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The Hope Slide of 1965

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Aerial view of the Hope slide taken by Laura Halliday flying a Piper Cherokee July 6, 2013
Aerial view of the Hope slide taken by Laura Halliday flying a Piper Cherokee July 6, 2013

I’d heard of the Hope Slide of 1965, but it wasn’t until we stopped at the viewpoint this past July, that I could see how massive it really was.

On Saturday January 9, 1965, about 20 km east of Hope, half an unnamed mountain plunged down the highway. It brought 46 million cubic metres of rock, earth, snow and trees. 300 metres of wreckage, rushed up the other side of the valley, and back down again. When it was finished, four people were dead, a valley and a lake were wiped out, and kilometres of highway was destroyed.

Hope Landslide
Vancouver Sun, January 10, 1965

To give you an idea of the devastation the slide caused—the height of the mountain that fell was a little under 2,000 metres. Grouse Mountain is just over 1,200 metres.

Flying Phil Gaglardi:

Highways Minister, (Flying Phil) Gaglardi took a helicopter out to survey the wreckage and told the Victoria Daily Times: “It looked as if a giant stood on top of the mountain and split it with an axe.”

Norm Stephanishin was driving a semi-trailer to Hope, when he came across Bernie Beck, Dennis Arlitt and Mary Kalmakoff. It was just after 4:00 am and they were pushing out their car from the snow it was stuck in from the first slide. Norm heard rumbling and thought there could be a second slide. He told them that he was going to hike to Sumallo Lodge and call for help. He said they should go with him, but decided to stay. As they talked, Thomas Starchuk pulled up behind in his hay truck. Starchuk also stayed, and Beck climbed in the truck with him. Arlitt and Kalmakoff sheltered in Stephanishin’s semi.

Hope slide
From the viewpoint. Eve Lazarus photo,2022
Two Earthquakes:

Seismographs recorded two earthquakes that morning with epicentres in the Nicolum Valley area. The second was at 6:58 am, the time of the second slide.

The bodies of Bernie Lloyd Beck, 27 a salesman from Penticton and father of a toddler, and Thomas Starchuk, 38 -year-old father of four from Aldergrove were recovered later that day. The bodies of Dennis George Arlitt, 23 and Mary Kalmakoff, 21 and the 1957 yellow Ford convertible they were travelling in, were never found.

Hope land slide
Diagram from the plaque at the Hope-Princeton viewpoint, July 2022

According to the plaque, the new highway and the viewpoint we were visiting, were built on slide debris about 55 metres above the original road.

Hope-Princeton Highway
Kathleen and Mack Richards on the newly opened Hope-Princeton Highway in 1949. Courtesy Bruce Richards

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

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10 comments on “The Hope Slide of 1965”

I wouldn’t doubt it those wonderful, kind people who passed away years ago 1965 still walk along that highway in spirit.. I believe in after life and you never know maybe one day someone will see a ghost(spirit) of one of those people sitting by the highway. I have seen ghosts (spirits) and heard them also.. Very sorry for the families that lost their loved ones during the earthquake years ago in 1965..

You think people would hang around the place of their death? Good grief. My parents were friends with one of the deceased and he was a loving, devoted husband and father. So no, they had families, children and their energy would follow them through their lives. Seriously, I hope they don’t see your comment.

Epic! Did you run across the story about the Greyhound bus barrelling down the Hope-Princeton onto the stretch of highway about to be buried in 230 feet of rock? That would make a good part 2.

David Hughes, the Greyhound driver, was my grandfather.

The Ashcroft Times has a detailed series of events from a 2018 article.

The driver of the Greyhound bus was a very gracious gentleman who lived with his wife at the retirement home where I was employed. Lovely couple and he shared with us how he was the driver of that bus on that eventful day.

I remember a few years after it happened, my dad stopped us at the site and told us we were standing over the bodies of those unfortunate people. It’s to this day an area that chills me to the bone. The current highway bypasses the likely grave area. Last time I was there, a few years ago, you could still get to part of the old highway, which now runs through the forest growing over it.

My Dad had driven semi-trucks along that highway for years and when he heard about the slide on the news, he insisted that we drive there.
I have memories of him taking video tape of the slide and showing me about where he thought the couple were at the time.

I remember the day it happened, and may still have the newspaper articles. I was 13. I was really shocked, because our family traveled that route every year to the Okanagan for our camping trip. We had also visited the site of the slide in Frank, Alberta, a few years before, and learning bout it really caught my imagination.

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