ROSENORT, Man. – Barry Fraise sat down on the driveway and cried.
In his fight against the Red River, the river has won.
Fraise, who had planned to retire from farming even before this disaster, ran his bulldozer to the very end, pushing dirt higher and higher from the centre of his yard to the dike around the farm.
He defied an evacuation order to wage war on the water, boating out to the farmstead and defending his family home. But even with the help of his neighbors, the fight with the rising Red was an uneven match.
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The farmer had already spent several days helping the nearby town of Rosenort prepare for flooding, and only returned to his farm once the town was considered safe.
As water from the Morris River, a tributary of the nearby Red, cascaded across the dike and into his farmyard, his were not the only spirits to be dampened.
Thorsten Stance, the farm’s new owner, had worked with Fraise to move tools and equipment to higher ground and sandbag the house. After the water recedes, this will be his home, albeit in a different state than he had once envisioned.
Stance and his parents, Herbert and Karin, arrived from Germany in January, during one of the worst winters on record. They bought the farm from Fraise and intended to plant their first crop in Canada this spring. The Stances will take possession of the property next month.
“We will clean up and get on with it. We knew there would be a flood but not quite this bad,” said the 29 year-old agriculture graduate.
“There is a bright side to all of this. We came here to farm and we know in farming you take the good and bad. This is as bad as it can get. It will only get better from now on,” Stance said.
He videotaped the destruction as he and Fraise gave up the farm to flood waters. He would spend many more hours this day helping his new neighbors with sandbagging and dike reinforcement. His future here is set and fighting the river today is part of that future.
“It is true what it says on the licence plate. This is Friendly Manitoba,” said Stance. “In Germany the neighbors would not have come to help you so much. Here they give you all they have.”
