Happy Canada Day from Calgary!

For those of you who are maybe a little further afield, the city I live in, Calgary, recently suffered a disaster-flooding. Calgary is located along the confluence of two rivers, the Elbow and the Bow, and they both spilled their banks just over a week ago. There have been some pretty hard hit residential areas, as well as a fair bit of downtown. I was affected among 75,000 people who were evacuated, as our downtown condo is only a couple of blocks from the river. We were told to leave on Thursday night, and watched the TV on Friday and Saturday to see the water covering block after block.

I am very lucky. We have a fourth-floor condo, so we knew even as we left that most of our stuff would be ok. We have a storage unit in the parkade, and haven't yet been able to access it to find out the bad news, but it could have been so much worse. I have a coworker who is from High River, a town south of Calgary that suffered tremendously with flooding, who has literally lost everything except the clothes on his back. We have good friends who kindly let us stay with them for a week, and we came home to everything basically intact, aside from a rank fridge full of spoiled food, and a (presumably) flooded storage unit. We are among the lucky ones, and we've been trying to give something back to those who haven't been as lucky.

It has been a tremendous experience living here through all this, and I have to say- I'm proud of my city. Calgary handled the emergency situation calmly and with strong planning, so kudos to our city council and workers- they deserve it. Calgarians immediately stepped up and brought their A games to the situation- we had more offers of places to stay than we could possibly have used, people were posting ads on kijiji to invite displaced strangers into their homes, and the city's evacuation centres were barely used. Volunteers have flooded into affected neighbourhoods, helping people to reclaim their homes. Everywhere we go, local businesses are running programs for flood relief and collecting donations- it's been incredible. So, thank you, fellow Calgarians, for showing the world what a wonderful city we have and the dedicated people living and working in it. I am proud of all of us.

Anyone looking to help can donate to the Red Cross here.