History
Calgary pioneer Sam Livingston originally settled at the location of the reservoir, and he gave the name Glenmore (Gaelic for "big valley") to this area.
The dam was completed on 31 January 1933. When the area flooded (by the summer of 1933), part of the Livingston house was preserved and now stands in Heritage Park, which borders on the reservoir.
- 2005 flood
Although the dam usually provides effective flood protection, a major flood in June 2005 caused the reservoir to exceed its capacity. The excess spilled over the dam and into the river. The flow downstream increased from its normal average of 20-30 cubic metres per second up to 350 cubic metres per second. As a result, some roads were closed and 2,000 Calgarians who lived downstream were evacuated. The Glenmore water treatment plant had difficulty treating the heavily silted water. Ironically, this caused the municipal government to issue water restrictions. The Alberta government estimated the floods in the area to be the heaviest flooding in at least two centuries.
Location of Glenmore Reservoir in CalgaryRead more about this topic: Glenmore Reservoir
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)