Reflections on Duff’s Ditch

In the spring of 1997, after the Red River Floodway had diverted floodwaters around Winnipeg and saved the city an estimated $4 billion in damages, an elderly gentleman walked into a Winnipeg restaurant.

“The entire restaurant clientele rose as if one in a standing ovation,” a Maclean’s magazine columnist wrote.

The honored gent was Duff Roblin, who, as Manitoba’s premier from 1958 to 1967, had championed the floodway project and seen it through to near-completion.

But what a change the applause represented from Roblin’s time in office.

Back then, as a 2001 story from Manitoba History recounted, “Manitobans were strongly divided as to whether the province could afford the capital costs of a mammoth engineering project that would benefit primarily Winnipeg.”

The project was “vehemently denounced by opponents as a monumental, and potentially ruinous, waste of money,” the story continued.

“Indeed, the projected Red River Floodway was derisively referred to as ‘Duff”s Folly’ and ‘Duff’s Ditch’, and decried as ‘approximating the building of the pyramids of Egypt in terms of usefulness.’”

Of course, the floodway quickly proved its worth, as “the decade after 1968 saw a trend toward an increased frequency and severity of flooding,” Manitoba History continued.

Having diverted floodwaters in 1969, 1970, 1974, 1979, 1991, 1994, 1996 and 1997, among other years, the project is credited with preventing more than $40 billion in flood damage in Winnipeg since 1968.

There are no guarantees that the Fargo-Moorhead diversion – the “son of Duff’s Ditch” – will rival its parent in effectiveness. But I wouldn’t be surprised, and if floodwaters start skirting the metro as routinely as happens up north, count on Fargo-Moorhead residents to one day regard their canal as affectionately as Winnipeggers do Duff’s Ditch.

Good reading, Tom Dennis

I welcome your feedback and story ideas. Call me at 701-780-1276 or email me at tdennis@prairiebusinessmagazine.com.

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MADISON, S.D. – Information is power, and cybersecurity is all about protecting that information to make it as secure as possible. This is important whether you live in the United States or in any country around the world.

Ghana, my home country in West Africa, is not immune to cyber risks and attacks. Electronic payments and commerce fraud, “sakawa” or internet fraud, ransomware, insider threats and identity theft, social media abuse, social engineering, web defacement and ATM fraud are top cybersecurity issues.

Plus, Ghanaian news and media outlets have reported that cybercriminals are getting smarter by the day, sharpening their skills and discovering innovative ways to gain access to networks and data of businesses such as financial institutions. A report released by a Kenyan-based IT firm, Serianu Ltd., revealed how the Ghanaian economy lost a total of U.S. $50 million to cybercrime in 2016.

Ghana is taking baby steps with cybersecurity. For example, in Ghana there was no proven system for monitoring cybersecurity developments, and the International Telecommunication Union of the United Nations observed the absence in the country