Asbestos removal and remediation in Canmore

What Canmore’s housing means for asbestos

Canmore began in 1883 as a Canadian Pacific siding and became a coal town almost immediately. It was incorporated as a village in 1965 and a town in 1966. Mining ended in 1979 when Canmore Mines Ltd. ceased operations, and provincial safety policy saw most of the mine structures demolished, leaving the lamp house and a few entrances. Then the 1988 Olympics were awarded to Calgary with the Nordic events at Canmore, and the town became a resort.

That gives a clean dividing line. The 2021 Census counted 15,990 residents and 9,173 total private dwellings — but only 6,804 of them occupied by usual residents, a gap of well over two thousand homes that reflects how much of the town is second homes and visitor accommodation. Development stayed inside the original blocks until the 1960s, and the older housing is concentrated in the mine-era townsites: the CPR townsite in North Canmore around William, Mountain, Sidney, Howard and Young Streets, and the mining village and Townside ground that became South Canmore, between the Bow River and Policeman’s Creek.

Those are the houses where vermiculite in the attic, floor tile and black mastic, textured ceilings, joint compound and pipe lagging turn up, and they are also the houses most likely to be renovated, because the land under them is worth a great deal. Heritage buildings tell the same story — the 1890 Canmore Hotel, the 1891 Ralph Connor Memorial United Church, the 1893 Sacred Heart church and the 1893 North-West Mounted Police barracks on 8 Avenue, a Provincial Historic Resource since 1990. Anything from the resort build-out of the late 1980s onward is a different proposition, and asbestos is rarely the question there.

How a job in Canmore runs

The steps are the same ones on our asbestos removal page. Nothing is skipped because the job is in Canmore rather than Calgary.

• Testing. Samples go to an accredited third-party lab and you get the result in writing before anything is disturbed. A clean result ends it there.
• Notification. Alberta OHS must be notified at least 72 hours before any work that could release asbestos fibres, and the notice is filed per address. We file it for every restricted-area job.
• Permits. The Town of Canmore’s Planning and Development department issues demolition permits, reviewed by a Safety Codes Officer (403-678-1543, option 2), and a demolition permit is a prerequisite before a foundation permit where an existing building is coming down. There are separate checklists for a demolition and for moving a mobile home or house. Confirm the current requirements with the Town before you apply.
• Disposal. Worth knowing before anyone quotes you. The Bow Valley’s own facility, the Francis Cooke landfill at Exshaw, is a Class III site — dry, inert waste only, with chemicals and hazardous wastes prohibited — and it publishes nothing about accepting asbestos either way. We do not assume; we confirm in writing before a load moves, and where it cannot go there, it comes to Calgary. Shepard Landfill in southeast Calgary is the only City site that accepts commercial asbestos, under a free Industrial Waste Permit and a booked appointment requested by 10 a.m. the day before. The rate is $200 a tonne, rising to $220 in February 2026. Material is wetted before bagging, double-bagged in 6-mil polyethylene and sealed, and you get the weight ticket and the manifest. That haul is roughly an hour and a half each way, and it belongs in the quote rather than in a surprise.
• Travel. Canmore is about 81 kilometres west of Calgary on the Trans-Canada, and we also work Cochrane on the same corridor. Travel is priced into the written quote — no separate mileage line.

Steep creeks, and what the water leaves behind

In June 2013 roughly 220 millimetres of rain fell on the 43-square-kilometre Cougar Creek watershed in three days. The debris flood that followed carved out something like 130,000 square metres of creek bed and bank, damaged property, roads and utilities, and did around $50 million of damage. The Mountain Creek Hazard Mitigation Plan was approved on 23 June 2013, four days after it started.

What has been built since is substantial: the Cougar Creek Debris Flood Retention Structure, 34 metres high and rated to 45 cubic metres a second, begun in 2020 and now complete, funded to more than $72 million between the federal and provincial governments and the Town. Work has also been done on Three Sisters Creek, Pigeon Creek and others, and the Land Use Bylaw now carries a Steep Creek Hazard Overlay.

For a property owner the practical residue is the same as anywhere: water that got into a building leaves wet insulation, wet drywall and, within a couple of days, mold. On a mine-era or pre-Olympic house the wet material may be the material that needs testing first, so we sample before demolition and dry immediately where the material is clean. Water damage restoration and abatement run as one job rather than two contractors blaming each other.

If you searched for an abatement company in Canmore, this is the page.

Related reading

• A flooded basement: the first 24 hours
• I found asbestos. What do I do now?
• Where asbestos waste goes in Calgary