The Ghosts of Lille

Mother Earth dictates that mountains should never move. Sentinels of time, they stand and observe the passing of the ages, marking the years only by the slow degradation of old age, like an elder, slowly shrinking and too stubborn to be moved. People, on the other hand, do not hold still for long. From the time they are born until they die, they continue to move forward, some slower than others; but measured against the lifespan of the mountain, their time is brief, regardless of how long and fruitful a life they have lived. ​

 

Mountains have known time without the presence of man. How quiet it must have been for them, how peaceful, as no other creature has ever disregarded the grandiosity of a granite monolith like man has. None other than man would think to go through the heart of a mountain, rather than over or around it. No other creature would think to pillage the depths to steal what treasures lie there, instead relying on the mountain to parse out those treasures at will, leeching rich life-giving minerals into the frigid streams. Since the time of man, a mountain’s lifespan is no longer as sure as it once was, but still, as a rule, mountains do not move of their own volition, until they do.​

 

There are places in this world where the natural laws do not always apply, or rather, a different set of natural laws are present for reckoning. Who is to say what is natural and what is not? There are places where the mountains move and people stay still, stuck in time for what might seem like forever. But who is to say? Forever is a very long time, and unlike the mountains, people haven’t really been around all that long, so maybe all that is natural for people is not fully understood. Perhaps some people are like mountains: they cannot move on; they cannot go away; they are stuck. ​

 

There is such a place which breaks the natural laws, or which recognizes a different set of laws altogether perhaps. It is a collection of tiny communities cut into the mountains, still in view of the foothills, which stretch out to the oceans of golden yellow prairie land to the east. Reaching to the border which divides Alberta from British Columbia, it is a gateway to the Rockies and a pavilion for the wicked winds of the west. Not for the faint of heart, as the westerly winds are strong enough to hurl chunks of rock and gravel into fragile window panes, the Crowsnest Pass is comprised of former coal mining communities which have more in common than they do which separates them, though one would be wise to keep that opinion to oneself when in the company of a resident, as they tend to see it quite differently.  The Pass, as it is commonly referred to by locals and nearby Albertans who flock there for summertime outdoor excursions, is home to the worst mine disaster in Canadian history, the Hillcrest Mine Disaster, in which 189 miners lost their lives, leaving ninety grieving wives widowed, and 250 traumatized children fatherless. This came just over a decade after the Frank Slide, Canada’s deadliest landslide, which nearly destroyed the town of Frank, killed up to ninety of its residents, and toppled half of Turtle Mountain. The mountain had moved after all.​

 

With such a rich and devastating mining history, it is no surprise that the community of the Crowsnest Pass is littered with homes with a rich and devastating history of their own. From the far-west town of Coleman to the eastern hills of Bellevue, there are a scattering of old houses which had their start in a place called Lille, a relatively short-lived mountain mining community, which is now a ghost town. Though the term ghost town means nothing more than a town which has shut down and essentially ‘died’, there are those who claim that upon hiking to the abandoned town high up in the mountains behind the Frank Slide Interpretive Center, they have had the sense that they are being watched, and that their presence is not really welcome. ​

 

There are also those who live in these once-nomadic abodes who claim to have had other-worldly, sometimes even frightening, encounters with past residents. Though it may be easy for most to deny the possibility of people who haven’t yet moved on, it’s not so easy for anyone to deny the eerie and ominous atmosphere felt when passing through the towns, especially when driving past the slide, where the highway is flanked on both sides by millions of tons of limestone rubble, a century-old graveyard for so many who are still buried in the exact spot where they died. ​

 

In the shadow of Turtle Mountain, it’s easier to fathom that mountains do indeed move. It is still monitored daily, in light of the fact that another slide is likely to occur at some point in the future, though according to the experts, not any time soon. If mountains can move, perhaps there are also people who cannot. Perhaps there are people who stay in one place far longer than they were ever meant to, far longer than they ever should.