‘Drowning machine’ dangers return at Harvie Passage
Yesterday, an inspection revealed that an extremely dangerous
‘whitewater’ condition has developed at ‘Drop #4’, the passage’s most
downstream drop structure, which is adjacent to Deerfoot Trail South.
(The drop is also known as ‘Tatanka’ to kayakers and boaters.)
Kayakers navigate through the waves flowing through the Harvie
Passage, formerly known as the weir, on July 27, 2011.
Photograph by: Colleen De Neve, Calgary Herald
Bow River's Harvie Passage beckons paddlers
'Drowning machine' gets tamed
By Amanda Stephenson,
Calgary Herald
April 16, 2012
When the Harvie Passage opens to kayakers and rafters this year, it will mark the beginning of a new chapter for Calgary's paddling com-munity.
It's hoped it will also mark the end of a century's worth of tragedies caused by a weir that earned a reputation as the "drowning machine."
The Harvie Passage - a $17-million project by the Parks Foundation Calgary - is a series of man-made pools and rapids on the Bow River, just downstream of the Calgary Zoo.
The project hasn't removed the weir, constructed in 1904 to divert some of the flow to an irrigation canal and replaced several times since. A concrete structure still stretches across the river. Now a series of steps slows the pace at which water flows over the barrier and lessens the drop, eliminating the dangerous hydraulic action that claimed the lives of 14 people over the past century.
