Personal Essay: No Dam Way

June 9, 2025

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Take our wins as we find them and always remember what we are fighting for.

 

 

By Lindsey Wallis

Read the PDF version here.

 

It was my favourite shirt. Mostly because I was seven years old, and it had an almost-cussword on it. The shirt was white with a red octagon and inside, written in all caps, was NO DAM WAY. I got it from my dad, Cliff Wallis, who was heavily involved in the campaign and subsequent court cases against the construction of the Three Rivers Dam, or as it’s now known, the Oldman Dam. Cliff is also a long-time board director for Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA).

At the time I didn’t understand the significance this dam would have on the future of southern Alberta or the implications the court case would have for water and conservation across the country. I just remember the proliferation of NO DAM WAY merchandise in our house, TV cameras appearing on occasion in the front yard for interviews, and Dad disappearing downstairs with Milton Born With A Tooth and other organizers from Friends of the Oldman River to plan their next steps. This was truly a moment in Alberta conservation history when people came together: the Lone fighters of the Piikani Nation, conservation organizations like AWA, rural landowners, and individual Albertans came together under the banner of Friends of the Oldman River, united for a common cause.

My dad still tells the story of how they organized the benefit concert. Surprisingly, it was easy to get a permit to hold the outdoor concert near Maycroft, the perfect place, where the Oldman River flows out of the mountains, and the ridges of the Whaleback swell to the north. Celebrities including David Suzuki, Ian and Sylvia Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, and others signed up to support the cause. Something like 10,000 people braved miles of muddy gravel roads to come and stand against the dam. There were traffic jams for miles down Highway 22. On the day of the concert, it was raining everywhere — the Eastern Slopes, and in the Porcupine Hills. But at the concert site, they were blessed with blue skies and sunshine.

Now, some naysayers said people were just coming to see famous people play a concert, but it was much more than that. The biggest cheers were for environmentalist David Suzuki, and when the time came to clean up, there was no garbage left by concertgoers. The volunteer cleanup crew only found some loose change on the ground. These were people who cared about the environment.

Speaking of loose change, during the concert, volunteers roamed the crowd with ice cream buckets, collecting money for the cause. The organizers were just hoping to break even. But that night, as they loaded the rented porta-potties onto a flatbed, they also jammed garbage bags full of cash into the back of my dad’s tiny Suzuki jeep. As he tells it, he arrived home around 6 a.m. and spread the money out on our kitchen floor to organize it. After expenses, Friends of the Oldman had raised more than $20,000 from people’s pocket change to support the fight. It was a fine example of folks from all stripes standing together and showing concern for the environment. “You go through these periods in Alberta’s history where people come together and things get done,” says Cliff.

“The government was really mad at us,” he adds, laughing. And that wasn’t the end. Friends of the Oldman River took the case to the Supreme Court of Canada and won (meaning the federal government would have to conduct an Environmental Assessment and Review Process). Unfortunately, it was too late for the Oldman and the two other rivers affected by the dam. Unable to get an injunction, construction of the dam continued while the case wound its way through the courts.

It all came full circle last year when I organized an Adventure for Wilderness to the Oldman Dam and reservoir. In March of 2024, the communities of Cowley and Pincher Creek had to truck in water or dredge the river bottom to pump a trickle of water for their communities. It was what the scientists said would happen before the dam was constructed. The dam slows the river, which drops sediment behind the dam, filling the reservoir with silt. Last March we saw a trickle of muddy sludge, winding its way through a deep channel in kilometres of cracked silt.

The dam protest was one of those special moments in AWA’s 60-year history where everyone pulled in one direction for the same cause. Everyone’s reasons varied, but they all spoke to connections with the land we love. There are other examples in our past where collaboration successfully moved conservation forward, creating protected areas such as the Willmore or Bob Creek. But with the Oldman Dam, things feel a little murkier. Did we win? In a very real way, no. The dam was almost built by the time the case wound its way through the courts. But there were wins. And lessons to learn.

According to Cliff, the biggest of these lessons is “don’t give up.” Before the Oldman Dam case, there was the Rafferty-Alameda Dam case in Saskatchewan. The opponents didn’t exhaust all their legal options, and the dam was built, despite rulings of the lower courts. Cliff wonders, if they persevered and pushed the case to the Supreme Court, would the Oldman Dam ever have been constructed? As it stands, no major Alberta river has been dammed since Friends of the Oldman won their case in the Supreme Court of Canada. And the recommendations that came out of that court case (though the government ignored the first one, which was to decommission the dam) did help mitigate some of the damage. We study in-stream flow needs and river health because of those recommendations. It also changed environmental assessment law in Canada forever. The court ruled that assessments were mandatory, a ruling that heavily influenced the Canadian Environment Assessment Act.

Maybe 2025 will be another watershed moment for the conservation movement in Alberta, when Albertans of all stripes pull together and create meaningful change. There are certainly plenty of reasons to be outraged of late. Our water and wild spaces are again at risk. The provincial government appears to have learned nothing from the Oldman Dam, as they are proposing more dams to “mitigate drought.” The Ardley Dam on the Red Deer River is currently under a feasibility study and a number of other reservoirs are in the pipeline. This is at a time when other jurisdictions are recognizing the harms of dams and removing them. Economic analysis shows these irrigation projects don’t return on their investment.
The most recent issue that has galvanized Albertans is opposition to coal mining on the Eastern Slopes, and specifically Grassy Mountain. It looks like we have the community to make big things happen again. Opposition to the Grassy Mountain mine has and continues to bring folks together from ranching communities, Indigenous Nations, recreationists and conservationists.

As we continue our work to conserve our wild places, remember: We do what we can. Take our wins as we find them and always remember what we are fighting for. Because, as my dad said to me the other day, “Fifty years ago there were systems in place to advise government and [the Alberta government] have dismantled them. The only ones that are going to look after your environment are [everyday] people.” And keep passing down that fire. Because as long as there are wild places, there will be those who love them and are willing to fight for them.