Crowsnest Pass: Community at a Crossroads

July 13, 2026

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Wildlands Advocate article by David McIntyre

Read the PDF version here.

 

I fell in love with Crowsnest Pass 50 years ago. It was love at first sight.

I fell in love with the land’s endearing intrigue; its location, a step off the beaten path. I saw the community — and the upper headwaters of the Oldman Watershed — at sunrise, cast in the magic of a gorgeous spring day.

What I didn’t see, nor begin to comprehend, was that the community had only recently shed its long black coat of coal mining dust and its lingering legacy of coal mining deaths.

Standing in sunshine and looking out at snow-clad mountains laden with Crown of the Continent beauty, I failed to see the tragic toll of death and destruction that had occurred during the dirty, land-degrading boom-and-bust quest for coal. I didn’t realize that many headwaters streams had already lost their native Westslope Cutthroat Trout and Bull Trout.

My subsequent move to Crowsnest Pass was made amid opportunities offered elsewhere. I didn’t make the move for money. I moved in quest of headwaters beauty, crystal-clear springs, and quality-of-life living.

The past 50 years have been wonderful — and profoundly painful. I’ve hiked amid great beauty. I’ve also seen this beauty degraded by needless landscape destruction. And the pain in witnessing this loss has found me in constant retreat from formerly treasured places.

Today, I stand with countless other Albertans in an uphill battle to save Crowsnest Pass and the Oldman Watershed’s vital headwaters forest for its priceless and irreplaceable worth, and for the sustained health and prosperity of its downstream users.

 

Water concerns

Thirty years ago, Albertans didn’t realize how little water there was in the Oldman Watershed, a small watershed that exists at the dry eastern edge of a narrow waistline within the Rocky Mountains’ realms of mountainous expanse and larger rivers. Albertans didn’t realize how vulnerable this meagre watershed was to coal mining, clearcut logging, and off-road abuses.

Thirty years ago, we didn’t know coal mining was creating toxic accumulations of selenium, or that this toxicity would last for decades.

We didn’t know that “yesterday’s” Tent Mountain mining in the headwaters of the Crowsnest River would kill native trout and make it unsafe to consume fish from Crowsnest Lake.

We didn’t know that the selenium problem had no industrial-scale solution.

And when it comes down to it, we didn’t see an intense and burning need to protect the Oldman headwaters from the impacts of the current scale of clearcut logging, off-roading abuses, and further coal mining.

 

The Headwaters Forest, the living “sponge” that holds our vital water 

We didn’t realize, until recently, that clearcut logging — the killing and degrading of the essential headwaters “sponge” — was destroying the Oldman’s vital-to-life watershed.

We didn’t understand that this watershed was worth far more than the matchstick forest industry it was being sacrificed to support. (The problem within the problem?: It takes a long century to grow merchantable timber in this dry, matchstick forest, and tree growth faces the daunting twin threats of insects and wildfires.)

Until recently, many failed to see that the clearcutting of this headwaters forest, instead of reducing the threat of wildfires, fuels and fosters the down-the-road threat and likelihood of wildfires.

Forty years ago, society didn’t know that the forest community in the headwaters of the Crowsnest River was Alberta’s rarest, home to Western Redcedars, Ponderosa Pines, Western White Pines, Rocky Mountain Junipers, and other tree species with core ranges farther west.

Ten years ago, society didn’t fully realize that overhead transmission lines within this dry, fire-prone forest introduce a profound and deadly wildfire threat. For an example, take California: One electrical provider there, even after paying more than 23 billion in settlements, still faces lawsuits stemming from its overhead transmission lines and their role in recent wildfires.

 

Highway 3 visions and concerns

I view the current billion-dollar plan to twin and transform Highway 3 from Lundbreck, Alberta to the Alberta/British Columbia border as a death sentence for the community of Crowsnest Pass, as well as for southwestern Alberta’s potential to be recognized for its wealth in scenic, recreational, and historical attractions. The envisioned highway, an asphalt albatross, if constructed — at a cost exceeding one billion dollars — will permanently kill the region’s ability to gain maximum value from its wealth in scenic and recreational attractions.

Highway 3 is a priceless provincial treasure… if it can be saved from the planned twinning. It can be marketed as a scenic byway that, at a suggested sustained speed of 80 km/hr, exposes travellers to spectacular scenery, a gorgeous trellis waterway, and a wealth of heritage attractions.

I see an absolute and unflinching need to honour and respect the two 1970s provincial designations that protect the historic and natural integrity of Frank Slide (Frank Slide, North America’s deadliest rockslide, cascaded from Turtle Mountain in 1903 and killed an estimated 100 people within the sleeping community of Frank) from development, and from the willful and planned destruction that twinning Highway 3 would create. The current plan to twin Highway 3 within the projected path of Turtle Mountain’s forecast “second coming” — yes, a second rock avalanche is expected to cascade from Turtle Mountain — reflects a colossal brand of “engineered” ignorance and oversight. It ignores the scientific assessment that a second rockslide will at some point come from Turtle Mountain with the potential to cross the railway and Highway 3 and extend east into downtown Bellevue.

The plan to twin Highway 3 here would degrade the worth and profile of the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre and relegate it to a viewpoint from which visitors would look down on an incredibly noisy, Deerfoot Trail-like speedway with a massive highway roundabout as the prominent viewpoint feature.

I look to honour the planned Jim Prentice Wildlife Corridor, a five-kilometre strip of land that serves as an essential wildlife passage in the area, not kill it with a twinned highway. Twinning the highway would, in essence, cause it to become the Jim Prentice Memorial Speedway, a probable 24-hour truck stop, and a high-speed exit ramp into British Columbia.

 

Viewing Crowsnest Pass and planning for its future

Crowsnest Pass, despite its scars from industry and decades of contamination and degradation of its headwaters, still retains world-class beauty. It’s laden with grand vistas and hidden retreats. The community and the Oldman headwaters (including the Castle, Crowsnest, and Upper Oldman rivers), if protected from further debasement, offer society a quiet place to escape into the solitude of shady, stream-side retreats. Here at heaven’s gate there are beckoning mountain trails that expose hikers to a wealth of scenic and historic attractions, and tucked within intriguing folds in the land there are compelling stories.

Among them, the remains of North America’s deadliest rockslide. Beneath the mountain, late-day shadows also reveal the haunting graves of the 189 men and boys who died in the 1914 Hillcrest Mine Disaster, Canada’s worst coal mining accident in history.

The Crowsnest River, flowing through this valley in the shadow of death, has also witnessed wild days and wilder nights. It was here under cover of darkness that rum runners raced through the night. Tension was in the air, and there were shootouts with the police.

The community of Crowsnest Pass needs to be more involved in its future to ensure that it and its vital-to-life watershed aren’t sacrificed on the route to a false promise of overnight industrial wealth. Albertans must never allow this gorgeous Crown of the Continent landscape to be transformed into a speedway overlooking a network of industrial parks and truck stops offering nothing more than fleeting glimpses into world-class vistas.

Crowsnest Pass needs to protect its priceless viewscapes from visual scars such as clearcuts, overhead power lines, communication towers, and other poorly located infrastructure.

 

Community at a Crossroads

The community of Crowsnest Pass stands at a critical crossroads, its past formed in footnotes of death and destruction and its future worth dependent on its ability to save its scenery and the health of its headwaters.

The community, small in population and isolated from mainstream Alberta, requires the powerful support base afforded by the Oldman Watershed’s 200,000 thirsty, water-dependent downstream users, as well as the people power of grassroots support from all caring Albertans. It must do this if it’s to rise to provide quality-of-life living and watershed salvation.

I ask Crowsnest Pass residents and the people of Alberta to stand up and demand that the Oldman Watershed’s critical headwaters’ health and beauty be retained for future generations.

Only when we stand and fight together can we honour the hard work and lost lives of those who preceded us and save the land that defines us in the place we love and call home.