d'énergie de la Baie James, a subsidiary of Hydro-Québec, began construction on the Caniapiscau Reservoir, designed to feed the hydro-electric generating stations of the James Bay Project. Filling the reservoir began on October 25, 1981, and over the next three years it flooded numerous lakes such as Lakes Caniapiscau, Delorme, Brisay, Tournon, and Vermouille. It now fills a depression in the highest part of the Laurentian Plateau of the Canadian Shield, covering , or about four times the size of the natural lakes prior to impoundment. Since August 1985, the Caniapiscau River was partially diverted to the west into the Laforge River of the La Grande River watershed, flowing west to James Bay. Many new islands were created as a result of the lake's impoundment, and in 1997 Quebec's Commission de toponymie published a map naming those islands for significant works of Québécois literature. The names of the islands attracted controversy not only because they exclusively used French-language works, but also because Cree and Inuit First Nations leaders claimed that the sites already had native names, which were ignored and overwritten. Flora The Caniapiscau Reservoir is in the zone of discontinuous permafrost. The area surrounding the reservoir is vegetated entirely with taiga, or boreal forest, characterized by widely spaced Black Spruce with a thick underlayer of yellow-grey lichen and interspersed with muskeg and bogs. In the more moist areas, some closed coniferous forest stands may appear. On the more exposed land, a forest-tundra transition zone occurs where the woodland is replaced by lichen dominated tundra. See also List of lakes of Quebec Hydro-Québec James Bay Project List of Quebec rivers References Bibliography External links La Grande hydroelectric complex HAYEUR, Gaëtan. 2001. Summary of Knowledge Acquired in Northern Environments from 1970 to 2000. Montreal: Hydro-Québec World Lakes Database Explo-Sylva Air Saguenay Base on Lac Pau Lakes of Nord-du-Québec Lakes of Côte-Nord Reservoirs in Quebec James Bay Project Canada geography articles needing translation from French Wikipedia