Hundreds of people were airlifted Monday out of the flood-prone Kashechewan reserve, a northern Ontario community that has faced four emergency evacuations in four years.

Ronnie Wesley and one-year-old Sload arrive in Stratford, Ont., from the Kashechewan First Nation on Monday. (Dave Chidley/Canadian Press)

Last week, ice jams and rising waters on the Albany River began to threaten the communities of Kashechewan and neighbouring Fort Albany near James Bay. Rising water levels also put the nearby community of Attawapiskat at risk.

The evacuation began on Friday, with military and commercial planes taking hundreds of people from Kashechewan and Fort Albany to safer communities in northern Ontario over the weekend.

Snow and fog forced the evacuation to halt Sunday, but it started again Monday, when about 450 Kashechewan residents were flown to Stratford and a handful of small towns in southern Ontario, where Red Cross workers set up hundreds of cots and makeshift kitchens in arenas and community centres.

The remaining 650 Kashechewan residents are expected to be flown out on Tuesday, officials said late Monday.

Residents may not be able to return home for six to eight weeks, which is a source of great anxiety, said Jonathon Solomon, chief of the Kashechewan First Nation reserve.

"Seeing the situation of my community, seeing the emotions of the people at this time of year, seeing the anxiety and the fear, it's very difficult to see your people continue to live in that state," Solomon told CBC News on Monday.

"You ask yourself, 'Do you really want this for the next 50 to 100 years?' I don't think so."

Debate over relocating Kashechewan

Floods have forced Kashechewan's residents to flee two other times since 2004, while in 2005, the community was temporarily relocated when the reserve's drinking water was found to contain high levels of E. coli.

The community and the federal government have debated possible solutions to end the cycle of evacuations.

In 2006, an adviser to the Department of Indian Affairs recommended the embattled community be permanently relocated to Timmins, Ont., about 480 kilometres to the south, at a cost of $200 million.

But Kashechewan residents said they preferred to be relocated to higher ground within their traditional hunting territory, at a cost of $500 million.

However, both relocation plans were nixed in 2007 when Kashechewan signed a $200-million deal with the newly elected Conservative government that promised to redevelop the reserve with a better dike and drainage system. Solomon said Kashechewan has so far seen little improvement.

In the House of Commons on Monday, New Democrat MP Charlie Angus, who represents the area, urged the Conservatives to take action in Kashechewan.

"Four emergencies in three years? I'd like to ask this minister to tell the Canadian people how many floods it's going to take, how many evacuations it's going to take to finally move these families to safe ground," Angus said.

Improvements reduced extent of flooding: Strahl

But Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl assured the House the evacuation was going smoothly. He added that the government was following through with the agreement it reached with Kashechewan.

"We're continuing to follow through on the memorandum of understanding signed with the chief and council of Kashechewan last year to ensure, as they requested, they stay in the community, and we work on the dikes to make it safe for years to come," Strahl said.

Strahl said that infrastructure improvements, such as installed pumps and levies, have already been made to minimize the extent of flooding in Kashechewan.

"Much of that work was what prevented the disaster from getting worse than it could have been, including protection of safe drinking water facilities and those sorts of things," Strahl said.

River levels too dangerous

Solomon said it has been nerve-racking for community members to leave their homes, but there was no other choice.

"It’s a safety issue, a precautionary measure that we decided has to be done," he said. "The water has not really receded to a point where you could say everything is going to be OK."

Kashechewan residents have been put up in motels, hotels or other accommodations in Cochrane, Greenstone, Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. The Ontario communities of Kapuskasing, Elliot Lake and Geraldton have also received people.

Meanwhile, Perth County, a farming region west of Toronto, expected to receive 1,000 people on Monday afternoon — 310 of them in Stratford and nearly 700 in the nearby towns of St. Marys, Milverton and Mitchell.

Stratford Mayor Dan Mathieson said the provincial government's emergency management agency asked his community to pitch in.

"Of course the only answer you can give in a time of crisis … is 'yes,' " he said, adding that any other community would do the same.

Evacuation plan prepared a year ago

The evacuation plan for this year's flooding had been in place for about a year, and the federal and provincial governments were awaiting a call from the community to kick their plans into gear, said Barry Radford, a spokesman for Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources in Huntsville.

Although Kashechewan is perennially beset by flooding, conditions this year are particularly bad, Radford said.

The Kashechewan reserve came into being in 1957, when Ottawa forcibly moved Cree hunters and their families to an isolated plain about 450 kilometres north of Timmins and near the coast of James Bay.