Flood-recovering Bragg Creek looks to festival to entice tourists

People living in Bragg Creek are hopeful this weekends annual festival will entice tourists to come back to the hamlet as it recovers from Junes floods.

Roughly50 per cent of homes and almost all the businesses in the community west of Calgary were affected by the flood.

Business at Naomi Campbells Scoops and Snackswhich didn't have water damagehas slowed to a trickle since the flood.

"Now that the town's coming back in and a lot of businesses are opening up we need people to come out now and help us and get us through the winter again," she said.

Rose Everett, who has lived in the community for 35 years, is optimistic the annual Bragg Creek festival will bring visitors back.

"Hopefully there will be a big crowd out here to support. People like to come out here on weekends. So hopefully they'll show up put some money down," she said.

The celebration starts with a dance on Friday evening, followed by a breakfast, parade and other activities on Saturday.

"We've been having this little charming parade and festival to celebrate our lives here in this little village for 50 years. And we need this to get together to thank each other, and to blow off a little steam, as anybody who's normal would do at this time," said Sunil Mattu, the president of the Bragg Creek Community Association.

Doug Sephton, who has lived in Bragg Creek for 17 years and runs the hamlets website, is eager for the tourist to start visiting again.

"We have a lot of motorcyclists here and I didn't see them last weekend, so ...are they taking a pass for a couple of weeks? Are they going to come back later? How long is this going to last?"