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Photography book shows K-Country before and after 2013 flooding

Canmore residents can vividly recall the events of June 20, 2013 when mountain creeks in the Bow Valley swelled with storm runoff and debris.
The Great Kananaskis Flood published by Rocky Mountain Books contains photographs and stories about the 2013 flooding of K-Country.
The Great Kananaskis Flood published by Rocky Mountain Books contains photographs and stories about the 2013 flooding of K-Country.

Canmore residents can vividly recall the events of June 20, 2013 when mountain creeks in the Bow Valley swelled with storm runoff and debris.

The memory is still crisp locally of when a state of emergency was enacted and the communities of Canmore and Banff were cut off to the east and to the west.

In Kananaskis Country, which ranges from the edge of Canmore all the way to Bragg Creek, the torrential storm that dumped rain on this part of Alberta wreaked havoc there as well.

But as a provincial park, with Alberta Parks crews responding to the emergency situation (over 8,000 people were airlifted out of K-Country) there were not many images of what was taking place to the landscape.

The damage was dramatic, but a ministerial closure on the landscape prevented the public from accessing it and, as a result, photographing it. That doesn’t mean provincial staff and backcountry users didn’t take photos at the time, though, and now the public has a chance to see them.

Those keen to get a closer look at the 2013 flood’s effects in Kananaskis can do just that with Gillean Daffern and Derek Ryder’s new book, The Great Kananaskis Flood, which has been released by publisher Rocky Mountain Books.

Ryder, who is also chair of the volunteer non-profit group Friends of Kananaskis Country, said putting a before and after photography book together made sense to share the story of what happened and its aftermath.

“We knew there were a lot of photographs out there of things that people would never see,” Ryder said.

Ryder and Daffern credited Alberta Parks and Jill Sawyer in particular with providing the majority of the photographs contained in the book. Daffern also collected the stories of those who were there at the time.

“If the first section reads like a suspense novel,” Daffern said, “that is because it was very suspenseful for those people caught in it and there were many near misses, but you have to read all about it in the book.”

Publishing of the book is also a fundraising effort for Friends of Kananaskis Country, which is a non-proft that boasts a membership of 1,500 people who care about the public lands contained within K-Country.

Since 2013, the majority of the volunteer organization’s trail work has gone into repairing flood damage, with Ryder estimating around 4,000 hours a year on average.

“We put in 30 to 50 days a year getting out on trails and working with parks crews,” he said. “Of the 1,200 kilometres of trail in Kananaskis Country, 600 were damaged by the floods.”

Since 2013, the province has funded trail repair through Alberta Parks with a fund of $60 million, but that flood recovery work and funding ends this year. The Friends of Kanansakis Country are hoping funds from the book’s sale will help them in the long run to continue their efforts to repair trails.

“Parks has done an awesome job putting bridges back, but it is different than it was before,” said Ryder, referring to the changes in how trails were reconstructed.

Regulars to Kananaskis Country may have already seen some of the changes taking place to the trail design, post flood, but the book also does a good job showing what happened at places like Ribbon Creek, Galatea and Jewel Pass.

Ryder said a lot of work has been done to replace washed out trails and all of it was done with trail design priorities like sustainability in mind.

The Great Kananaskis Flood is available in Canmore at Café Books on Main Street.


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