KENORA – Cat Lake First Nation needed help, and the Kenora District Services Board showed up.
The remote Ojibway community northeast of Red Lake was hit by a fire that burned down its Margaret Gray Nursing Station on Saturday, destroying medical equipment and supplies, leaving nurses without a place to assist residents and – among other damages – destroying a fibre optics line that ran through the nursing station.
In partnership with Kenora information technology business FSET Inc., the KDSB is providing temporary Starlink high-speed internet to ensure the nursing team in Cat Lake stays connected to vital resources and services.
The KDSB is currently working with FSET to deploy Starlink as soon as possible, a KDSB spokesperson said by email.
Henry Wall, the board’s chief administrative officer, explained in a phone interview that getting internet connectivity restored to Cat Lake was something they could do quickly to help the First Nation.
He said the KDSB reached out with the tech assistance because “it’s the right thing to do and, you know, in times of crisis it’s really important that communities support each other.
“We had an extra unit sitting around, so it was easy to send it over right away and support Cat Lake,” Wall said.
At the end of a news conference Tuesday morning in Toronto on another matter, Cat Lake Chief Russell Wesley detailed a number of actions being taken in response to a fire that prompted him to declare a state of emergency.
He said some Cat Lake residents have been relocated to larger centres for health care, nurses in Cat Lake have been moved to the local fire base, and two additional nurses have come in from another First Nation.
“There’s long-term planning happening now in terms of a long-term solution,” he said, adding that “there’s a lot of effort to resolve the situation very quickly.”
