Financial Post
for July 10, 1998

I read with interest my colleague John Schreiner's column on the B.C. salmon fishery and he is bang on bringing readers' attention to the sports fishery which is of much greater value than the commercial sector. Unlike their Atlantic cousins, the traditional five Pacific salmon are more fished for in salt water than in rivers and in the "good old days" - not that long ago - a weekend would see thousands of sports fishermen, up and down the coast, mooching live herring or trolling spoons for coho and chinook salmon.

Painters Lodge at Campbell River was famous for its world figures chasing 50 and 60 pound Chinooks or Springs as we older timers call them. As stocks depleted, the action has moved further north and to the west coast of Vancouver Island but, save Langara in the Queen Charlottes, where Fisheries Minister David Anderson's buddy Bob Wright has his camp, those areas are also hard hit by the coho closure.

But there's much more to the issue than the recreational pursuits of coastal British Columbians or the money brought into the province by rich Germans and Americans. What is not well understood is that the Pacific salmon is part of the essence of B.C. - part of its soul. To debate the matter on monetary terms is bad tactically and unacceptable morally.

Last week the Toronto Globe and Mail, (proving once more that if it's Canada's National Newspaper then I'm Canada's National Broadcaster) did an editorial loaded with typical smarm essentially saying it's not really a big deal economically so who cares about the Pacific salmon. Well, 4 million Canadians from British Columbia care - a lot.

The salmon is much more than money. Anyone who has an abacus can figure out that the best economic use for the Fraser River is to dam it and forget the fish. In fact if Alcan had got its way and completed the Kemano Completion Project thus destroying the huge Stuart system sockeye run, a dam on the Fraser would have been only a matter of time. Indeed, since Alcan is still desecrating the Nechako River, it may be as if KCP was never tubed.

Moreover farmed Atlantic salmon is a far better money maker than wild pacific salmon especially if you don't give a damn about the latter and ignore all the dangers fish farming poses to them.

The salmon is more than money to natives - it's sustenance but even more importantly, it is part of their culture. As I'm writing this I can look up on my wall at a Gitskan representation of a spawning sockeye - it grips a British Columbian like the fleur-de-lis grips a Quebecker. It defines us.

We're a province of many things - majestic mountains, huge trees and, yes, rain. We're a region of deserts, cactus and sagebrush. And of magnificent rivers, deep canyons and more lakes than can be counted.

For most of us, though, the symbol of our land is the salmon and his mates in the food chain - the eagle, the seal, the sea lion and the orca. That's what identify us.

Without the salmon there is no bald headed or golden eagle. Nor seal, sealion or sea otter. There's no Orca to attract hundreds of thousands to whale watching sites. And British Columbia as we know it is no more.

If we destroy the salmon we have committed a crime against nature and ourselves for which we can never be forgiven.

But we will destroy it - for all intents and purposes at any rate. It will become a rare species confined to a few rivers as the atlantic salmon has become in Britain. As an economic defence, we will permit more and more fish farming which, as the dog chases its tail, will destroy more pacific salmon eliminating the reason to curtail fish farming.

Voracious greed, a stupid federal government (Ottawa must be bashed because it's always been in charge) stupid provincial governments which have never had the jam to properly protect habitat, international plunder by Alaska, Washington and Oregon. They're some of the reasons.

The solutions?

Seemingly unachievable because every user of the resource exonerates himself while blaming all the others. And worst of all, there is no ethical lodestar to which we all aim our moral compasses. We talk the talk but won't even walk the first step.

The problem isn't an economic one - it's much more serious than that.