Volunteers with Team Rubicon Canada are working in basements across St. Catharines, Ont. helping homeowners clean up after roughly two months’ worth of rain fell on the city in a matter of days, triggering catastrophic flooding and sewage backups. Storms hit the city on July 27, 28 and Aug. 2, triggering a state of emergency. “We’re doing what we call a ‘muck out,’” said Jack Profijt, a volunteer and St. Catharines resident who has spent the last several days pulling up carpet and ripping out drywall in the home of an elderly woman. He says the first few weeks after a disaster can be overwhelming and this is a way to help people see a way forward. “What this does for homeowners is it actually gets them to a point where they can see a beginning, and it puts them in a direction of how to finish.” Like many of the Rubicon volunteers, Profijt is a veteran, having spent 26 years as a reserve with the Canadian Armed Forces. Team Rubicon was founded with a dual purpose: helping communities in need, while giving veterans and other first responders a way to keep serving after they’ve left the service. “It’s hard to know where to fit sometimes,” he said. “What teamwork does for me is it allows me to get back to something that was missing. I have the camaraderie, I have the people that have common experience and it allows me to commit and continue my service to Canada.” Trevor Young, a volunteer and member of Team Rubicon’s board, says that sense of purpose is central to the organization. “One of the things you miss the most when you hang up your uniform is that sense of purpose and contributing to the community,” he said. “And so that dual mission, I think, is one of the things that makes us unique.” Team Rubicon Canada is currently helping about 30 homeowners, with more in the queue. The organization has set up its base at the local high school, where the gym has been converted into a staging area and the library is lined with cots for volunteers to sleep in. “The need that we’re seeing is sometimes multigenerational,” said Jennifer Goodfellow, who manages volunteers for Team Rubicon Canada. “Generational homes where they’re no longer able to house everyone in their basements anymore. They’re all up and living on one floor. The need is great so it’s really good to be here.” Three weeks after the devastating flooding, the damage is still visible throughout the north end of the city where piles of debris sit at many curbs waiting to be picked up by garbage collectors. “It’s been really hard to see, you know, in some cases, people’s entire lives at the end of the driveway,” said St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe, who is now calling on the provincial and federal governments to do more to help municipalities grappling with aging infrastructure. “In an era where we’re talking about nation-building projects, I would argue that fixing the water, wastewater and stormwater systems of municipalities across the country should be top of mind because it’s something that’s affecting every single municipality.” Both St. Catharines and the Niagara regional governments have said inspections show there were no blockages, infrastructure weaknesses or other problems that caused the widespread flooding. There was simply too much water for the system to handle. Siscoe says St. Catharines is not the only community grappling with these issues, just the most recent one impacted by extreme weather. He says aging infrastructure needs to be updated to help prevent future flooding, but those improvements are costly. “I think this concern is shared by every mayor across the country, is that’s an incredibly expensive process,” he said. “We’ve been dealing with the remnants of a 150-year-old water wastewater system (and) trying to replace all of that. Separating out all of the storm sewers takes time, and it takes a lot of money.”
