A year ago, rivers and streams in the Bow Valley rose rapidly as 220 millimetres of rain fell in a 36-hour period.
Canmore’s dikes held back the Bow River, but along Cougar Creek, some 44 houses saw extensive damage when the creek, usually a quiet intermittent stream, rose dramatically, becoming a debris-choked river.
The flood of 2013 was a significant event, but it was not the first time Canmore has seen large and damaging floodwaters.
For a community that has straddled the Bow River for 131 years, flooding has always been a regular part of life with major floods in 1924, 1932 and, of course, 1974. The 1974 flood led the province to build the dikes along the Bow River through Canmore.
The Canmore Museum and Geoscience Centre is exploring this broad view of flooding in Canmore as part of its upcoming exhibition, Canmore’s Floods, opening Thursday (June 19) following the museum’s annual general meeting.
The AGM begins at 7 p.m. and the exhibition will open at 7:45 p.m.
“(The exhibition) gives a sense of why this valley floods. We’re trying to tell the story through the historic flooding, which is more related to the Bow River, but also the most recent flooding, which is more related to the mountain creeks that surround the valley and caused the debris flows and debris floods,” said exhibition curator Michale Lang.
“There is a difference and we’re trying to draw the distinction that this is a long history and that people should really be prepared for flooding in the valley. We’re also going to talk about the mitigation and have some stories about the 2013 flood.”
Canmore’s Floods is a temporary exhibition, tied to the one-year anniversary of the flood of 2013, and a fundraiser intended to help the museum create a new permanent exhibition that tells the stories of Canmore and its community.
A water main in the Canmore Civic Centre broke in late January and water inundated the main floor, including the museum and its gift shop, office and library. The water that spread throughout the main floor building thankfully caused no real damage to the archives and the museum’s collection of artifacts and photographs.
“All of the exhibits have been damaged beyond repair by the flood at the Civic Centre so we talk about the Civic Centre flood and its part of a long-term fundraising campaign to help us build new exhibits,” she said. “This is a temporary exhibit, but it will be here for a while until we can raise the money to install a permanent exhibit that tells the stories of the community.”
The gift shop, offices, library and exhibition hall have since been restored and Canmore’s Floods is the first exhibition that will be on display as part of its re-opening.
Overall, Lang described the exhibition as a bird’s-eye view of flooding in Canmore.
“It is a big story, the 2013 flood, and we want to talk about all of the different issues around that. I think what you have to do is you can’t make it simplistic, but you have to make it as simple as possible so people can understand the story you’re trying to tell. But also you want to put a human face on it. We felt one of the most important pieces was the audio-visual piece.”
This video shows footage of the flood captured by videographer Glen Crawford and interviews with residents who live along Cougar Creek, produced by Catherine Nadia and Martin Finnerty.
“It just puts that human face on it. The magnitude of the flooding is hard to imagine, even from photographs. When you see those video images it really gives you a strong sense of the power of that water and how devastating it really was and we wanted to show that,” said Lang.
“We thought it was a relevant topic just in general in Canmore because it has impacted a lot of people’s lives in the long term.”
