Salmon were so plentiful in the Lower Mainland's creeks 60 years ago that Musqueam elder Delbert Guerin remembers catching one as a child with his bare hands.

"Every creek from Seymour right down to Eagle Harbour were loaded with salmon back in the '40s," he said Monday morning from behind the wheel of his pickup truck. He was touring the only wild salmon-bearing creek, which flows through the Musqueam reserve to the North Arm of the Fraser, left in the city.

"I always remember dad taking us for a ride. We went down to Eagle Harbour [in West Vancouver] and we stopped at a bridge. We got out and looked and chum salmon--dog salmon we refer to them as--they were just so heavy in there. I was about seven years old. I rushed down to the creek and I grabbed one and I managed to pull it out of the water... It was probably about eight or nine pounds. We went straight home and mom cut it up and fried some steaks for us. It's [one of those] little things you never forget."

Delbert Guerin

Email to a friendPrinter friendly

Font:

• *
• *
• *
• *

He recalls a similar instance in Vancouver. It was 1958, and he'd just got a job digging drainage ditches at the Shaughnessy golf course for $1.25 an hour.

"One of our fellows--he's long gone now, he was quite a bit older than me--he saw some splashing [in the creek that ran through the golf course] and went running over and caught himself a coho salmon. He pulled it out it was still silver and he said, 'I'm taking it home.' He came back the next day bragging to us, 'Oh that was delicious.'"

Earlier, at the band administration building on the reserve, the white haired Guerin--a longshoreman for 42 years before retirement, pulled out a map from 1890. The map showed Vancouver when False Creek extended all the way to Clark Drive, and a salmon creek stretched from there to Burnaby's Central Park. It was one of the many salmon streams that once ran across the city like veins.

It's such stories that Celia Brauer, co-founder of the False Creek Watershed Society, hopes Vancouverites will take to heart. The society aims to promote the rich natural and human history of the watershed to inspire city dwellers to live more sustainably, including choosing environmentally friendly products for cleaning and treating garden pests to keep toxic chemicals out of our waters.

Guerin and others will be sharing river and salmon stories at the environmental group's fourth annual Salmon Celebration, entitled Remembering Our History: Celebrating the Living, Sept. 30.

"It's important for us to remember what was here and think about where our fish comes from because we are the resource users," Brauer said. "It's a matter of understanding them so we can steward them for the rest of the wild species that exist."

This year's free family-friendly is at Vanier Park near the Maritime Museum from 12 to 4 p.m. with a parade at 1 p.m. The celebration marks the end of Wild Salmon Month in the city and falls on B.C. Rivers Day. Wooden boat building, Nisga'a dancers, canoes and canoeists from the Squamish Nation, drumming, crafts, food and games are part of the festivities, which also include an environmental fair.

For more information, see www.falsecreekwatershed.org.

© Vancouver Courier 2007