Tag Archives: Chinook Salmon

Arts, Rivers & Oceans

Bringing Campbell River’s Tyee Legacy to Vancouver’s DOXA film festival


A documentary about Campbell River’s historic Tyee fishing culture will be screened at Vancouver’s DOXA Film Festival on Thursday, May 7. In this morning’s interview filmmakers Jevan Crittenden and Nate Slaco talk a little about ‘In Tyee Country,’ and how it came into being. 

Jevan: “When we started this project we expected certain things and a lot of those assumptions were accurate, but there were some surprising things that came up. To me the community aspect is the surprising thing. Peter Wipper talks about having a greater sense of community and home in Campbell River than he does in his own hometown, and he credits that to the community that’s come up around the Tyee Club. It really is a tight-knit group.”

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Rivers & Oceans

Ottawa’s renewed salmon funding spawns both hope and skepticism

By Sonal Gupta, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Ottawa’s $412-million salmon recovery program offers a lifeline to BC’s struggling fisheries — but comes at the same time budget cuts are dismantling monitoring systems conservationists, experts and First Nations say are essential to protect them.

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Feds ignore calls for moratorium, approve commercial herring fishing

By Sonal Gupta, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

When Kurt Irwin was growing up near Salt Spring Island on British Columbia’s southern coast, spring meant herring season. He remembers the ocean turning white as the small fish filled the harbours, the sky alive with gulls and salmon chasing them just below the surface.

“We haven’t seen that in many years… They [commercial fishing boats] literally fished it out,” said the now 58-year-old Irwin, a councillor for the Penelakut Tribe, located near Chemainus on Vancouver Island. Their members have also been pushing for a five-year moratorium on commercial herring fisheries to allow stocks to recover.

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Energy, Indigenous Nations

Wind energy project empowers We Wai Kum First Nation

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Wei Wai Kum First Nation is charting a new course as the majority owner of one Vancouver Island’s largest new power sources following decades of exclusion from energy projects in their own territory. 

The Yə̓yus Energy, formerly known as the Brewster Wind Project, is a $600-million, 197-megawatt wind farm with 30 turbines that will be located northwest of Campbell River. Wei Wai Kum owns 51 per cent of the wind project while Capstone, a Toronto-based renewable energy firm, owns the remainder. 

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Animals

Canadian and US regulations are at odds in the Salish Sea, and whales are caught in the middle

Editor’s note: The Orcas that visit Cortes, Quadra and the Redonda Islands are mostly members of the northern resident pod, but there also get visitors from the southern pod.

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Salish Sea is one ecosystem but Canada and the US are playing by different rules when it comes to protecting threatened whales, experts warn. 

Continue reading Canadian and US regulations are at odds in the Salish Sea, and whales are caught in the middle →