Five cyclists from the Windsor area have ridden and carried their bikes through the heart of the disastrous Alberta floods including a rare ride on part of a deserted Trans Canada Highway.
“It was quite an experience getting to Calgary,” said Dean Morais, who organized the cross-Canada trip, speaking from Bassano, Alberta, where they stopped overnight.
Dean and his fellow cyclists began their trip on June 15 in Victoria B.C. to raise money for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). They were riding right into what’s being called the worst flooding in Alberta’s history.
“The rivers were right over the roads,” Morais said, describing some stretches of their journey on the Trans Canada Highway from Golden, in southeastern B.C. through to Calgary and into Canmore, Alberta. The water came up to their bike pedals and there was a slight current, too, he said. “It was a little dicey riding through it.”
The team rode over rocks, debris and broken road, occasionally hopping off to carry their bikes over the more difficult parts. “This is once-in-a-lifetime,” Morais said, describing what they witnessed.
In total, the group encountered at least half a dozen road blocks and had to get creative to convince police and emergency workers to let them through even though sections of the highway have been wiped out by overflowing rivers.
At each road block, they explained they were riding for ALS, Morais said, and pointed out that they were not heavy trucks or cars and were not going to ogle at the disaster. And it worked. Sympathetic police officers, firefighters and clean-up crews would eventually let them through. A firefighter even escorted them on the last stretch of road towards Calgary.
In fact, the ride from Golden to Banff was “the best and safest” they had, Morais said. For six hours the cyclists enjoyed a quiet, truck- and car-free highway ride since both lanes were closed to traffic.
Canmore was flooded pretty badly, he said, and they saw just how deep the water was in downtown Calgary.
“The devastation of the area from the flooding is incredible, wrote one of the cyclists Ben Merritt of LaSalle in a blog posted Sunday. “All rivers over flowing and a nasty shade of brown streets under water.”
Flooded downtown Canmore businesses — beside the Canmore Hospital and below the Trans Canada and Cougar Creek area. (Handout)
The group is set to cycle another 150 km to Medicine Hat on Tuesday, Morais said, despite news reports of flooding there as well.
“We’re going,” Morais said. They didn’t call it quits in Golden, he said, so they aren’t about to call it quits now. “We’ll just keep going until they tell us we can’t.”
Sue Omstead, a friend of the cyclists who lives in Canmore and spends part of the year here in Kingsville, said Morais and the others were overwhelmed with the extent of the disaster. “They really experienced it from beginning to end.”
Olmstead and her husband Tom had planned to ride with Morais and the others from Banff to Calgary but could not get out of Canmore, so they met the team there. She said they are very lucky their home in south Canmore was not affected but it feels strange to live near so many other residents who have lost their homes to the flooding and erosion.
Canmore’s Carrot Creek bridge on TransCanada between Canmore and Banff — westbound lanes with bridge washed out on the right side. (Handout)
“We see it in other places, you know New Orleans and the southern states, and you just don’t think that it’s going to happen in the place that you live.”
She said it began to pour June 19 and as the Cougar Creek swelled, Canmore residents knew it was just a matter of time before the flooding and damage hit. She said small communities between Canmore and Calgary such as Exshaw, Morley, two First Nation areas and High River, south of Calgary, are very hard hit and won’t have the financial reserves or be as well known as Calgary as they try to get aid. “It’s going to take a long time for recovery,” she said.
Gerry Stringer, 41, attended high school and university in Windsor and now lives in Cochrane, Alberta near Calgary. He lives on a ridge and was not affected.
Stringer who is the manager of industrial engineering for UPS in Calgary said the challenge in the recovery stage is delivering supplies such as sump pumps needed in the disaster area. He said Calgary’s core is closed off which he likened to shutting down downtown Detroit.
“There are definitely a lot of people who are evacuated and they are saying some of these people may not get back to their homes for long periods of time. They basically lost everything.”
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