Hundreds of people came to celebrate Neighbour Day across Calgary on Saturday.
One of the biggest parties was in Sunnyside, a community that was heavily impacted by the 2013 floods.
Neighbour Day was established following the Calgary flood to celebrate the support and generosity of people in the community.
Christie Page had a one-year-old baby at home when she was forced to grab whatever she could and evacuate from her home in Sunnyside.
“Our whole street was underwater. We had five and a half feet of water in the basement,” recalled Page.
That baby is now 10 years older and joining the Neighbour Day parade in the northwest inner-city community.
“I was just amazed at the amount of volunteers who showed up and got dirty cleaning up my mess. Everyone did so much,” Page said. “I believe in humanity so much and it just proved it that day that people are good,”
Calgary’s former mayor launched Neighbour Day in 2014. He joined the party in Sunnyside on Saturday.
“During the flood, this corner was an epicentre of activity. People had set up almost like a store on the corner where people could drop off donations and people could pick up what they needed,” recalled former mayor Naheed Nenshi.
Calgary’s current mayor spent the day attending Neighbour Day events in all areas of the city.
Mayor Jyoti Gondek said flood mitigation work continues.
“We are 50% more resilient than we used to be. We will be 70% more resilient when the Springbank Reservoir project is done in a few years,” Gondek said.
“We have done the river barrier in downtown and we’re doing a Sunnyside barrier over the next couple of years. We’ve done a lot of work, but what we really need is the Bow River upstream mitigation now.”
The city plans to build a flood barrier to protect homes and businesses in Sunnyside and Hillhurst.
Construction is expected to start this year with estimated completion in 2025.
The chair of the community association’s flood committee says good progress has been made on new pump stations and renovating storm water lines but a big piece of the puzzle is missing.
“We need that flood barrier to give us the protection against the high river and that’s not there yet,” said Charlie Lund chair of Hillhurst-Sunnyside’s flood committee.
Despite not having a flood barrier yet, residents like Page are willing to take the risk of living here, accepting that the future will bring more of the same.
“I believe in climate change and I have no doubt it will happen. I appreciate everything the city has done for flood mitigation, but I’m not sure it will ever be enough,” Page said. “We never thought about leaving. This is such a great community. You know everyone on the street and we have a neighbourhood where you sit on your front porch and talk to people.”
According to the city, the Sunnyside barrier will help manage flood water and avoid the type of damage that happened in 2013. Additional future protection may also be offered through the completion of a new Bow River reservoir.
The Alberta government continues to look at options to build additional flood and drought storage capacity on the Bow River.
In spring 2021, the province’s Environment and Parks began engagement and field studies for Phase 2 of the Bow River Reservoir Options initiative, the feasibility study.
Completion of the feasibility study is scheduled for winter 2023.
The feasibility study continues to look at 3 reservoir options in the Bow River basin, upstream of Calgary. They include: a new reservoir between Seebe and Morley, on Stoney Nakoda Nations reserve lands, an expansion of the existing Ghost Reservoir and a new reservoir between Cochrane and the Bearspaw Dam at the western edge of Calgary.
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