The Eastmain River, formerly written East Main, is a

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

in west central

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. It rises in central Quebec and flows west to

James Bay James Bay (french: Baie James; cr, ᐐᓂᐯᒄ, Wînipekw, dirty water) is a large body of water located on the southern end of Hudson Bay in Canada. Both bodies of water extend from the Arctic Ocean, of which James Bay is the southernmost par ...

, draining an area of . The

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

Cree The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada ...

village of

Eastmain Eastmain ( ; cr, ᐄᔅᒣᐃᓐ/Îsmein) is a Cree community located on east coast of James Bay at the mouth of the Eastmain River, Quebec, Canada. It is a small coastal Cree village with a population of 924 people in the 2021 Canadian Censu ...

is located beside the mouth.

Name

Eastmain is a

compounding In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of a custom formulation of a medication to fit a unique need of a patient that cannot be met with commercially available products. This may be done for me ...

of the river's former name East Main, which was taken from the former

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

outpost at its mouth, which controlled the its operations in the East Main District on the eastern side of

Geography

Since the late 1980s, most of the waters of the Eastmain River have been diverted and flow northwards through the Opinaca Reservoir, with a surface area of about , and into the

Robert-Bourassa Reservoir The Robert-Bourassa Reservoir () is a man-made lake in northern Quebec, Canada. It was created in the mid-1970s as part of the James Bay Project and provides the needed water for the Robert-Bourassa and La Grande-2-A generating stations. It has a ...

Hydro-Québec Hydro-Québec is a public utility that manages the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity in the Canadian province of Quebec, as well as the export of power to portions of the Northeast United States. It was established by the ...

's La Grande Complex. The remainder of the Eastmain River contains only about 10 percent of the volume of its former flow, and is now subject to freeze-up in winter (see photo). These changes have affected the

and

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

peoples who live along the Eastmain River and James Bay coast. Eastmain-to-Otish-QFJAAWCCC

A further hydroelectric project on the upper Eastmain River was under construction in 2005. The project was part of the original hydroelectric project provided for by the

James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (french: Convention de la Baie-James et du Nord québécois) is an Aboriginal land claim settlement, approved in 1975 by the Cree and Inuit of northern Quebec, and later slightly modified in 1978 by th ...

of 1975. The Eastmain Reservoir will eventually have a surface area of about , and the Eastmain-1 power plant will generate a maximum of 900 MW. Eastmain-River-shoreline-QFJAAWCCC

History

The mouth of the Eastmain was a centre of the

Hudson Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

fur trade.

Charles Bayly Charles Bayly, ( fl. 1630–1680), the first overseas governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, likely spent his early years in the court of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I. He was an English born French Roman Catholic in this Protes ...

reached it from

Rupert House Waskaganish ( cr, ᐙᔅᑳᐦᐄᑲᓂᔥ/Wâskâhîkaniš, Little House; ) is a Cree community of over 2,500 people at the mouth of the Rupert River on the south-east shore of James Bay in Northern Quebec, Canada. Waskaganish is part of the t ...

in the 1670s. After Rupert House was destroyed in 1686, the area was visited by a ship from

York Factory York Factory was a settlement and Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) factory (trading post) located on the southwestern shore of Hudson Bay in northeastern Manitoba, Canada, at the mouth of the Hayes River, approximately south-southeast of Churchill. Yo ...

. In 1723 to 1724, Joseph Myatt of the Hudson's Bay Company built a post.Arthur S Morton, ''A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71'', no date, circa 1950

References

Rivers of Nord-du-Québec James Bay Project Tributaries of James Bay {{Quebec-river-stub

Name

Geography

History

See also

References