I was going to write about a possible new era of wheat in Western Canada this week. Then came the deluge.
This column is entitled Editorial Notebook, so I like to use this space for sharing when something out of the ordinary happens behind the scenes at The Western Producer.
The Alberta flood was truly extraordinary, if you will forgive the understatement.
Covering disasters is an important and somewhat regular part of journalism. People need to know what’s happening, the scale of the event, who is in trouble, what officials are saying and what comes next.
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Still, sometimes, journalists go above and beyond. Many are, after all, in the disaster zones themselves. Mike Sturk, our freelancer in High River, Alta., is the perfect example.
Mike started that awful Thursday getting ready for a Calgary photo shoot; four hours later, a front-end loader took him and his wife, Katie, to safety. That’s how fast the flood hit.
Nonetheless, Mike kept shooting the flood. Mike took the impressive photo of a combine rescuing flood victims on the front page of the June 27 edition. On Facebook, more than 65,000 people have seen it.
But he was not only practising his craft under insane conditions. He was in the flood up to his chest-waders, helping one woman rescuing horses and another who was floating away in her truck.
All the while, Mike’s life was being turned upside-down as flood waters inundated his home. All our best wishes and big hugs go out to Mike and Katie.
In Millarville, Alta., freelancer Wendy Dudley also had one of the scariest experiences of her life when a spectacular storm ushered in the rainfall. You can find Mike’s and Wendy’s first person accounts on our website, if you haven’t seen them yet.
At the WP, reporter Barbara Duckworth was evacuated from her home and couldn’t reach her office through the chaos that took over Calgary. But she kept working despite intermittent phone and computer service. Although worried about her own home, she continued to file stories and maintain contact with her sources and with us. Through it all, everyone was worried about friends, family, colleagues (two of ours were travelling near Canmore) and generally all the people of southern Alberta.
We hope you found the coverage interesting and useful. As you can see, it was challenging to provide.
