June 13, 2023

Canmore Flood – 10 Years Later

By Jacqueline Louie

It was 10 years ago, the Canmore Flood began, in June 2013, that an intense, slow-moving rainstorm and abrupt melting of the Rocky Mountain snowpack led to a historic flood in southern Alberta. In the Bow Valley, more than 25 centimetres of rain fell over the course of three days (nearly half of Canmore’s average annual rainfall). Rising water eroded creek and river banks, damaging or destroying many homes, and closing the Trans-Canada Highway. In the worst-hit area in Canmore, Cougar Creek carried rocks, boulders the size of small cars, entire trees, and other debris in a torrent downstream.

Southern Alberta’s flood of 2013 – one of the costliest disasters in Alberta history – damaged or destroyed major infrastructure, homes and businesses in the Bow Valley. While Canmore has since recovered, the town has made permanent changes, to protect the community if a similar event were to occur again in future.

Here’s a look back at what happened:

On the evening of June 19, 2013, it was raining heavily. At 1 a.m. on June 20, then-Canmore mayor John Borrowman woke up to the sound of his phone ringing. It was Canmore’s chief administrative officer, asking him to come to Canmore’s Emergency Management Centre to sign a local state of emergency. As soon as he did so, the town’s emergency management plan kicked into gear and people swung into action to protect Canmore from the rising flood waters.

 

 

High water damaged the railway and gas lines, as well as the Trans-Canada Highway. Several semi-trailer trucks ended up stuck on the highway, and the drivers had to be lifted out by helicopter.

 

 

Several Canmore neighborhoods back onto Cougar Creek, with residential and commercial developments built on a two-km-wide alluvial fan. This was the worst-hit area in Canmore in the flood. And A Bear and Bison Inn, located at 705 Benchlands Trail in Eagle Terrace, on the edge of the alluvial fan, had a front-row seat on the action.

 

 

During the flood, A Bear and Bison Inn was closed for three weeks, and seven weddings were relocated. Guests who were staying at A Bear and Bison Inn were evacuated to the Georgetown Inn, located in Canmore along Highway 1A, and then evacuated again because of the high threat of flooding in that area.

 

 

“The Town did a really good job of responding quickly to the flood. It was all hands on deck, whether it was trying keep the channel clear, or reinforcing existing walls in front of the Inn. Water was coming straight at the Inn and eroded the road in 30 minutes,” says A Bear and Bison Inn owner, Lonny Middleton.

 

 

As the floodwaters rose, backhoe operators quickly built a dike in front of the Inn, where the rising water had washed out the road. Several companies were involved, including Bremner Engineering and Construction, based in Canmore. “They brought all their backhoes and worked through the night. They were real heroes,” Middleton recalls.

 

 

He also has high praise for Canmore’s volunteer firefighters, who set up barricades to keep people away from collapsing creek banks, and evacuated people to safety.

“The leadership of Canmore and the people of Canmore did an amazing job of coming together very quickly and ensuring no lives were lost. It was a well-executed, never-before-done operation in the history of Canmore. Also, the support by the Alberta government was phenomenal.

 

 

“All in all, it was a really big event. As traumatic as it was, it would have been so much worse if not for the well thought out responses by everyone involved.”

After the water crested and water flows returned to normal, it took a lot of hard work by many people to rebuild roads and infrastructure in Canmore. This included the utility corridor in front of the Inn. Middleton remembers the consideration taken by the contractors who were rebuilding Benchlands Trail and armoring Cougar Creek to mitigate damage from future floods.

 

 

The contractors carefully timed their breaks with the wedding ceremonies taking place at the Inn. For one particular wedding, they even loaned the Inn a backhoe to use as a wedding prop, because the groom himself worked as a backhoe operator, in northern Alberta.

 

 

Cougar Creek drains an approximately 43-square-kilometre watershed, where for millennia, water has been washing rocks and sediment out of the mountains and down to the Bow River. Studies have shown evidence of flooding that has occurred as a normal event through the eons on Cougar Creek and other mountain creeks, Borrowman explains. What made the 2013 flood so destructive, is because of its impact on the residential and commercial development that’s been built in the area in recent decades, and a changing climate. June 2013 saw an unusual weather pattern – a lingering heavy rainstorm – coupled with a rapidly melting mountain snowpack. It was an unusual event – but there’s still the potential for it to happen again someday.

To prepare for future emergencies, the Town of Canmore “made a concerted effort to review our entire emergency management plan, which was already fairly robust. I think it’s critical for all communities, particularly in places like the mountains, to have a comprehensive and regularly updated emergency management plan, which defines how emergencies are managed,” says Borrowman, who served as mayor from 2012 to 2021. “The better prepared a community is, the less negative the impact (of an emergency) might be.”

The town’s risk and hazard assessment process identified all steep creeks within the Canmore area and determined what would need to be done to mitigate the risk of another major flood event in future. To put the Canmore community into a safer position for the future, the Town of Canmore, in conjunction with generous support from the provincial and federal governments, is building a debris retention structure on Cougar Creek. “It’s designed to hold back the debris that washes down in a flood situation caused by massive rains or a sudden melt of the snowpack,” says Borrowman.

“It’s more than enough to handle almost any volume of water that nature would put in the catchment area of Cougar Creek,” Middleton says. “The work they’ve done has been amazing. They’ve cut down on the damage that would be done if an event like this were to happen again. I’m very happy with what has been done.”

Current Canmore Mayor Sean Krausert describes the 2013 flood as an important time in Canmore history. “It put the community to the test, and we rose to the challenge,” Krausert says. “The flood event gave rise to a new risk and hazard assessment process, safer steep mountain creeks, and resulted in a robust emergency management plan for future emergencies. We are now a much safer community for future emergencies any kind.”

A Bear and Bison Inn guests can follow a trail overlooking Cougar Creek for an invigorating walk, where you can see the ongoing work to make the community safer. “It’s a major piece of engineering to protect all residents, businesses, and infrastructure in the Cougar Creek area from future floods,” Borrowman says. “It’s a critical area to protect.”

 

See how A Bear and Bison Inn is thriving now in our updated Photo Gallery