Arlene Dickinson - Unti Arlene Dickinson NF

T he night my hometown was nearly destroyed by flooding, I woke at 3 a.m. and stood watching in shock from a window thirty-odd floors above downtown Calgary. It was eerily quiet, with not a light in sight. Every tower, crane and billboard had gone dark. Buildings had been reduced to ghostly outlines. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swear that the only sound was the faint rushing of water spilling over the edges of the Bow River. My heart raced.

I was witnessing one of the worst natural disasters in Canadas history. In the summer of 2013, heavy rainfall triggered unprecedented flooding in Alberta, leading to mandatory evacuations throughout the southern part of the province. But like a lot of people, Id rolled my eyes when the mayor of Calgary issued a warning not to go downtown for any reason. Westerners tend to think of themselves as tough and resourceful, able to deal with just about anything life throws at them, and Im no different. So I didnt evacuate, though I did take the precaution of seeking higher ground: I went to stay with a friend who lives in a high-rise, grumbling all the while about the inconvenience.

So why were we still up there when the river surged into the city, watching this catastrophe unfold? Denial. Neither of us could believe it was really happening. It felt like a horror movie, one with a huge special effects budget.

When I woke up for real at 6 a.m., Calgary was a watery ghost town. I could barely make sense of what I was seeing. A car floated along in the water swirling through the downtown streets, bobbing like a bath toy. Helicopters whirred overhead. My city was drowning.

Five people had lost their lives, many thousands had been displaced, and the financial toll was in the billions. People had seen their homes and livelihoods washed away overnight, in a torrent of muddy water. I was relatively luckyblessed, actually, because my family and friends were all safe, thank God. But the flood left Venture, the marketing company I had spent twenty-five years building, in ruins.

No one, least of all me, had expected this; our offices were outside the downtown core, far from the surging Bow. But the day before the flood, the police had knocked on every door, including ours, telling people to get out while they still could. I couldnt believe it. We were in the midst of several big pitchesthis abundance of caution would cost us a full day of work. Our IT guy had the wherewithal to grab Ventures backup servers before locking up the old schoolhouse wed so lovingly restored and converted into our headquarters, and everyone went home, fully expecting to come to work as usual the next day. That night, however, water rushed into the historic building, flooding the basement offices. As we discovered later, it rose nearly to the ceiling, covering all but the topmost step of the staircase up to the first floor. Computers, desks, files, office supplies, the espresso machine in the staff kitchen, irreplaceable hard copies of our early workall were submerged.

Finally, after days of heroic rescue efforts by responders, the flood water receded. Most people were allowed to return to their homes (if they were still standing), yet police told us that Venture was still off limits. A combination of half-drained water and downed electrical wires made it too dangerous to enter the building. But I needed to see for myself. I drove through the broken city, weaving between vacuum trucks and emergency vehicles, and gingerly pushed the door open. A coating of thick brown sludge, muddy silt from the river, covered every surface. There was a sickeningly sour smell in the air, like rotting food. Flood water is contaminated with all kinds of gross bacteria; we would have to get rid of everything, even furniture and supplies that hadnt got wet. To this day, when I look at insurance photos of the devastation, I seize up inside.

The months that followed were chaotic and depressing. Marketing is a service business, and our clients, many of whom werent located in Calgary, still expected us to do the work wed been hired to do, on the timelines wed promiseda reasonable expectation. But the team was under incredible emotional stress. Some peoples cars and homes had been destroyed, and they were camping out with friends and family, living out of suitcases. Even those who hadnt experienced personal losses were reeling; witnessing destruction on such a massive scale is traumatic.

I was reeling too. Id skated past trouble so many times in the previous twenty-five years that Id been lulled into a false sense of security. Without even recognizing it was happening, Id come to believe that my business was untouchable and my professional judgment infallible. Id seen it all, done it all. What could possibly go wrong? I now had the answer to that question: everything.

The logistical challenges alone were mind-boggling. I was running around dealing with insurance companies, attempting to clean up the mess in our old office and trying to find a new one. So many Calgary businesses were in the same predicament that the temporary space we were lucky enough to find was already crammed with refugee staff from other displaced companies. Still, we tried to forge ahead with our usual can-do work ethic: business as usual. As fate would have it, we had four reviews scheduled with existing clients, to determine whether theyd renew their contracts with us or go with other agencies; these are all-out pitches, where you remind clients of the heights youve scaled together and then present a plan for an even rosier future. But our team was scattered across the city, with some people working from home while others were distributed among three different rental offices, all in different locations. Collaboration was extraordinarily difficult, and the quality of the work we were putting out was severely compromised.

We lost all four clients. One of the CEOs told me, We wanted Venture to win, we really did. But it was as though a whole different agency showed up to pitch. He was right. We were limping along, just trying to get through another day, not to excel. We didnt sign a single new client during that time, which was very unusual.

In a state of grief and uncertainty, many people quit, and since we werent generating new work, I had to lay others off. Soon, half my business and half my team had vanished. Those who remained were anxious, understandably, so I was trying to project calm and certainty, but inside I was starting to panic. I was plowing my own money into the business to keep the lights on, but the bank was telling me it was a lost cause. Pull the plug, Arlene. Venture has had a good run, but its over.

My lowest point came when the chief marketing officer of a company wed done business with for many years called me into her office and told me that since the companys focus had shifted to the American market, shed decided to hire a marketing firm in the US. Years before, when wed landed this client, it had been a coup, one that gave us clout and credibility in the marketplace. The company hadnt been one of our larger accounts for quite a while, so the loss was more symbolic than anything else, but what it symbolized to me was that Venture was in irreversible decline. I did something Ive never done before in a professional situation, and something Ive explicitly told others not to do, because it reveals such a lack of self-control. I broke down and began cryingnot a discreet tear or two, which would have been completely fine, but wrenching sobs that simply wouldnt stop. I managed to gasp out that I was truly grateful to have had the company as a client and was very proud of the work wed done together, but accepted and respected their decision, and wished them the best of luck. Yet I could not stop weeping. It was mortifying. The CMO was a smart, tough businesswoman, someone I really respected; I think shed seen me the same way, and didnt quite know what to make of the fact that I was having a breakdown in her office. I tried to explain that the flood seemed to have washed away everything Id worked so hard to build, but I was probably crying too hard to be coherent. Eventually she left me alone in her office with a box of Kleenex so I could try to pull myself together.