CELPIP Reading Part 3 Practice Test: Ice Roads of Canada’s North

Paragraph A

For most of the year, dozens of communities in Canada’s North can be reached only by plane. Every winter, however, a temporary network of roads appears across frozen lakes, rivers and the swampy ground known as muskeg, linking these places to the rest of the country for a few short weeks. Some of these roads are hundreds of kilometres long, and many must be rebuilt from scratch each year. Known as ice roads or winter roads, they allow trucks to deliver fuel, building materials and other bulky goods that would cost far too much to send by air. In remote First Nations communities in northern Manitoba and Ontario, many households time large purchases, from furniture to snowmobiles, around the weeks when the road is open.

Paragraph B

Building an ice road involves much more than ploughing a path across a lake. Crews begin as soon as the ice can support light equipment, and their first job is to clear away the snow, which acts like a blanket and slows freezing. They then pump lake water onto the surface, where it freezes in layers and thickens the ice faster than nature could on its own. The thickness is checked constantly, traditionally by drilling holes and now also with ground-penetrating radar towed behind a vehicle. Heavier loads are permitted only once the ice reaches the required depth, and the allowed weight rises gradually as the season goes on.

Paragraph C

Driving on these roads comes with its own set of rules. Speed limits are kept low, and not simply to prevent skidding. A heavy truck moving over floating ice pushes a wave through the water beneath it, and if the truck is travelling too fast, that wave can strike the shoreline and break the ice from below. Drivers are also told to keep a long distance between vehicles and to avoid stopping on the ice, since a heavy load left in one place can gradually weaken the surface beneath it. One of the best-known routes, the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road in the Northwest Territories, stretches roughly 400 kilometres from near Yellowknife, mostly across frozen lakes, and carries supplies to diamond mines during a season that usually lasts only about two months.

Paragraph D

In recent decades, milder winters have made the ice season less predictable. Some roads have opened weeks late or closed early, leaving communities short of fuel and supplies. As a result, there is growing pressure to replace certain ice roads with permanent, all-weather highways. In 2017, for example, the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway opened in the Northwest Territories, giving Tuktoyaktuk its first year-round road connection to the rest of Canada and replacing a seasonal ice road. Such projects are expensive and difficult to build on permafrost, however, so for many northern communities the ice road remains a vital, if increasingly fragile, lifeline.