Where life ebbs and flows with the river

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/10/2019 (2332 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RURAL MUNICIPALITY OF RITCHOT — It’s not normal, Al Sumka says, as he turns his truck away from the floodway control structure that straddles the churning Red River. Not for this time of year, early October, when fall is preparing to give way to winter and the floodway is usually sleeping.

Many things about this fall haven’t been normal. The snowstorm that swept over the province Thursday, sending cars sliding off the road and knocking out power to 13,000 Manitoba Hydro customers, wasn’t normal. Nor was the soggy start to October or the fact, for the first time, the province had to operate the floodway in fall. 

Still, in the RM of Ritchot, where flooding has long made its mark, there are few short-term worries. For now, the water is staying where it should.

“It’s not even close to what we had in the spring,” St. Adolphe Mayor Chris Ewen said, as he watched the data come in. “And we had nothing in spring.”

There is another risk now, lurking far off in the future. It is October, and the snow is already here. The ground is saturated; late in the season, it will likely freeze up loaded with water. When the spring thaw comes, there could be nowhere for all that water to go — nowhere except out, over the land.

Sumka knows this. He grew up on his family’s property in Howden, nestled in a deep bend of the Red River. In 1997, when the Flood of the Century inundated the land, they worked hard to save what was then the family’s market garden.

That doesn’t mean he fears it, exactly. It’s too much part of the rhythm of spring on this territory. Like most residents in this area, his family has done what they can to mitigate the risk of damage; since 1997, they’ve built up the earthen dike around the property to protect their home and land.  

“For us, water is nothing,” Sumka said. “It’s a way of life now, where we live.”  

Still, he can guess at some things that will happen. The road into their nook of the riverbend, for instance: that floods whenever there is water. There are many years they have to park their truck on one side, take a 10-minute boat ride to get to get to work in the morning, another boat ride to come home again. 

Once, this area was full of market gardens. When Sumka was a boy, he recalled, nearly every property was into that line of business. Over the years, the market gardens slowly disappeared. Older folks retired, and the children didn’t want to stick with it. The water that came so often was not worth it. 

The Sumkas, too, got out of the market garden business. They’re in trucking now, and have seen how this wet and now unseasonably snowy fall has impacted that work. It’s the mud, Sumka said. It’s thick like gumbo, and when you deliver a load of it to a construction site, it sticks in the box, which can make the vehicle imbalanced. 

At a home construction site up the road, there’s a truck that suffered that fate. The box tipped and slid into the mud, and the wheels got stuck, and the driver’s lucky the tractor didn’t go along with it, Sumka said. It’ll take some work to haul out, but other than that, things will be OK.  

As for the future, they’ll face that, too, come what may. No sense in worrying too much about it now.

This is where the water lives when it decides. There is a lot of weather to come between then and now, and all the folks along the river’s edge can really do is just watch it, and wait. 

“Time will tell, eh?” Sumka said, with a shrug. “What’s the winter going to be? Nobody knows. There was the Farmer’s Almanac and this and that people used to follow, but you can’t follow nobody anymore.

“There will be water, but I can’t say how much. The only one who can say is the good Lord.” 

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca