The rain beat heavily on the roof of Kelly Schovanek’s newly purchased van parked next to Cougar Creek when he woke up in it on the morning of June 20.
The sound of boulders and rocks coming down the mountain creek rumbled, bass-like, as Schovanek woke up to a friend’s text message saying he better get his van out of the parking lot – a parking lot that a few hours later would no longer be there.
“I didn’t think it was going to be as heinous as it was when I woke up at 6 a.m.,” he said. “I got out and there were firetrucks already there and it was kind of getting a little serious.
“I may owe my survival and my van’s survival to Jay Englot for getting me out of there on time.”
The longtime Canmore local stood at the top of Cougar Creek for about 20 minutes and snapped the first of several thousand pictures he would take over the coming weeks.
“That is when I took my first photo, which is actually the cover of the book that I made,” Schovanek said. “It is a photo of Cougar Creek, pretty big and pretty wide, but you can still see there is a lot of land on both sides of the creek.”
Water Under The Bridge is the first photography book the young photographer has published, with the help of Victoria-based Atria Collective, which edited and designed it for him.
The book documents several weeks of flood response and flood stories in Canmore, Exshaw and High River. The first day of the flood saw Schovanek hiking up and down Cougar Creek four times with local photographer Beau Evans.
“My camera just got pummeled in water, I had garbage bags wrapped around it, it wasn’t really doing anything,” he said. “Half the photos I took I couldn’t see because the lenses were fogged up and just humidified.”
The size and scale of the natural disaster soon became apparent to Schovanek, as he and Evans took photos and video of what was unfolding around him.
“I found myself caught up in the moment a few times – me and Beau would be running around Cougar Creek, our adrenalin pumping.
“Then you would come across someone literally sitting there watching their house fall into the creek and you realize this affects people, this isn’t a video game, you have to take in the fact it is real and it’s happening.”
Within a week, Schovanek was in Exshaw helping out and taking pictures. Each day he would post on Facebook and his website, drawing attention to how serious the situation was.
“Exshaw was wild,” he said. “People were astounded, they had no idea the extent of the damage in Exshaw and still, even then they couldn’t get in (to help).”
Next, Schovanek went to High River to help with cleanup efforts and continue documenting the stories of the flood with friend and fellow photographer Doug Mitchell.
“I tiptoed a bit more sensitively in High River. I didn’t know people and I found myself talking to people more and asking them if they minded if I could take photos,” he said. “It became more of a document of the disaster and people’s ability to get up after they have been kicked down, then come together and clean their houses and take care of their belongings and everything that is left over.”
The name of the book, explained Schovanek, works on several levels with the obvious fact that the first photo he took was of the water flowing under the bridge on Elk Run Boulevard in Canmore.
“The week that this happened there was a flood in India and 7,000 people died and I remember that coming and going like water under the bridge, nobody really paid attention to it,” he said. “Here, the majority of it was belongings and people’s houses, which is a horrible thing. I’m not making light of it, but the fact is it is all belongings, it is water under the bridge, nobody really lost their neighbours or their friends or family, it was all just belongings.”
Likewise, with the initial emergency response period over, Schovanek said it is as if the event “has floated past us,” and what is left is the recovery.
“While the book was shot in a few weeks, the aftermath is going to take the next how many years to actually figure out who gets compensated for what and who is going to build what.”
Copies of the $30 book are available at March’s Flooring or Lube and Muffler in Canmore, with a few dozen left of the 160 printed. The self-published book, with proceeds going to flood release, will also be available at Café Books as of next week.
He is looking at printing another run, and those who are interested can contact him at [email protected] for more information.
