Northern BC: Construction Crews, Wireless Internet, and Lots of Water

Posted by Tad McIlwraith on July 20th, 2007 filed in Head Notes

I am just back from almost a week in northwestern BC. I was up as far as Dease River Crossing, north of Dease Lake along Highway 37. I love traveling in the area — I have done so now almost annually for ten years — and seeing the changes each time I go back. This time, the condition of the roads seemed worse than usual. But, they in that stage of ‘being worse before they get better’ as crews are working to seal-coat and pave long stretches of the gravel surface. Hotels, campgrounds, lodges, and camps in Dease Lake, Iskut, and other places were filled with crews working on the roads or building the infrastructure for new mining projects like Galore Creek. The area just seemed busy — perhaps trying four hotels one evening in Smithers before finding a room confirmed the craziness.

Water levels were unusually high too. Lakes have spilled their banks. Roads are damaged by winter runoffs. The access road into the Klappan and the BC Rail grade are completely impassable. We tried fishing for salmon in the Kitwanga and Meziadin Rivers but couldn’t believe the torrent of water still melting out of the unusually deep snow pack. Some people we spoke to said that the salmon are late, coming slowly up rivers like the Skeena and the Stikine. (That didn’t stop successful lake fishing for rainbow trout all along the route.)

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that most lodges and hotels now have highspeed and wireless internet. I found myself pleased to be able to check email from the deck of a cabin overlooking a lake and mountain and, yet, somehow saddened by the reality that the wider world has intruded onto a place I like to go to get away from the demands of an internet existence. There is still no cell phone coverage along Highway 37 but I suspect that it will come soon — perhaps once the long-awaited powerline connects the area to the provincial grid.

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3 Responses to “Northern BC: Construction Crews, Wireless Internet, and Lots of Water”

  1. Peter Hall Says:
    August 11th, 2007 at 4:44 pm

    Please be aware that the Kitwanga sockeye salmon population is depressed. Recreational fishing for these fish is prohibited and FSC fishing on this stock has been voluntarily abandoned by the Gitanyow for conservation reasons. See the following news article:

    Scott Simpson
    Vancouver Sun

    Friday, July 27, 2007

    A North Coast first nation is taking the unusual step of applying in federal court for a judicial review of the government’s management of commercial fishing activity on the Skeena River system.

    The Gitanyow First Nation filed in Vancouver on Thursday for a review of the 2007 Skeena fisheries plan developed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

    Gitanyow chief negotiator Glen Williams said in an interview that the federal fisheries agency has caused the sockeye run into the Kitwanga River to fall to about 10 per cent of its historic population by allowing a large number of fish to be intercepted each year during a commercial fishery.

    The fishery is designed to target Babine River sockeye, an artificially enhanced population that has sustained a large-scale commercial fishery at the mouth of the Skeena for four decades.

    Each year thousands of salmon and steelhead bound for other streams in the Skeena system are intercepted during the Babine sockeye fishery, and fisheries department officials have long expressed regret at the impact the Babine fishery has on those other runs.

    However, they have never taken action to shut down the Babine project, which relies on lake fertilization to inflate the number of sockeye returning each summer to the lake.

    The Gitanyow estimate the historic run size of the Kitwanga sockeye at about 30,000 fish, but say in recent years the return has averaged less than 1,200.

    Williams said the maximum interception rate the Kitwanga sockeye can tolerate without suffering a complete collapse is 34 per cent. But he said the interception rate over the past decade has averaged 53 per cent, including 51 per cent in 2006.

    The Gitanyow accuse the department of using erroneous test fishery results to understate the interception rate in 2006, and say it succumbed to political pressure by commercial fishermen in 2006, giving them extended fishing opportunities even though it was clear that Kitwanga sockeye would be intercepted. They say they expect the 2007 fishing plan to lead once again to interception of 50 per cent of the Kitwanga sockeye.

    As a consequence of the fishery, and a subsequent conservation concern for those fish that make it past the gauntlet of commercial nets, the Gitanyow cannot exercise their aboriginal right to fish for food, ceremonial and societal purposes.

    Fisheries documents obtained by North Coast environmental groups through the Access to Information Act, and recently released to the public, confirm that even within the fisheries department, fishery managers were uncomfortable with the arrangement.

    The document filed in federal court asks for a declaration that the 2007 fishing plan is unconstitutional because it infringes on the aboriginal right of the Gitanyow to go fishing, and asks the court to set aside the parts of the Skeena fishery that either directly or indirectly allow interception of Kitwanga sockeye.

    Department officials declined to comment, saying that the government has not yet been formally served papers in connection with the action.

    ssimpson@png.canwest.com

    © The Vancouver Sun 2007

  2. Tad McIlwraith Says:
    August 11th, 2007 at 5:58 pm

    Thanks for the note, Peter. I had no idea about this restriction. We bought licences in Smithers and discussed our fishing plans with staff in two different fishing stores there. Perhaps the high water is a blessing for the fish stocks … we did not even put a line in the water in the Kitwanga because the water was running so fast. (I might add that a check of the fishing regulations did not identify this restriction either.)

  3. FieldNotes: for the Anthropology of British Columbia » Field Research and Skype Says:
    February 20th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    [...] no have easy access to a telephone. There is no cel coverage and my accommodation did not have one. I did, however, have wireless internet. I also had Skype (an internet phone system which allows calls to land lines) on my computer and [...]

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