ALTONA, Man. – Dale Manikel pulls out his video camera and pores over pages of flood forecasts to document how high the waters rose around the family farm and equipment dealership near St. Jean.
But it’s hard for him to assess how much the people from communities on the edge of the Red River Valley helped fight the flood of 1997.
There are no pictures, charts or words to describe how much it means to him.
People displaced by the deluge making its way from North Dakota to Lake Winnipeg won’t soon forget the water and the destruction it caused.
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But they say what they’ll always remember about the flood is the outpouring of generosity from friends, neighbors and total strangers.
As water lapped at Allan Calder’s farmyard south of Letellier, he found himself engulfed in a groundswell of good will.
“You try and do as much as you can yourself, but it comes to the point where you need help,” Calder said.
“People appeared in the yard out of nowhere.”
As he and his brothers cleaned out basements, garages, barns, bins and sheds, one man spent each day organizing teenagers who turned their boundless energy to filling and tossing sandbags. Farmers brought trucks to haul grain.
On April 24, the last great push, about 40 people put an extra two feet on top of the dike in only three hours.
And somehow, even though the fridge was empty, sandwiches and chili and cookies and canned drinks kept appearing.
If the flood wasn’t quite of biblical proportions, Calder said the efforts of volunteers reminded him of miracles written up in the Good Book.
“The loaves and fishes came to mind,” he said. After the dike was done and they left, Calder had enough food left over to take to the Letellier fire hall, so others could eat.
Friends in Altona opened their doors. Calder’s wife Edith and daughter Sarah are staying a couple blocks down from where he and sons Jeffrey, 14, and William, 11, have been able to make themselves at home.
“We’ve been going back and forth, one meal in one house, one meal in another house, and then everybody kind of gets a little bit of an evening with their own family,” he explained.
There are 513 people from the evacuated valley staying in Altona in homes, motels and trailer parks. It’s one of several towns where people are looking after others displaced by the flood.
Townfolk plan card parties, games for kids, things to do to push problems aside for a while. Last week, the local radio station hosted a barbecue for evacuees and military stationed in town.
Most of the people who reached out don’t look for recognition. They are matter-of-fact about their contributions and prefer to stay anonymous.
But Carole Sabourin remembers the ones who stayed to finish the sandbag dike around her home near Letellier, even though the rising Red River was putting their own homes in danger.
Her children Danica, 12, and Rossel, 10, have remarked on the difference between the wars in Bosnia and street gang fights in Winnipeg they see on the news each night and what they witnessed happening in their front yard.
“What a superb learning experience for them, just on life,” Sabourin said, saying she appreciates most how volunteers have shown her kids the good in the world.
“This will live on in them forever.”
