From the parking lot at Ribbon Creek, a popular recreational area in Alberta's mountainous Kananaskis Valley, 115 kilometres southwest of Calgary, a large open meadow can be seen along the eastern slopes of Mount Allan, the spectacular venue for alpine events during the 1988 Winter Olympics. At the eastern base of the mountain, a half kilometer from the parking lot near Highway 40, hikers sometimes wander into another clearing; a narrow avenue sprinkled with gravel and chunks of coal. At the far end behind bushes and trees, there are odd cement foundations and a cluster of rusted pipes popping out of the ground. A further search in the bushes uncovers the remains of tarpaper shacks and scores of rusted-out tin cans. There is even the remains of a two-man biffy in the woods, just out of sight from day-users of a picnic area. These are the last fading remnants of a ghost town called Kovach, named after district ranger Joe Kovach, who worked in the Ribbon Creek area.

The startup costs to develop the northern coal fields would demand far greater investment capital. Wasserman, always mindful of his commission fees, was adamant
and determined to develop the northern coal fields first. The resulting decision by this ambitious European fund-raiser was to have an enormous impact on future Alberta settlement, and accompanying economic, social and environmental policy that defines west-central Alberta and Kananaskis Country even today. The immediate consequence, however, was that Kananaskis coal field was left undeveloped for nearly four decades.

Martin Cohn, already deeply attached to the beauty and potential of the Canadian Rockies, soon changed his last name to Nordegg, the name of the town built to service the northern coal fields, which by 1909 was under the ownership of Toronto-based Brazeau Collieries. Although Nordegg's German background led to his downfall from the coal mining industry during the First World War, the mine and town he spearheaded became one of the most dynamic and innovative coal mining communities in western Canada.

In the late 1940s, Brazeau Collieries, which also assumed control of the Kananaskis coal field in 1909, decided to develop the Ribbon Creek area to capitalize on the opportunities in the Ontario anthracite coal market and the popularity of fuel briquettes, already a successful venture at Nordegg. A strip mine was opened on the lower southeastern slopes of Mount Allan in 1947, followed by an underground mine the next year. Plans were immediately in place to build a permanent townsite but a temporary locality was quickly put in place at the bottom of the mountain for nearly 150 miners and their families. The settlement was never incorporated as a town and was classed only as a village or hamlet, listed officially as Kovach in the Gazetteer of Canada.