Duff’s Daring Ditch: Canada’s Unbridled Success in Building the Red River Floodway to Protect Winnipeg after the Great Flood of 1950

On May 14, 1950 the rampaging 547-mile-long Red River of the North (henceforth, Red River) crested in the City of Winnipeg, Manitoba, after its 547-mile journey northward from its source in southern Minnesota and North Dakota. For 51 days, Canadians living along the river in southern Manitoba had fought to hold back its rising waters, but finally gave up and rushed to higher ground on May 10th and 11th, 1950. (1) The Red River, racing at 103,000 cubic feet per second, reached 12.2 feet above the channel capacity, swamping the levees lining Winnipeg’s shoreline and submerging more than six square miles of the city, including the business district built on the river’s western edge. The Red River, usually about 450 feet in width, swelled to form a lake 60 miles long and 40 miles wide nestled in the bottom of the ancient Pleistocene lakebed of Lake Agassiz.

About 40,000 Winnipeg residents of a total 235,000 population (1951 census) evacuated along with another 60,000 people in southern Manitoba in towns along the Red River. This mass evacuation of about 100,000 was the largest ever undertaken in Canada’s history. (1,2)

Some 5,000 Canadian army, navy, and air force personnel participated in the response, evacuating residents, manning pumps, and building (and patrolling) dykes. The military domestic disaster response to the Red River flood of 1950 was the biggest peacetime operation in Canadian history. (1)

A total of 10,500 homes in Winnipeg sustained damage from flood waters totaling about $50 million in 1950 dollars. There was but 1 fatality on May 6, 1950, when Lawson Ogg was trapped in a basement where he was fixing a pump when waters rushed through the door of the house and filled the basement.

Livestock and poultry from the area’s farms found shelter on the dirt-heap hillocks left over after building prairie dugouts created during the 1930s Dustbowl years as depressions to collect rainwater and spring runoff for use during drought. According to one reporter named Dal McKenzie, one hillock held 22 chickens, 8 cows, and 6 horses. These hillocks were sometimes the only dry land for miles. (1)

Winnipeg Ponders Its Flood Problem

As Manitobans moved into the recovery phase of the 1950 Red River disaster, vivid memories of the flood drove them to seek action from their government to find a long-term solution to the constant threat of flooding. The 1950 flood was only the latest flood to affect Winnipeg; floods also occurred in 1776, 1826, 1861, 1852, 1892, 1897, 1904, 1916, and 1948. (4)

Most Manitobans were well aware that their flat prairie land was really the very flat bottom of a vast ancient glacial lake called Lake Agassiz, first described thoroughly by geologist Warren Upham in 1894 for the United States Geological Survey. (3) “Lake Agassiz occupied the basin of the Red River of the North and of Lake Winnipeg. Its northern barrier was the retreating ice-sheet of the Glacial period,” he wrote. Lake Agassiz was the largest of the many Pleistocene lakes of North America, several times larger in area than Lake Superior. Indeed it was larger than the area of all five Great Lakes combined (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario)! Geologists deduced its existence from dozens of consecutive beach (shoreline) ridges of gravel and sand left behind as the lake diminished in size. The lake originally outflowed to the south into the Mississippi River, but later changed direction to flow northeastward. “Finally it was reduced to lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Winnipegosis, which are lineal descendants and representatives of Lake Agassiz,” noted Upham. (5)

Canadian Federal Government Conducts Studies

Following a federal inquiry into the 1950 flood, the Royal Commission in December 1958 produced its “Report of the Royal Commission on Flood Cost Benefit” in Winnipeg, Manitoba. (6). The report noted that on average, the City of Winnipeg could expect floods equal to, or surpassing, the flood of 1950 every 36 years. With this in mind, the government studied various flood control approaches, including deepening the Red River’s channel to increase its flow through Winnipeg and raising the level of the levees on the river’s shorelines. The report, however, recommended the solutions developed by civil engineer (and Dutchman) Professor Ed Kuiper (Department of Civil Engineering, University of Manitoba). Kuiper concluded that the best flood control approach for the city was to divert water AROUND it by employing three components:

1. A portage diversion channel (about 18 miles long) to connect the Assiniboine River (after the Assiniboine First Nation) to Lake Manitoba (just west of Lake Winnipeg).

2. A reservoir near Russell (named the Shellmouth Dam and Reservoir).

3. The Red River Floodway. (1)

The 600-mile long Assiniboine River originates in southeast Saskatchewan (the province west of Manitoba) and meanders over flat prairie to meet the Red River at “The Forks” in Winnipeg.

Kuiper divulged in a recent interview (at age 85): “We came up with a combination of works and the most efficient and most cost-effective and I cannot remember anyone questioning that.” (7)

Price Tag Shocks Winnipeg but Duff Leads the Way

In 1959, the cost of the project was announced: over $70 million with the floodway alone costing some $63 million. The newly-elected Conservative Party premier of Manitoba in 1958 was Winnipeg native Dufferin (Duff) Roblin (born 1917) who noted that raising this amount of money “was quite a problem for a province of Manitoba’s size in those days…It was considered an enormous sum. I think everybody felt the same.”(7,8) He was adamant about proceeding with the Kuiper design even as opposition party members berated him. For example, one legislator divined that dredging the river and shoring up the banks was a better approach and that the tremendous cost involved with Kuiper’s design did not justify the benefits received by Winnipeg.

Another member recalled that the opposition party was just doing its job in criticizing projects to try to get the best deal for taxpayers. He admitted that when the first attack on Duff failed (cost-benefit analysis), he tried ridiculing the floodway as “just a ditch”, “Duff’s ditch”. Then the opposition complained about the way in which the province was expropriating land for construction of the floodway. Years later, some opposition party members admitted that their behavior was irresponsible, particularly in hindsight: the floodway repeatedly and for decades up to the present time has saved Winnipeg billions of dollars in flood damage. “If I voted against it,” said one legislator, “I’m embarrassed like the rest of the people who voted against it should be. We should recognize the great thing that Mr. Roblin did.” (7)

Federal Government Asked to Help Pay for the Flood Control Project

One aspect that the entire legislature agreed upon in 1958, however, was getting the federal government of Canada to help pay for the project. The big challenge for Roblin was to convince the federal government that Manitoba’s problem was its problem, too—that flooding in Manitoba was a national concern. Roblin reasoned that 80% of the water in the Red River passing through Winnipeg came from the United States and Manitoba clearly had no control over the United States. The federal government of Canada, however, DID have a relationship with the United States, argued Roblin, so “the federal government under those circumstances was amply justified in helping the province pay for this investment.” (7) The flood control resolution in the Manitoba legislature passed with only 11 nays.   

When this approach didn’t seem to be working, Roblin asked engineer Kuiper to please investigate the cost of building a dam at Emerson, Manitoba (just north of the border between the US and Canada, on the Red River), to block the flow of the Red River into Manitoba. Kuiper said, “We raised our eyebrows and said, what now? This was a ridiculous project. It was impossible because a dam at Emerson would flood the people in the United States, and you couldn’t do that!” Roblin turned to the federal government and said, “See, this is now an international problem. Canada will be flooding the United States.” (7) Roblin denies this story today saying that building a dam at Emerson was idle chatter among friends and that flooding the US would not have been a good way to advance the Winnipeg flood control project. (7)

The cost of the Red River Floodway was shared between the federal government in Ottawa ($37 million) and the provincial government in Manitoba ($26.2 million), paid for in cash! This cost is equivalent to between $350 and $500 today, according to one source. (9)

Construction of Duff’s Ditch

Construction of the Red River Floodway began on October 6, 1962 and was finished in March 1968, one year after Premier Roblin left office after a remarkable tenure in which building the Red River Floodway, he said, was the least of his accomplishments. (8)

During construction of the floodway, engineers moved an amount of earth equal to that moved to construct the Panama Canal. “The construction left such a mark in the earth that “Duff's Ditch”…was visible to the Apollo Astronauts on the moon. In the summer of 1965, there were more than one thousand people working on its construction. In the end, it turned out to be harder project to build than the Panama Canal or the St. Laurence Seaway. Even though it was finished in March 1968, it wasn’t needed that spring so the official opening waited until October 11th. “Duff's Ditch” saw its first action in the spring of 1969.” (9)

The completion of the Shellmouth Dam and Reservoir on the upper Assiniboine River occurred in 1972 (10) The Portage Diversion (also called the Assiniboine River Floodway) was completed in 1970. (11)

Winnipeg Flood Control Project Performance

The Red River Floodway has been used 18 times since it was opened in 1969, preventing flooding of Winnipeg and saving billions of dollars in flood damage. In 1997, a major flood on the Red River caused a disaster at Grand Forks, North Dakota, but spared Winnipeg completely because of the investment made 40 years earlier. Unfortunately, many farms were flooded, resulting in property damage and interruptions to farm business operations as well as groundwater contamination south of Winnipeg. The cost of the 1997 flood, which didn’t even dampen Winnipeg, was about $245 million in disaster financial assistance.

Floodway Expansion Project Launched 2005

After the 1997 “Flood of the Century”, the International Joint Commission--an independent binational organization established by the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 to help prevent and resolve disputes relating to the use and quality of boundary waters and to advise Canada and the United States on related questions--reviewed flood protection in the Red River Valley and concluded that “the risk of failure of Winnipeg’s existing flood protection infrastructure is high under flow conditions similar to or greater than those experienced in 1997.” (12, 13) The 1997 flood was a 1-in-100 year flood, and the risk of Winnipeg flooding with the existing floodway was calculated at 37% of over the next 50 years. Expanding the floodway will reduce the risk from 37 to 7%. The widened and deepened floodway has been designed to provide protection against a 1-in-700 year flood level. In the event of a 1-in-700 year flood, approximately 2/3 of Winnipeg would be inundated with sewer and overland flooding with the existing floodway. (13)

The expansion project when completed will divert more water around Winnipeg during major floods by increasing the capacity of the floodway channel from 60,000 cubic feet water/second to 140,000 cubic feet/sec. The channel will be widened to 350 feet rather than deepened, to protect ground water. The expansion project involves replacement of 12 bridge crossings and excavation of 27 million cubic yards of earth. (13)

Sources:

1. “A city submerged: Winnipeg and the flood of 1950” in CBC Radio Archives. Available online at: http://archives.cbc.ca/400d.asp?id=1-70-670-3783 and http://archives.cbc.ca/400i.asp?IDCat=70&IDDos=670&IDCli=3783&IDLan=1&NoCli=1&type=clip; accessed August 26, 2006.

2. Winnipeg 1951 census at: http://prod.library.utoronto.ca:8090/datalib/data/cc51/1951%20
census%20-%20table%203_area%20and%20density%20of%20population%20for%20cities.xls; accessed August 26, 2006.

3. Warren Upham: “The Glacial Lake Agassiz” (1894). Available online at: http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/govdocs/text/lakeagassiz/preface.html; accessed August 26, 2006.

4. “Geoscientific insights into the Red River and its flood problem: Highest Red River floods 1800 to 1999”. The five (of 20) greatest (meters squared/second) in Winnipeg occurred in 1826 (6,400 cubic meters/sec), 1852 (4,700), 1997 (4,600), 1861 (3,500), and 1950 (3060). Note that the 1950 flood was only the fifth worst historical flood, yet it caused the most damage because human settlement had grown. Available online at: http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/floods/redriver/table1_e.php; accessed August 26, 2006.

5. Warren Upham: Chapter 1. Available online at: http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/govdocs/text/lakeagassiz/chapter1.html; accessed August 26, 2006.

6. Report of the Royal Commission on Flood Cost Benefit” (December 1958) by HW Manning (chairman), WC Riley, WJ Macdonald, AS Beaubien, J. McDowell. Available online at:  http://www.gov.mb.ca/conservation/envapprovals/registries/redriverfloodway/fedscreenrpt/
commentspublic/clifton/append3.pdf#search='report%20of%20the%20royal%20commission%20on%20flood
%20cost%20benefit'l ; accessed August 26, 2006.

7. Professor Ed Kuiper in an interview at: http://archives.cbc.ca/400d.asp?id=1-70-670-3783; accessed August 26, 2006.

8. For more information on Dufferin Roblin, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dufferin_Roblin and his autobiography titled “Speaking for Myself: Politics and Other Pursuits” published 2001 by Great Plains Publications.

9. “1968” at: http://timelinks.merlin.mb.ca/ourcommunity/History/1968.htm; accessed August 26, 2006.

10. For more on the Shellmouth Reservoir, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellmouth_Reservoir; http://www.schulich.ucalgary.ca/CSCE-Students/WR_diversion.htm; and http://www.quantumlynx.com/water/vol7no2/story2.html’ accessed August 26, 2006.

11. For more on the Portage Diversion, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assiniboine_River_Floodway; http://www.schulich.ucalgary.ca/CSCE-Students/WR_diversion.htm; and http://www.quantumlynx.com/water/vol7no2/story2.html; accessed August 26, 2006.

12. For more information on the International Joint Commission, see: http://www.ijc.org/en/background/biogr_commiss.htm; accessed August 26, 2006.

13. Manitoba Floodway Authority: “Historic announcement commemorates start of construction on the expansion of the red river floodway. Government of Canada Re-Affirms Funding Commitment to Complete Red River Floodway Expansion Project” (September 23, 2005). Available online at: “http://www.redriverbasincommission.org/
PR_-_GROUNDBREAKING_ANNOUNCEMENT_-_Floodway_September_23_2005.doc; accessed August 26, 2006.