‘We were fishing golf carts out of the river’

WINNIPEG — Scott McCallum has made the trek to the Gilbert Plains Country Club clubhouse countless times.

But this was the first time the golf professional and general manager of the course required hip waders to get to his office.

Walking hand in hand with his wife Lindsay, McCallum didn’t need much time to see the devastation caused by the flash flooding in the Parkland region in late June.

“We’re on a river and it’s a beautiful golf course, but anytime you’re on a body of water you know that you’re taking a chance of events like this happening,” McCallum said in a phone interview. “To this magnitude, we’ve never seen anything like it before. So, this is new to us.

“We’ve had water on our golf course previously, but not moving at this pace or washing out the way that it has or bringing the amount of silt that it has onto our golf course. It’s incredible and the cleanup is unbelievable. Obviously, now the water reached all of our buildings, our cart sheds and clubhouse and everything.”

The rain gauge in the office of golf course superintendent Don Senyk recorded more than eight inches of rain overnight and the challenge of moving the water that had cascaded in was readily apparent immediately after stepping on the property.

“The water was probably a foot from the top of the cart sheds,” said McCallum. “To explain it a little more, if your car was in the parking lot, it would have been underwater.

“The power of water, I just can’t believe it. We were fishing golf carts out of the river. The water picked them up and just washed them away.”

Although it was painful to soak in the scene, it didn’t take long for McCallum to shift into problem-solving mode.

“It was kind of crazy going down and seeing what was ahead of us,” he said. “To be quite honest, we jumped into action immediately. The first green that we had access to was hole No. 9. We had to hook up pumps to the water, we were pumping water out of the bunker to wash the greens off and we were pushing silt probably two to three inches deep on the greens. And we had to do that on seven greens.”

Gilbert Plains Country Club is known as one of the hidden gems in the province and, earlier this week, the difficult decision was made by the board of directors to close the course for the remainder of the season.

“It’s obviously devastating. Anytime you have a season that has to be cancelled, it’s tough news to take,” said McCallum. “It’s something that we had to do, with the amount of construction and repair that is required to get the course back to shape. It just wouldn’t be feasible with golfers on the golf course.”

The process of restoring the condition of the course continues and the challenge is enormous, though McCallum has been blown away by the support the course has received from the surrounding communities and the province at large.

Several of the neighbouring golf courses even offered reduced green fees to the roughly 280 members at Gilbert Plains Country Club.

“It’s been overwhelming. It’s just incredible how much people have reached out,” said McCallum.

“There are so many things that go along with this. You’ve got so many tournaments that you have booked and you don’t want to let those people down. Those are very tough phone calls to make. Our neighbouring communities and golf courses have reached out and they’re able to accommodate a lot of these tournaments. It’s very kind of them to do that. So, people have been so kind that way, so we’re definitely grateful.

“Hopefully people will jump on board and support a small golf course in a rural community and get us back up on our feet.”

One of the top priorities the golf course is tackling presently is raising money to pay for the $100,000 deductible on the insurance.

“Essentially, there were only two holes that were spared from the water. Basically, the whole course got affected,” said McCallum. “We can’t say enough about our local community on what they’ve done so far. The local businesses and even personal people, for that matter, have been very generous with their donations. We’re thankful for that, but we’ve got a long road ahead of us yet. We’re not going to stop working at it.”

For those looking to contribute to the cause, the RM of Gilbert Plains has set up a place to donate funds for the flood relief and Crysler Jamieson launched the Parkland Business Challenge. A 50/50 is also up and running, thanks to the Dauphin Kings of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League lending the golf course their licence.

The pot for the 50/50 has eclipsed $16,000 and tickets are available at dauphinkings5050.ca or by calling 204-548-2326.

“In times like this, there are always good stories,” said McCallum.

“Gilbert Plains doesn’t have a large area of employment, so kids come back for the summer, and this is their employment. It would have been easy for the board to just lay everybody off and throw their hands in the air. But the board supported me in guaranteeing these kids that they were going to have a job for the rest of the summer, like we had promised them.

“Although your job is not going to look the same. Beer cart staff were in bare feet with squeegees on the greens. That’s just the way that it was. There’s a sense of camaraderie too among the employees when you get into hard times like this.”

Losing most of what is already a short golf season in Manitoba was tough to swallow, but McCallum remains hopeful for the course that originally opened with nine holes in July 1969 and expanded to 18 in July 1997.

“We’ll get through it. It’s such a resilient community and they’re so supportive,” he said. “We’ll get there. The only thing that we ask is for people’s patience and understanding while we get to that point.

“Next year is the goal. My comment to the board was that if we are going to make the decision of closing our golf course, let’s make sure that our patrons have a place to be by May 1 of next year.”

» Winnipeg Free Press