a single apartment block every year. That wouldn't be in proportion compared to the value of the property.

[BensTakeYT]

Great video, love what you guys have been doing.

[FHL-Devils]

Canada is a truly massive country with staggering infrastructure costs. These communities of a few hundred (at most) people simply are not financially or socially sustainable by a financially responsible government.

[Homer-OJ-Simpson]

You went from 7k subscribers to 27k in about a month. Wow, you guys are growing fast! I said in the last video that’ll when you crossed 20k that you will hit 100k by Dec 31 and it looks like you will!

[hbowman]

Fermont, another small town in the area, is famous because about a third of its approximately 2, 500 residents live in one building, which contains stores, offices, and an indoor swimming pool, and functions as a windbreak shielding the rest of the town from blowing snow.

[lioneldemun]

Fun fact : Montreal and Quebec are at the same latitude as Central Europe and further South as Britain!

[groovycody]

speaking candidly from my personal perspective, you could live in an old mining town with a population of 12, 823 as of 2016 and trust me, the federal governments still gonna make you feel as if youre a bunch of barnacles on a rock.

[jean-emmanuelrotzetter]

Thanks.
I used to travel frequently from Switzerland to Eastern part of Canada for private and business reasons, a region and people I like.
And had several discussions on railway, public transports with local "experts" - to understand that even those "experts" do not understand what the advantages of a railway network could be for Canada. 
Friends of mine from Switzerland - railway fans - have travelled by train to Churchill years ago. Maybe I try to use the train to Shefferville on a future trip to Québec.

[kylerclarke]

As an Ontarian who has driven much of Canada, I've often wondered about the remote towns in Ontario and Quebec far to the north. What a perfect video!