Ice Roads Mobilities: A Photo Essay from the MacKenzie Delta All photography by Jonathan Taggart, text by Phillip Vannini. Living off the grid tie doesn't mean living without a road to take home. It's true that there are some small island communities (such as British Columbia's Lasqueti Island) which thrive without a bridge or a car ferry, but it is uncommon for off-grid dwellings to be without some kind of road access. And while it's true that you're unlikely to run into an off-grid home near a freeway exit or along a littered cup's windblown flight route from the nearest Tim Horton's, the acreages in the exurban and rural areas that off-gridders call home are always located at the end of a drive way. This creates an obvious transportation challenge for the sustainability-minded off-gridders, as every mile driven on the family's 4x4 is a giant step back off the path to a carbon-neutral life. I am not alone in pointing out this contradiction; off-gridders are fully aware of their car dependency and often feel quite guilty about it. Committed environmentalists like Dave, from Lasqueti Island, and Conrad, from Edmonton, strategically switch to bicycles and public transit to avoid consuming fossil fuels, but these kinds of choices are rare. Transportation is a key aspect of life off the grid. No one in this day and age in Canada--and arguably anywhere else--can live without some kind of access to the rest of the world. Accessibility to places of employment, supply stores, schools,