A flashback to the 1950 flood

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/05/2020 (1937 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I don’t remember the day or the month, but I vividly remember the year the Red River ravaged St. Vital.

I remember getting the vaccine against typhoid fever and being a typical eight-year old, returning home to play in the waist deep Seine River water that covered much of our Sadler Avenue yard. I wasn’t alone frolicking in the dirty water. I was joined by neighbour Kenny Box and friend Edward Piper who lived up the street. Our venture only lasted as long as my grandmother’s angry yell. I don’t remember if she was mad that I was having fun in the water, or the fact I was fully dressed. Either way, the sight of her waving the corn broom got me onto dry ground quickly.

The typhoid vaccine swelled my left arm, but not as much as the next two shots that came at the same time. I didn’t want to have the shot, and even convinced my grandmother a nurse had visited Lavallee School and I was now immunized. My ploy didn’t workm as I was ratted out by my sister June and I was among many Sadler Avenue kids loaded into back of a rickety pickup truck and taken for the shots.

One night soon after mmy grandmother, Junem and I walked to Hindley Avenue along the top bank of the Seine to be picked up by my Uncle Ed for a trip to his house for supper. When we arrived home later that evening, the water was gone but a few hours later we were evacuated as a wall of water rushed into our yard from the Red meeting the Seine near what is now Bishop Grandin Boulevard and St. Anne’s Road.

We were whisked away to the Telfer Avenue home of my Uncle Frank Dubois. I remember walking the sandbag sidewalk over Omand’s Creek and watching whirlpools form as the water rushed under the bridge en route to the Assiniboine River.

My parents returned from Vancouver and my father returned to his job with the St. Vital Police Department. Meanwhile, our house wound up with almost five feet of water on the floor and a broken front window, through which the Piper boys rowed their boat, checking out the place. They only did it once after being attacked by our flock of blue geese which were better than any watchdog.

Eight years later, Duff Roblin was premier of Manitoba and he vowed the city of Winnipeg would never again be under water.

Bob Holliday is president of the St. Vital Historical Society and a community correspondent for St. Vital. Email him at docholliday90@me.com