Gillam is a town on the Nelson River in northern Manitoba, Canada. It is situated between Thompson and Churchill on the Hudson Bay Railway line.
Many residents of Gillam are employed by Manitoba Hydro at one of their many facilities or support groups. Located within Gillam's boundaries, Hydro has four hydro dams—Kettle Generating Station, Long Spruce Generating Station, Limestone Generating Station (the largest in Manitoba) and Keeyask (in construction)—three HVDC stations—Radisson, Henday, and Keewatinohk—and a few support groups.
History
The large Gillam Local Government District () was established by the Manitoba government in the mid-1960s to facilitate development of hydroelectricity on the lower Nelson River. At , Gillam is considered to be the 9th largest city or town in Canada by area, although the majority of the encompassing area of the District is largely uninhabited and undeveloped, but filled with many lakes, rivers and large forests of pine trees. It is the largest town in Manitoba, and one of four extremely large "towns" (the other three are Leaf Rapids, Snow Lake, and Lynn Lake) in northern Manitoba that, although technically towns, are mostly rural and are the size of most typical counties in the United States or eastern Canada.
Gillam is also the home of Fox Lake Cree Nation, a First Nations Band. A majority of the members of Fox Lake Cree Nation live in the Town of Gillam or on Reserve Land in the nearby community of Bird, which is also located within the Gillam Local Government District. The ghost town of Sundance whose purpose was to facilitate the building of the Limestone Generating Station, is also within the District of Gillam. Once a busy, fully functioning town, it has since been abandoned and torn down after the completion of Limestone (named for the Limestone River that empties into the Nelson just downstream of the dam).
2019 BC murders
In late July and early August 2019, Gillam became an inadvertent subject in worldwide media after a burning Toyota RAV4 was found near Fox Lake Cree Nation. The RCMP confirmed it belonged to Leonard Dyck, a BC man whose body was found near a burning pickup truck south of the Stikine River Bridge in British Columbia. The pickup truck's drivers, Bryer Schemegelsky and Kam Mcleod, then just considered missing persons, became suspects in the murder of Dyck and of a tourist couple whose bodies were found near Liard Hot Springs, BC. The RCMP launched a massive manhunt in the surrounding Gillam area, scouring through more than 11,000 square kilometres of dense brush and forest, and conducting searches of more than 500 houses in Gillam and nearby York Landing. After several days of fruitless searching, a breakthrough came through on August 3, when a damaged rowboat and several objects belonging to Schmegelsky and Mcleod were found scattered along the banks of the nearby Nelson River. On August 7, the RCMP confirmed that it had found the bodies of Schemegelsky and Mcleod about 1 kilometre from the rowboat, who died in dense brush of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. They were found approximately 65 kilometres north-east of Gillam.
Geography
thumb|400px|left|Location of Gillam on [[Stephens Lake (Manitoba)|Stephens Lake ]]
Gillam is located on the southeastern shore of Stephens Lake, a reservoir created by Manitoba Hydro in 1971 by the Kettle Dam on the Nelson River.
Climate
Gillam has a subarctic climate (Dfc) with long and extremely cold winters, briefly interrupted by short and mild summers. Its inland position at 56 degrees latitude causes severe freezes in winter, even though its all-time extreme cold temperatures are less extreme than its normals suggest. The lack of warming chinook influences ensures that Gillam is colder than Fairbanks, Alaska, despite the fact the latter is eight degrees latitude farther north and a greater distance from the sea.