There’s a persistent stench wafting through the bucolic mountain town of Canmore, Alta.

It’s so strong that one local coined a new tourism slogan for his local newspaper.

“Visit Canmore,” wrote Jamie McVicar in a letter to the editor. “Come climb a peak; don’t mind the reek.”

The picturesque town on the eastern edge of Banff National Park, about 110 kilometres west of Calgary, has been permeated by a strong sewer smell emanating from the community’s sewage treatment plant.

“It’s ungodly,” said McVicar, a retired lawyer who has lived in Canmore since 1993.

“There were mornings when we would close all the windows in our house because it was so putrid.”

The town has been trying to fix the sewage problem for years.

Efforts to eliminate the offensive odour from the plant, which was buil

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