The Bragg Creek community clean-up event, hosted by the Bragg Creek Ladies Auxiliary, is occurring for the second year in a row later this month, after seeing a successful turnout in 2021, despite COVID-19 concerns.
The event, kicking off on May 28 at 9 a.m., is volunteer-based. Bragg Creek residents can pull on a pair of gloves, grab a bag, and help clean up the hamlet’s streets.
Meeting at the Bragg Creek Community Center, volunteers are encouraged to bring a travel mug, as coffee and other refreshments will be available. A coffee mug is all the volunteers are needed to bring, as all other materials, such as gloves and garbage bags, will be supplied.
The event was inspired by the 2013 flood that devastated the hamlet, according to Michele McDonald, a Bragg Creek Ladies Auxiliary member.
“The community was really reeling from just the mess and the debris, garbage and litter that was everywhere,” McDonald said, “and the river had really moved through buildings and things strewn throughout.”
The community banded together to create a robust clean-up, which “had the support of Rocky [View County] in getting litter to the dump,” McDonald added.
The community faced another crisis when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. Last year, the Bragg Creek Ladies Auxiliary hosted a community clean-up due to an increase in litter that, McDonald suspects, came from nearby residents who were desperate for a trip away from home.
Bragg Creek soon became a “quick day destination”, McDonald said, because people “weren’t able to go very far.” However, the increase in tourism also meant an increase in litter that McDonald and other residents found throughout the hamlet.
According to McDonald, Bragg Creek does not have a designated hamlet clean-up crew, due to the small size of the community, so any litter brought in by tourists is unfortunately left to the community to handle.
Not only did last year’s clean-up help with reducing litter, but the event also provided Bragg Creek residents a social outlet, allowing residents to gather in a safe way while still following the government-implemented COVID-19 restrictions.
The Ladies Auxiliary is partnering with Bragg Creek Wild, an organization that seeks to protect the area’s wildlife, to host the event this year. The partnership was needed as the West Bragg Creek area has been populated exponentially, McDonald said.
“So they’re just seeing a lot more [traffic], which is leading to more litter on the highway,” she said.
Even with the latest partnership, the event remains “really grassroots,” according to McDonald, as most of the clean-up volunteers are people known to the Ladies Auxiliary members.
McDonald’s main goal for the event is that “folks will come out and give us a hand.”
