Vancouver Province
for June 9, 2000

Our population will increase by leaps and bounds. Access to hard-to-reach places increases everyday. My test for the quality of life is, where do I have to go to get some decent fishing and some gentle peace and quiet? That means few, if any, people.

There are a few places close to home.-the BC government over the years has done wonders at keeping Interior lakes well stocked but you need a plane to get to the peace and quiet. Not only are the best weed beds of the best lakes covered in people but that noise, so fatal to any cleansing of the brain, the cell phone, can be anticipated with certainty. What sort of person would go fishing with a phone in his pocket?

Not so long ago a person on an average income could fish near Vancouver and find solitude and fish. Now there is solitude all right -but no fish. The places that used to be sure things for Coho-Salmon Rock, Thrasher Rock and the Flat Tops, Lasqueti Island and Pirate Rock-are now just fading memories for the guy with the small speed boat, a mooching rod and bait bucket full of herring.

The places where I used to fish have mostly gone. The sea trout have been put out of business by the ubiquitous fish farm with its diseases and sea lice. Tramping the heathered hills and fishing the many lochs that dot the landscape is great fun but you have to go a hell of a long way to get that pleasure.

Where, if you ponder what they’re saying, you can get the gravity of the situation is in the fly-fishing magazines. More and more the articles are about fishing in Argentina and Chile for the fishing we used to get in out own back yard. Here is an article about fishing for sea trout in the Falklands, there is one about a trip to Iceland which will probably only set you back about ten grand for a week with the strong possibility of "you should have been here last week" as you go home empty handed. It was, until recently, that Alaska dominated the stories and adds but now, I’m told, their wilderness rivers look like the Vedder on a long weekend. Now it’s Russia with that "virgin" rivers dominated by a few guide outfitters. If you happen to spring from a dukedom or are a dot.com zillionaire you can get decent fishing but how long will that last? If you want, I’m told that Outer Mongolia has a native trout that’s a gas.

And now there is the flyfishing for ocean fish-the bonefish, dorado and barricuda. And they’re fine if you’ve got the airfare for Belize or Christmas Island in your ass pocket. Even fish we never thought of as "game" fish such as rock fish are being targeted by the folks who used to walk the woods and wet a line in a river not all that far from home.

But it’s not just fishing. I’m writing this in a wonderful old inn in a small village in Wales. Trouble is, the village has been named the "best village" in several surveys and now a several hundred room hotel with all the accoutrements is planned in the valley.

Where will it all end? And where do we go next? And who the hell can afford it anyway?