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Along the Fraser: Singing love for streams and fish

Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows environmental groups celebrate Rivers Day.
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Volunteers Katrina Gorrie and Mariah Mund sing “They need love” to trees planted along Katzie Slough.

“The one we didn’t sing to died” – Katrina Gorrie.

Rivers Day is about love.

The love of Katrina Gorrie and Mariah Mund, for example.

Last Saturday, they were cooing to 128 plants that they helped establish along the northern bank of a blueberry farm that borders Katzie Slough in Pitt Meadows. It was the launch site of another canoe tour to introduce the public to the eight-kilometre channel that snakes from the Pitt River into Maple Ridge along the Fraser River by Airport Way.

Lina Azeez, of Watershed Watch, hopes to reconnect the it with parent rivers.

“We sang to our plants four hours a day,” the SFU students told me.

“It works,” said Mund, pointing to a healthy-looking willow, “named after MP Dan Ruimy because he planted it.”

It’s early yet, but Dan has adapted well to his location, and should survive.

“All the plants are doing really well,” said Gorrie, “except the one we didn’t sing to. It died. Plants need love.”

For the slough to thrive, it needs lots of love.

Plants on its southern bank would keep it from sluffing into the water. You can push a paddle into three feet of toxic muck.

Shade would mitigate temperatures that kill the few salmonids who escape outdated flood gates, and the ancient Kennedy Pump Station that grinds them up.

Shallow water is laced with nutrients from fertilizers that algae love and raw sewage purposely piped in from Maple Ridge during heavy rain.

If government loved wild fish, this process would have ended decades ago.

A change of heart would let spring and coho fry overwinter in the millions.

But, love for streams and fish brought 15 paddlers to Katzie Slough that day.

Vivian Biero has lived here since 1965. She’d never seen this stream hidden in farmland between the Lougheed Hwy. and Dewdney Trunk.

“I really didn’t know it was here,” said Biero, a kayaker.

Mike and Sunny Brown brought their two girls, Journey 8, and River, 6.

“I wanted to see frogs,” River told me.

“And help the Slough,” said dad.

In Port Coquitlam, the Maple Creek Streamkeepers involved kids in a game of environmental snakes and ladders that spreads out on the ground.

Maple Creek president Sandy Budd says they moved depending on stream protection facts.

“Squares say, ‘you planted trees near a stream’ – move forward 5 spaces; ‘cut trees to improve a view’, go back 7.”

If only we could get the DFO to play this version. This year it tried to end the vital Salmon Enhancement Program. In 2016, without consulting stakeholders, DFO approved alteration of a productive stream in PoCo so a homeowner could build onto his house.

Allco Fish Hatchery is the site of a Rivers Day Celebration by ARMS. It hums with community groups, the public, businesses all supporting a resource assailed by abuse, government apathy and deceit.

“It was another disappointing year for sockeye,” said Sophie Smith of ARMS. “Just three made it up this far. Two died before we could truck them into Alouette Lake. We’ve only seen two pink salmon so far, one half eaten.”

Seals take a bite of one, and move on.

“The pink haven’t arrived in Kanaka Creek yet either,” said Ross Davies of KEEPS at the Bell Irving and KEEPS Rivers Day Event. “But, the signs are there. Today, I saw seagulls sitting on the river. Fish must be close.”

Fishermen know that, too. Several positioned like gulls on the rocks at Davidson’s Pool on the Alouette River last Friday night, when Maple Ridge artist-in-esidence, Robi Smith began lighting candles inside 80 paper lanterns lining the wooded trail above them.

Throughout the summer, Smith and volunteers – eager to celebrate the eco-system – constructed the wire and tissue models.

“Crayfish, dragonflies, salmon, everything that’s here,” said Smith, who hosts an event again Friday, 7 p.m.

I’ll sing my tune, The Froggy Symphony, with songsters Kat and Tony.

Share the love. It’s free.

Jack Emberly is a retired teacher, local author and environmentalist.