A float plane was taxiing before takeoff on the Slave River. A group of men and boys were fishing from the shore. A dog, strangely, raced up and down the steps of a house overlooking the river from a ridge above—and then, with a deep thud, the house was gone.
Fifty years ago last Thursday, Fort Smith lost a valued community member, several houses and some of its power infrastructure in a historic landslide.
On this year’s anniversary of the event, a commemorative plaque was unveiled in remembrance of the disaster and the 27 families that survived, as was a bench in honour of Kay Ferguson, who didn’t.
To at least one resident, the event is finally being commemorated in a real, tangible sense. She was there when it happened, and it left her changed forever.
“You ask me what I did last year and I can’t remember,” said Toni Heron. “But this has always been there. What was going on that hour? I can tell you.”
The summer of 1968 had been rainy, but the night of Aug. 9 turned out to be a fine one for baseball. Heron decided to go and watch her husband play, baby in tow, and started along a route that passed by the Ferguson's house.
“I noticed the little dog, the Ferguson's dog,” said Heron. “He would run down and look back, then run back up and look at the door, and he’d run back down again.”
She didn’t feel anything but as she walked up to the back door to stop into her parents’ house, kitty-corner to the Ferguson's, she heard a thud.
Heron looked back to see telephone wires and power lines hanging and swinging. She thought someone had backed into a pole. Then she rounded the corner of her parent's house to look at the street and saw nothing but blue sky where the Ferguson's house had been.
“I started to scream, ‘Who pulled the Ferguson's house away?’ as I went into the house.”
She left her baby with her sister and went to the new edge of the hill. Soon after, Mr. Ferguson sped up to the hill in his truck, got out, looked down the edge and then got back into his truck and rushed around to the bottom.
“The steps were still hanging there,” said Heron.
After that, “it was chaos,” she said.
Other sections of the hill started to slide off throughout the day. Another house went down the next. Part of the power generation facility sheared off and fell. The power was gone, so vehicle lights were used at night to illuminate the hillside where hundreds of searchers looked for Mrs. Ferguson.
“Fifty years have gone by, and through those 50 years I think a lot of people who remember what happened that day, just kept it in the back of their minds,” said Heron.
In organizing the event, these stories—told not just by those who were there but by their children who heard about it growing up—started coming out, she said.
Stories about people fishing from the shore when the water receded and rushed back in, and the land slid; about a mother going out to pay for her kids’ swimming lessons, and her house falling while she was away. About a woman deciding to wait and weed her garden the next day, and then her garden falling down the hill with her luckily still inside.
Thursday’s events were about airing those stories and filling in the history of this event, which literally changed the shape of the community, and celebrating the memory of Kay Ferguson—her death both the peak of tragedy 50 years ago, and a chilling reminder of how lucky many others were.
Heron said this piece of history also needs to be known for future safety. She has heard elders say the land will still recede, and in researching the town, Heron read about a 1908 landslide that claimed many of the community's older buildings, including the Hudson Bay store, warehouse and residence.
Just as the town came together to rehouse its families and rebuild the community in 1968 and onward, it did so to put on Thursday’s event.
Heron said the municipality, the GNWT and Fort Smith’s businesses, such as Northwestern Air Lease, didn’t hesitate to provide help, services and funding for the commemoration.
“In times like this, the community really pulls together,” she said.