Page 16 - GBC Spring 2022 ENG

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Golf Business Canada
Image 1: One of the new tributaries that have formed on the Hope Golf Club property.
Image 2 & 5: Two different angles of the damage to hole #7 fairway at Hope Golf Club.
Image 3: Hope Golf Club offered their parking lot as a helicopter landing area to evacuate trapped travellers. Image 4: The 8th hole at Hope Golf Club.
the golf course itself is primarily intact. The entire property was left in a layer of silt, but no major damages were sustained to the turf so far.
A month after the initial flood, as the waters slowly continue to recede and as the winter weather settled into the Fraser Valley, teams of golf industry volunteers were still on standby and ready to jump into action. “The golf industry has been our saviour along with local friends and family,” said Corrine. “Our industry really stepped up to the plate.... I am just speechless. People are amazing.”
The finish line is a long ways off and help is still very much needed as the Allan family navigates the changing landscape of post-natural disaster life as a business owner, “but I am a survivor. We can fix this. We will make it through, and I hope to be open by March next year,” Allan shares.
HOPE GOLF CLUB LOSES FAIRWAYS
Unfortunately, major flooding was not localized to the Fraser Valley. There was light to extreme flooding of golf courses all the way from Vancouver Island to Metro Vancouver and throughout the entire Fraser Valley including Langley, Abbotsford, Mission, Chilliwack, Hope and beyond. Some courses saw high water levels and water pooling throughout the course, others were completely covered in water and some, like Hope Golf Club, saw unfathomable amounts of extreme destruction from the harsh weather.
Run by husband-and-wife duo Vince Cianfagna, Life Professional of the PGA of B.C., and Bonnie Lamoureux-Cianfagna, the Hope Golf Club sits on the corner where the Coquihalla River flows into the Fraser River in Hope, B.C. Not
only did the course experience major flooding from the nearby rivers during the atmospheric river events in mid-November, but entire sections of the course were also ripped apart as powerful waters spilled onto the property carving their way throughout the golf course.
There are countless damages to the course but amongst the most extensive are the fairways that need to be replaced. You read that right: many fairways do not exist anymore! Instead, the Hope Golf Club has been left with craters decorated with river rock and irrigation wires and pipes where fairways existed only days prior to the storms. The demolished fairways will need to be rebuilt and reseeded with anywhere from 80 to 400 yards of fairway on each of the affected holes, which will be a hefty task to accomplish this spring.