New paving stones support your local salmon

GO FOR THE ROE: The Alex Dobler Salmon Centre supports salmon enhancement and education, and much more.

BY PIETA WOOLLEY

Sheets of rain drench Ed Oldfield in his sweater mid-January. He’s not worried about the deluge.

Instead, the retired art teacher happily observes Lang Creek gushing over the rocks – a relief for both salmon and salmon-watchers, after the long, hot, dry fall of 2022.

Artist Ed Oldfield with the stone and raku pottery base he made for the Powell RIver Salmon Society centre 25 years ago.

His feet, though, aren’t muddy. Instead, he’s walking on the newly-built brick and gravel paths around the Alex Dobler Salmon Centre. The paths were laid for two reasons. First, to allow anyone with mobility challenges to enjoy the site: it’s easier to roll a wheelchair or a stroller on brick than through mud. And second, to raise money for the Salmon Preservation Foundation. The Foundation hopes to raise up to $1 million for salmon enhancement by selling “preservation pavers”.

Carving by qathet-born artist Mike Brown.

Salmon Preservation Pavers

The surging Lang Creek in January. This year, Chinook had trouble making it up the creek due to low water levels.

To order a preservation paver, in sizes ranging from $200 to $1,000, go to salmonpreservation.org/preservation-pathway, or pick up a hard copy of the order form at the qathet Living office, Marine Traders or Powell River Outdoors.

One of the first Salmon Preservation Pavers – memorial

One of the first Salmon Preservation Pavers – individual

One of the first Salmon Preservation Pavers – corporate.

The project has been 10 years in the making. “Ideas come quick – but projects and dollars don’t,” Ed said. “In terms of the money [for salmon enhancement], we’re it. If we want to do something, we have to raise the money.”

The PRSS was hoping Ottawa’s $641 million for salmon enhancement in BC – announced in 2021 –would fund the long-time work of the Society. So far, no dollars have materialized. Meanwhile, the PRSS is still re-building chum stocks lost in 2018 to vandalism at Duck Lake, and growing about 10% of BC’s hatchery-raised coastal salmon – two million a year, for the past 40 years. The Society started as just a hatchery, Ed said, but now it’s salmon enhancement, fundraising, water monitoring and education.

The new mobility-friendly walkway made of bricks and gravel.

If the Salmon Preservation Foundation had $5 million, Ed explained, the directors could fund all of its current activities. When all the bricks sell, that represents 20% of that.

Ed looks at Chum, Chinook and Coho returns for 2022, posted in the gazebo (which he also built).

Ed is thrilled with how the community has stepped up. The path itself would have cost about $250,000, but thanks to donations of gravel, logs, time and skill, it’s under $20,000 so far.

He hopes the community will get behind the “preservation pavers,” too. ||pieta@prliving.ca