Canada's federal minister of fisheries and oceans visited Squamish on Wednesday (Jan.11), touring local fisheries projects and meeting with community organizations along the way.
Minister Keith Ashfield's visit resulted from an invitation from West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky MP John Weston and fisheries activist Dave Brown of Whistler. It included a stop at the North Vancouver Outdoor School (NVOS) and another to chat about fisheries issues with local residents at the Adventure Centre.
The school, located in the Paradise Valley north of Squamish, delivers salmon education programs to students from Squamish and the Lower Mainland. Situated on 165 hectares of ecological reserve, NVOS also hosts several salmon enhancement projects in channels that run alongside the Cheakamus River.
Brown, vice-chair of the Squamish-Lillooet Sportfish Advisory Committee and a member of the Squamish River Watershed Roundtable, said he hopes the minister's visit to the school will result in federal funding aid.
More than nine kilometres of spawning channels were constructed in the 1980s on the school property and Brown said the problem lies in their maintenance and enhancement.
"It's glamorous to do habitat work and build it," he said, "but there's usually not the funding to maintain it."
He explained that a part of the roundtable's proposal involves maintenance work and "some of it is improving the habitat that's there and making it more productive."
Weston expressed his thoughts about the importance of the Minister's visit to the region.
"In striving to shrink the distance between Ottawa and the riding," Weston said, "meetings such as these bring our riding's world-class expertise and initiatives to the attention of cabinet ministers. This also affords the citizens in our riding the opportunity to bring their concerns, needs and aspirations to the federal government."
Carl Halvorson, NVOS property manager, led the minister and his staff on a short tour of the school, including a look at the spawning channels and the school fish hatchery.
Halvorson pointed out that the fish traps and manmade spawning channels are also an excellent educational tool, providing a safe way for the children to interact with the fish.
During the minister's trip to the West Coast, he also met with streamkeeper groups in Squamish and West Vancouver and announced $800,000 in funding to four Vancouver Island aquaculture companies that are working to build land-based tanks in which to grow farm salmon.
