Later this summer, there's a significant upgrade coming for Long Plain First Nation, southwest of Portage la Prairie.

Yellowquill Trail East is the main entrance to the community, off Highway 305, and has been closed for some time.

Chief Dennis Meeches tells why.

Dennis Meeches

"The past couple of years we noticed there was quite a bit of bank instability there, and erosion," he says, "Last year we had an engineer come look at the road, and they basically declared it unsafe, so we closed the road down. Last year, we had to do a temporary route, for people to get in."
 
Meeches anticipates final plans for the new route will be ready in about a month.

"The engineers recommendation is we're probably looking at after September long weekend (for construction)," he says, "That's their target. Everything still needs to cleared through I-NAC (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada), and their engineer, on how we should proceed, so it looks like the project will proceed, from what we heard at the meeting this past week."

He doesn't have a firm cost yet, but thinks it'll be 5 to 7 million dollars.

Meeches has mixed feelings about de-commissioning the historic Yellowquill Trail.

"The road is an historic trail, winding through Long Plain First Nation," he says, "We thought there was a good chance that they could save the road, but once we saw the cost estimates that came in ($30,000,000), the government being able to provide that kind of money to fix the road was way beyond what they were able to do."