Hitting the highways to run more than 350 kilometers is no easy feat, but one that Slave Lake resident Cleo Carifelle thought needed to be done.
Inspired by the generosity of communities like Westlock, Carifelle wanted to say thank you and she wanted to say it in a big way, so, the idea was born to strap on her sneakers and trek her way to seven different communities to hand-deliver thank you banners signed by hundreds of Slave Lake residents. By the end of her journey, she will have run or walked over 350 kilometres.
“Slave Lake will always remember them for what they did for us,” she said.
After the dramatic evacuation from Slave Lake as a result of the tragic fire that burned through the northern Alberta town earlier this spring, Carifelle returned to town to see her home still intact.
Although hers was spared, so many others weren’t as lucky.
“It was unimaginable,” she said. “You think it’s not going to happen to you and then all of a sudden you see the smoke building and getting worse and coming towards you.”
When Carifelle and her family evacuated, they were separated into three separate vehicles. They headed west from Slave Lake until the highway was closed and were rerouted back east where the highway was also closed. So, for the duration of the fire, they were stuck in a parking lot.
“We were stuck in a Wal-Mart parking lot sitting there watching the town burn, literally. There was just big, black smoke going from the ground up to the sky, going across the whole town,” she said.
After they evacuated, they stayed outside of Westlock at her boyfriend’s mom’s house and had many friends and neighbours that attended the various evacuation centres throughout the central region.
“The amount of people it took to run those centres, you don't even recognize,” she said. “But I stood there and watched them and they went on and did what they could and just did it without even second thought.”
In the days leading up to her return home, Carifelle was overwhelmed with the generosity of Albertans in a handful of communities, including Westlock, where some Slave Lake residents were evacuated because of the fire.
