It was the flood of 1980-’81 that implemented the construction of the numerous dikes along many of the rivers in Squamish. Before that, the area was largely floodplain and subject to numerous salmon spawning streams, abundant wildlife, and annual surges of "the wet season." It was not, however, in harmony with encroaching civilization and with those who came and settles in the valley, finding work in the mining, rail, logging, and paper industries.
It was a night we will always remember. We were driving back from the city (Vancouver) after our Christmas family gathering, and the rain was coming down strong. I was eight years old, and the sense of danger filled the ride home — perhaps overhearing my parents, perhaps the downpour, or perhaps simply because the windshield wipers broke and my father had to open the window and use his hand to create any form of visibility…
We eventually made it home (the upper Cheakamus Valley) past the Jack Webster Bridge — but it wasn’t called that then, it was a different bridge — an old wooden logging bridge, the kind with tracking for the wheels, spaces that open up to the river below, and two large logs holding it together. We had to cross it by foot and walk the rest of the way because it had dropped a foot or so, and with massive, huge boulders crashing below me, it was a terrifying experience.
That night the neighbours took refuge in our home — it was the highest — and through the rumbling of the river in the distant nigh we listened to the crackling radio, which updated us on current conditions, and whether the Daisy Lake Dam was going to overflow, or break, or both!
We decided, as a community, to hike the surrounding bluffs, young and old alike, in the torrential downpour, in the dark, and (slept) the night under a tarp on the edge of a bluff. The bridge was gone by morning, and most of the homes, save ours, were under water. The helicopters came, but even after my dad cleared trees, there still wasn’t room to land, and we were air lifted to safety.
All bridges in Squamish were wiped out, and at M. Creek on the old highway we had travelled on without wipers, tragedy occurred when cars drove over the embankment into the swollen rivers below, when that bridge, too, had fallen. In remembrance.
— Melanie Cochrane
