CHISASIBI, QUE.—If you want to drive north in eastern Canada, it doesn't get much farther north than here.

This Cree town lies at the very end of the highway in Quebec next to James Bay, almost at the confluence of Hudson Bay. It's a vast land of short trees and shorter summers, 1,600 km of driving straight up from Toronto.

The road stretches here to serve the massive hydro dams of northern Quebec. Hunters and trappers also use the road, and occasional bus loads of tourists come in the summer to gawk at the immense scale of the dam at Radisson.

And then there's us. Well, it seemed a good idea last week.

The plan was to travel to one of the coldest and most remote places in the country, reachable from Toronto over a long weekend of fairly monotonous driving, to see if Wheels' long-term Toyota Prius hybrid tester would start in the frigid minus 40 C temperatures common to the area.

After all, Prius owners were united in their wrath last month when I reported that the car wouldn't start on a minus 14-degree morning. It must have been operator error, they told me in unison. Even Toyota Canada itself sent me a cordially restrained note suggesting that I should "RTFM — Read The Flipping Manual" next time.

I still don't know why the car wouldn't start that day because I did RTFM and followed it to the letter, but I figured that if it were to seize up on us, it might as well do so on the empty shore of James Bay as the Beaches. It would make for a better story to tell the grandchildren.


The original idea was for three of us to drive the Prius — redesigned for 2004 — on its own, loaded down with emergency blankets and chocolate bars. 

Wheels' reviewer Laurance Yap agreed to come along to see what the end of the road looked like. As well, Thane Silliker, an experienced long-distance motorcyclist who once rode to Radisson just so he could turn around and ride back again, was keen to join us.

At the last moment, the mothering instincts of Wheels' performance car writer Nika Rolczewski came to the fore and she sweet-talked Porsche into providing a Cayenne SUV as a chase vehicle for her to drive, to make sure we had enough snacks and provisions. 

We left my home in Milton last Friday on a minus 21-degree morning. Since that early failure, which probably was my fault as a rookie operator, the Prius has started obediently on the very coldest and windiest of mornings. It hummed happily into life and we headed north for an uneventful drive past North Bay, reaching Rouyn-Noranda at 4 p.m. and pausing for pizza. 

This would be the last big town, with the last Tim Hortons, before our goal 1,000 km away, so we made the most of it before carrying on to Matagami, swapping drivers all along the way. Laptop computers provided DVD entertainment for the passengers; curves in the road kept the drivers busy.

The four-door Prius hatchback was spacious enough for two and had plenty of room in its trunk and back seats for all our luggage. Being relatively light, it was blown around a little on the unprotected highway compared with the heavier Cayenne. Its big advantage was that it cost less than half the price of gasoline needed to refuel the Porsche. It returned about 7 L/100 km and not the 4.1 L/100 km that Toyota claims, but then fuel mileage suffers considerably in cold weather. 

This second-generation Prius also tends to use the battery more in city driving — and hence less fuel — but there were few delays along our route.

Sam Cox, manager of tourism for the 
Cree town of Chisasibi, welcomes
the Toyota Prius to the shore of 
James Bay

The Porsche, however, attracted far more attention. "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" asked the young gas jockey when we reached 

Matagami four hours later, and let loose with a stream of mightily impressed Québécois invective that was completely lost on our non-fluent understanding. 

I think he wanted an explanation of why such a large vehicle would carry a Porsche badge — many others have asked the same question, but it's not an easy answer to provide in a barely understood language.

"C'est un Jeep de Porsche," I told him, and he grinned a lot and seemed satisfied. 

And maybe it did make sense as an answer, after all.

It was here we found that our map of Quebec didn't reach much farther north. A single dark line snaked up and off the chart, with an arrow and a note that said simply "Radisson 620 km."

The Pub Dépô was the only place in Matagami with any action happening and we quickly were it. 

After Laurance Yap was given an overly friendly greeting in the washroom by a grizzled miner, we decided to head on to the reservations I'd made a few days before for the Hydro-Québec camp at Km 381 up the Radisson road — the only possible stop along the way.

Before setting off along the road, drivers must check in at a security office, just in case. 

For us, the officer there warned, the greatest challenge would be the caribou on the road, spotted that night on their annual migration as far south as Km 237. 

Oh, and the road would be really slippery, too.

We pressed on into the darkness, grateful for the second vehicle, the satellite phone and the can filled with spare gas. 

The extra-wide road, built in the 1970s to allow truck weights of 500 tonnes, is fairly flat but curves constantly as it follows the winding route of the region's eskers. 

There is another group of visitors who enjoy this road in the summer: long-distance motorcyclists have adopted it as a riding mecca for both its challenge and its reward. After all, with hardly any traffic and no settlement for 600 km, its suggested 100 km/h speed limit is neither patrolled nor enforced. Nobody can remember anybody ever receiving a speeding ticket.

Its remoteness, however, is its own enforcement. With the nearest gas being 381 km away, farther than North Bay from Toronto, motorcycles must carry extra fuel and watch their consumption to make the distance.

There was no possibility of such antics on this night, however — the road was too icy and the threat of an imminent caribou too real. The closer we drove to Km 237, the more I expected a massive herd of hairy, doe-eyed beasts to be standing right at the distance marker, impenetrable and ready to charge.

The heavier, stronger Porsche led the way, but we passed 237, and 250 and 300. Perhaps the caribou were a made-up tourist trap, like Bigfoot or Nessie? Just as I was relaxing my steely gaze and white-knuckle grip on the wheel, the first pair of reflected eyes lit up down the road, quickly followed by a dozen more.

The caribou! On the road to eat the salt, such as it was. They were blinded by the Cayenne's xenon beams and ran hither and thither as we approached, eventually thinking to jump off the road into the forest. One caribou, though, ran in front of us for about two kilometres, hooves skittering on the ice, before finally leaping away.

Several more small groups gathered on the road and scattered in our headlights before we reached the camp at Km 381 at about 2.30 a.m. We checked into rudimentary rooms, served by a single rudimentary washroom and shower room, for a few hours sleep...

...Before doing it all again the next day. The Prius started immediately in the minus 18 cold and we were back on the road for the last 250 km into Radisson, chasing caribou much of the way. 

The trees shrunk a little more and there seemed to be more snow on the road as we approached its northern nub. At Radisson in the mid-afternoon, we took a side trip to see the dam before heading east for the final hour's drive to the saltwater bay. 

Chisasibi's lights shone across the snow as we entered the native reserve and drove the last few kilometres toward the town. Entering its limits and searching for the community's sole motel, we dodged snowmobiles out for the evening, enjoying the comparative warmth of a northern heat wave.

Heat wave?

"Oh yes," said Sam Cox, the town's manager of tourism, over breakfast the next morning. 

"This is really very warm. It's normally much, much colder. You should have been here just a few nights ago when it was minus 44 — the cars and trucks just weren't starting. My truck is still frozen."

It was minus 16 that morning, some three degrees warmer than Toronto. We could have stayed at home in bed to test the Prius in the driveway.

It started, of course, with no complaint at all. Cox himself thumbed the starter button and drove us to the shores of the bay 15 km away (since his truck was still frozen), where we walked out onto the ice and took photographs.

It was cold there, with the wind whipping in off the frigid open water another 10 km out, but we were happy. We'd made our objective and both the Prius and the Cayenne performed admirably.

"Right, then," we said. "Time to head home. How far is it again?"

The Wheels team drove home to Toronto in a marathon 24-hour drive on mostly slippery roads. Aside from a cracked windshield on the Porsche, thanks to a flying stone, neither vehicle seemed the worse for wear after their 3,500 km adventure.

Snow tires were essential, as were suitable emergency provisions and equipment for both people and machines. 

The Prius returned a disappointing average of 7.06 L/100 km in driving temperatures between minus 21 (Milton) and minus 13 (Radisson), but ran flawlessly. 

As for the Porsche — well, it's never claimed to be economical on gas. Its heated seats, however, were fabulous.



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Mark Richardson is the editor of Wheels. E-mail: [email protected] .