Shoal Lake 40 'Freedom Road' crowdfunding campaign nears deadline

Superior Morning8:49Honour the Source Campaign

With just days to go, we check in with the man behind the crowdfunding campaign for a road to Shoal Lake 40 First Nation.

A crowdfunding campaign to raise the $10 million needed to complete a road to Shoal Lake 40 First Nation wraps up on August 29 and so far it has only reached one per cent of its target.

The First Nation was cut off from the mainland when a canal was built nearly 100 years ago totransport fresh water fromShoal Lake to Winnipeg.

Both the City of Winnipeg and Province of Manitoba have committed to a one-third split of theproposed $30 million 'Freedom Road' to Shoal Lake 40, but the federal government has only committed to funding a design study.

• Freedom Road campaign aims to raise $10M for Shoal Lake 40 First Nation
• Shoal Lake reserve residents weep as Ottawa balks at funding road construction
• Shoal Lake 40 and Winnipeg's drinking water: What's at stake?

"What Ottawa won't do, I'm proposing we do," said Rick Harp, the Winnipeg resident who launched the Honour the Source campaign on June 29.

The isolation of Shoal Lake 40 has resulted in a cruel irony. The community has been without safe drinking water of its own for 18 years. A road would make the cost of a water treatment plant in the community more viable.

"Right from the beginning people were saying, 'Really?You're going tocrowdfund a basic human need like the right to water, that's ridiculous,' and I said 'no more ridiculous than the need is there in order to do it,'" Harp said.

More than 800 people have made a pledge to the crowdfunding campaign, resulting in more than $80,000 in pledges. Harp acknowledged there's still a long way to go to get to $10 million in less than two weeks.

"If $10 million were to be crowdfunded that would be stupendous, that would be amazing," he said. "At the same time it's also an opportunity to educate, to agitate to get people to think about something they've never fully understood before."

Harp sees the crowdfunding as "a kind of plebiscite," and said the number of people who engage is just as important to him as the amount raised.