The Edmonton flood of 1915 is our local version of Winnipeg's Red River perennial inundations.

Reports that Manitoba's relentless Red River is threatening to flood once again harkens me back more than a decade to the Flood of the Century.

I was covering the Oilers in their gritty 1997 playoff battle with Dallas and had been advised by my boss that if the Oilers took the Stars to Game 7 in Texas, I would be heading south to cover the action.

But the call that came from my editor on the eve of Game 6 sent me instead to Manitoba. I arrived just as then-premier Gary Filmon was declaring a state of emergency and ordering 20,000 Manitobans to evacuate the Red River Valley.

The next day, I caught up to Dave Penner in Morris, Man., as he clipped a three-year-old boy's hair in his barbershop chair. It would be the last time he would have to spend with his grandson for weeks because the town had been ordered to evacuate by 8 p.m. that day.

Penner was heading in one direction with his wife while his son and grandson were heading the other way. A week later, they would be separated by a 2,000-square-kilometre lake.

I spent several weeks in Winnipeg covering the rising torrent and its aftermath, and I ended up watching Oiler Todd Marchant's series-winning goal from a Winnipeg sports bar.

Duff's Ditch, a remarkable floodway that was built after a 1950 Manitoba flood, saved Winnipeg from disaster, but communities along the river outside the city felt the river's wrath.

More than 750 homes were seriously damaged or destroyed.

And now another flood threatens.

It has been 94 years since Edmonton faced a flood of comparable degree.

The great flood of 1915 swallowed much of Cloverdale and Riverdale and carried away hundreds of homes and businesses.

City residents got their first warning of what was coming on Saturday, June 26, when Rocky Mountain House officials reported that the North Saskatchewan River had suddenly risen nearly seven metres.

By the time the flood peaked in Edmonton about 1 a.m. Tuesday, June 29, lumber mills in Cloverdale, Walterdale and Riverdale had been washed away.

Edmonton historian Tony Cashman, who documented the flood in his book Edmonton: Stories From The River City, says the flood ruined lumber and coal baron John Walter, for whom Walterdale Hill is named.

"He had a lumber yard down around where the ball park is now and the river came along and swept it all downstream," Cashman said.

"He was Edmonton's first millionaire, but the river turned on him. He had used the river to move his coal and lumber up-and downstream, but it was treacherous.

"Floods are ominous. They have sort of a lurking evil to them."

The North Saskatchewan River flood nearly washed away the Low Level Bridge, which was being pounded by floating debris that included houses, barns and sheds.

"They saved the bridge by moving an old gravel train out onto it and they kept up steam so they could get off in a hurry if the bridge started to go," says Cashman, who interviewed the engineer of that Canadian Northern Railway train.

"The engineer said it was kind of nerve-racking.

"The bridge vibrated every time something big would hit it. It made for a pretty exciting time."

Cashman said at times huge crowds lined the bluffs on both sides of the river valley to see if the bridge would survive.

"It was a very long, drawn-out drama, which thousands of people watched," he said.

"If there's going to be a disaster, people want to be there to see it."

Many of the women who lived in the river valley at the time were alone with their children because their husbands had gone off to war. Heart of the City, a book that documents the history of Cloverdale, says the river peaked about 12 metres above its low water mark, knocking out the city's electrical and water supplies.

About 600 homes were flooded and about 60 destroyed. Damage was estimated at close to a million dollars, which would be closer to $20 million in today's dollars.

According to the book Riverdale: From Fraser Flats to Edmonton Oasis, by Allan Shute and Margaret Fortier, the only fatality from the flood was an infant who fell from its mother's arms into the torrent.

Developers shunned the neighborhood following the flood and city planners set aside much of the area for parks.

But over the years, the fear, like the floodwaters, receded, and when the city gave the green light to developers in 1983, they moved back in with a gusto.

Recent years have seen the construction of lavish homes and condos along the river.

Cashman, whose newest book, When Edmonton Was Young, is due to be published this summer, shudders when he sees all the new housing on the 100-year flood plain. He fears another major flood could occur, despite the dams that have since been built. "The conditions just haven't been right, that's all," he says.

Source - Edmonton Journal