Plan B...

Wow. Welcome to summer! Saskatchewan (well, the southern part of it anyway) has just experienced the wettest spring on record, and now our South Saskatchewan River is running high and fast through the City of Saskatoon, thanks to heavy rainfall events in southern Alberta.

Without getting into the debate about what causes climates to change, there can be no doubt at all that our climate is, indeed, changing. Folks whose only concern is whether or not to carry an umbrella may not see the larger picture, but those of us (whether farmers, construction workers or captains) whose livelihood is daily impacted by rain or wind, drought or flood, tend to have a different perspective.

Of course, those of us who are captains on these boats love all the extra water in the river. As Captain Tamara Sowellu (Meewasin Queen), commented during a Global Television interview this week, we can take our passengers further upriver than we have been able for five years. We started the season with Plan A - some of the lowest river flows we have seen in 15 years in business on this river. When the water gets that thin, our travels between the sandbars are pretty limited, so this is a welcome change!

So for us, Plan B (lots of water) is pretty cool. Unfortunately, many of our friends and neighbours are ‘way past Plan B, maybe working on Plan X. Thousands of acres of farmland, along with several towns and villages more normally associated with cactus than floods, are underwater.

There is a buzzword (or perhaps a “buzz phrase”) going around a lot these days: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”. While there is more than a little truth to that, it is far too simplistic to be adopted as a recipe for survival. Poet Robert Burns was more realistic: “The best laid plans o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”

Perhaps the best we can do is to always have a Plan B, pray that it works, and be very thankful if it does! So far, life on the river in 2010 is wonderful!

Peter Kingsmill