I still remember clearly that night in fourth grade that I spent in my sleeping bag on the main floor of the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre (one of the stops on our Southern Alberta History Tour). It was all so fascinating to me – more than 90 tonnes of limestone rock all sliding down one mountain and burying almost an entire town within seconds.
As we reflect on 150 years of Canadian history in the making, our country definitely has many successes, milestones, and famous individuals to celebrate. But, what we also have are many unique stories that maybe didn’t earn us global recognition or put us on the map. It is important that we take the time to learn about and commemorate the tales that impacted, sometimes devastated hundreds of ordinary, everyday Canadian citizens. The incidents that our country learned from, got through together and became more resilient from. Events like the Frank Slide.
On April 29th, 1903 at precisely 4:10 am, the largest and still to this today, deadliest landslide in Canadian history took place as Turtle Mountain collapsed. In less than 100 seconds, 76 people were killed and more than three-quarters of the houses in the town had been destroyed. Among the dead, 21 of them are said the be children, and only 12 bodies were found. The others still remain buried under the rubble.
Turtle Mountain received its name from the rancher, Louis Garnett, who saw in the mountain a turtle’s face with the shell rising up behind. Interestingly enough, the Blackfoot and Ketunai people knew Turtle Mountain as, “the mountain that walked.” These legends and stories kept them away from camping anywhere near it.
The structural formation of Turtle Mountain began with weak deposits of limestone and coal, leaving it in a constant state of instability. Additional movement and mining cracked the mountain peak and opened gaps where water could settle, freeze, and then expand which created internal pressure.
There are multiple well-known accounts of the experiences of surviving individuals on the horrific morning of April 29th, 1903. Some of these include:
- Joe Champman and his group of 16 miners who went to work the midnight shift in the mine on that April night. When the mountain started “moving” they found themselves 100 feet away from the mine mouth behind a wall of rock. After digging for twelve hours straight, early in the morning of April 30th, they broke into the dawn light safely without any injuries.
- Lillian Clarke was able to escape the disaster by being away from her home. Her father was also lucky as he was working in the mine that night, but took a break around 4 am and was outside when the avalanche struck. However, Lillian’s mother and six siblings perished in the slide.
- Finally, the most famous account of them all is that of the “boulder baby.” A 27-month-old baby, Glayds Ennis, was found in the debris beside her mother who had saved her child’s life by cleaning out the mud from her nose and throat. Glayds was the last survivor of the Frank Slide who died in 1995 in Washington.
Today, the town of Frank, Alberta, still lies in the shadow of the “Mountain the Walks.” (As an aside, Alberta didn’t become a Canadian province until 1905, almost two years after the incident, so at the time Frank was still classified as a community of the Northwest Territories). In 1985, the Frank Slide Interpretative Centre was built as a museum and tourist stop in order to document the Frank Slide and the region’s coal mining history. It still remains a popular destination receiving more than 100,000 visitors on an annual basis.
If you ever get a chance to visit, there is a great hike that starts in Blairmore Alberta which takes you just over three kilometres and 750 metres high to the peak of Turtle Mountain. This truly Canadian hike will not only provide a spectacular view of fields of beautiful prairie land and reveal Crownest Mountain, but I am also told, will allow you to gain an entirely different perspective on the events of the slide.
“No matter what, none will ever forget the Frank Slide.” – Mysteries of Canada
Research References: 1/2/3/4/5/6/