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Bowron Lakes

The article on Bowron Lakes in the Fall 2022 issue could not have been better timed, as last week I gave a talk to my Rotary Club in Wales on our canoe trip around the Bowron Lake chain in early September 1967. Paul Lyons and I rented a timber canoe and drove up from Vancouver. We set off after a brief chat with Davy the park ranger, who mentioned grizzly bears and the fact that he did a weekly circuit around the chain in the event we were stranded! We were there in the first week in September and on day two it snowed (a bit different to the 30 degrees mentioned in the article). When we got to Lanezi Lake, the trapper’s cabin was occupied, so we camped next door and dried our saturated sleeping bags by the wood stove. The two Canadians who were there shared a couple of Kamloops trout (a 12 pounder) steaks with us! The following day we climbed to Hunter Lake for the most amazing fishing experience as suggested by Davy. After day four, we ran low on food so subsisted on trout until we got back to the ranger’s trailer.

no prepared campsites, shelters or smoke! What an experience.

Dick Boyle, Wrexham, Wales, UK

Mount Slesse Crash

The crash on Mount Slesse was discovered by a team lead by Elfrida Pigou, probably the top woman mountain climber in BC in those days. Later her team was wiped out by an avalanche near Mount Waddington. I think they found an iceaxe. Perhaps that is why she is often forgotten today.

Tom Widdowson, Victoria, BC

Wings Over The Rockies Nature Festival

I’m a volunteer with the Wings Over the Rockies Nature Festival (Invermere), and I was hoping that BC Mag could

Print Something About Our Yearly Event

Our festival boasts about a hundred events/activities in the spring, the majority of which have to do with birds. We are located in Invermere, though some of the events take place in other communities of the Columbia Valley. Here in the valley, we live near the Columbia Wetlands which is on the flyway of migrating birds in the spring and fall. Our festival is to celebrate just that—the migration of birds through our spectacular area. Invermere is nestled in the Rocky Mountain Trench (to use a geological term) squeezed between the Rockies and the Columbia Mountains, the Purcell Range to be more exact. Every year we welcome a keynote guest speaker and offer events that range from bird watching with a guide to a concert. We are organizing next year’s event, and I was thinking how wonderful it would be if there was a mention of our festival in the magazine this spring.

Marie-Claude Gosselin, Invermere, BC

Comment On Cormorants

I recently picked up your winter edition as I was interested in your article about cormorants. Having been born in the Gulf Islands and been on and around the ocean from Port Hardy to Baja Sur Mexico, I was pretty familiar with these birds.

It was great that the author was able to identify the species and their general population strengths and the various attributes that cormorants have to native populations.

My concern with the article is twofold. The first is the notion that cormorants are an introduced species. Cormorants are not introduced to the Pacific Coast nor the Atlantic Coast nor to any area of the North American continent. The author may have been trying to imply that the use of legislation both federal and provincial created the myth that cormorants were introduced. This is especially true to the Great Lakes where rebounding popu- lations were used as an excuse to substantiate and order a cull. As invasive species cormorants would not be protected, as they would be if they were a game bird or if they were a species at risk. Implying cormorants were introduced here is not correct, even if the author was trying to show the vilification of the species in other areas, like Ontario. Populations for these birds has fluctuated across North America especially as the result of pesticide use and habitat loss for the last hundred years or more. If someone grows up in an area where there are no cormorants and then through their lifetime see more and more they may think they are invasive, when in fact they are not.

Secondly, having grown up in British Columbia and been on the water around both sports and commercial fishers I have never heard a bad word said about them. For a fisher, their presence may indicate that the fish they were feeding on may also be what the salmon were eating and a likely place to catch some salmon. A symbiotic relationship if ever there was one. So, they weren’t so much loved as they were tolerated and appreciated.

How can one not marvel at the V shaped passage of dozens in flight just above the surface of the water. A captivating sight. And by the way I grew up calling them shags, just like we called killer whales/orcas, blackfish.