The Sand Baggers
By Ritchie Gage

 The edgy daily media reports of the Red River flooding was a punishing spectacle in itself. Everyone likes
water and the river, but not at their door and not with concrete-sized chunks of ice. When the call came
for the sandbagging drill, people had an overpowering drive to help. They came in the hundreds for the
adventure and they wanted to save what could be saved and so lent a hand. Photographer Lance Thomson, whose credentials include a lot of wild and woolly assignments for us, offers a reflection from the frontline of the flood volunteers and other tough shots of the Red’s boiling trip to Lake Winnipeg.

Most people have at least one memory of having their home bothered by a leaky basement, a small fire or some other domestic problem. Even a sewer backup can be a challenge. But there are moments in the life of a community when its citizens rise to face a gigantic natural calamity – a river out of control.

It is easy to identify with people whose homes and daily lives are at risk from the bullying defiance of a flooding river. It’s another thing to put yourself in their shoes and offer yourself physically.

It is truly a selfless act because the job isn’t exactly a treat. Moving a 40-pound sandbag when you’re
20 years old should be within one’s grasp but when you’re twice that age, it’s a challenge. But no one talks
about it as a challenge like you think they would. They just go and do it. The response to the call for volunteer
sandbaggers was remarkable to the point where, some days, they didn’t need anymore. When 1,000 people drop what they’re doing and freely put in a three-hour stint handing shifting weight down a human chain, it is immeasurable except by the standards of building pyramids. There can be no less a commitment to protect the property of someone you don’t know but with whom you share an understanding: home sweet home.
You may never even meet again. You may never go inside to see the owner’s favorite chair or the family pictures. Trying to protect him or her with a wall of sand seems at best desperate, but you know it’s important or you wouldn’t be there. An acquaintance of mine, who is in her mid-50s and the mother of three children, accompanied her eldest son and his wife to the flood area south of Selkirk at Breezy Point. She is of average build. She claims to be in gym shape, whatever that means, but she is by no means particularly strong. But for three hours one morning, as if it was her civic duty, she passed along 40-pound sandbags. She admitted she was physically spent when it was finished and that the couple of hours became four when the bus didn’t show on time.

In times like these nothing goes by the clock. And if you called emergency measures or anyone else to find out how heavy the sandbags are to guage your abilities, no one could tell you for sure. But you saw everyone on television lifting in the lines and there appeared to be grandmothers and grandfathers and it didn’t seem hard. It was. But they continued to come anyway. There were people in shape with muscles and just regular people who had no muscles who gave a few hours for a cause that has become synonymous with mass devotion. In a province which has just gone through an unendingly cold winter, it would seem
heartless for the water to rise. But the river has its own needs.

For the people of Manitoba, young and old, men and women, in and out of shape, who will not be beaten and know what the word community means – good on you all.

Click here for a PDF version of the cover story with photos.