Dunbar Residents Association News and Events

Every year I watch and wait as the first Pacific Salmon Commission Test Fishing results are released indicating the projected run size and environmental conditions of the Fraser River for Stuart Sockeye. It’s a very long river swim home for these sockeye that my family gillnetted on Point Grey and North Sturgeon Bank.

A quick sniff of the North Fraser’s muddy plume, with no time or energy to waste, on a big tide around the 11th of July, they make the move into the river on mass, bucking the big low water tides further up river and the many nets. These high energy fish charge up stream on their long trek home. We called them Silver Bullets. In behind them, the river mouth had only seals still looking for a stray fish; the Stuarts had gone!

Those were the good old days on the North Arm. We do not fish and have not fished for my North Arm Silver Bullets for so many years now that I have lost count. I keep on thinking, did we catch too many in those early years? Did we somehow make their trip home in the ocean and river too hard to do? Did we somehow think about how much more they were WORTH DEAD, than alive, continuing their unique species?

What we all now have is this irreplaceable salmon species fast approaching the edge of extinction. Yes, you are correct; it looks like another year of keeping our fingers crossed, for the few returning STUART LAKE SOCKEYE, for it is a really long journey home.

Terry Slack

I could not let July 2 and 3 pass without thinking about what was happening 198 years ago on these dates. It happened near DUNBAR, WEST SOUTH LANDS on the river, just west of Deering Island Park; the time was about 2.00 o’clock in the afternoon. Yes the date was1808 and it was HIGH TIDE IN THE CHANNELS that made up the braided estuary of the lower NORTH ARM and SIMON FRASER with 24 explorers in a very large borrowed Cedar canoe, found them selves near the right or North Fork of the river. Local natives from upriver had warned SIMON FRASER to paddle only on the North side of this channel to salt water. Fraser’s narrative give little or no information of his trip from today’s New Westminster to a location where the explorers came in sight of a gulf or bay of the sea, the natives’ instructions of keeping only to the north side of the deeper channel, was strictly followed as hostile tribes were thought to have seasonal fishing camps on today’s Lulu Island.

The Middle Arm at its east end with the North Arm in1808 had many islands, side channels and drying marshes. It would have been very difficult to locate a north channel to the now visible gulf or bay of the sea. Fraser’s narratives do not mention this divide into another channel at the now Marpole location or any other landmark or channel until his notes states “on the right shore we noticed a village called by the up river natives, MISQUIAME, we directed our course towards it.” In 1858 for example, maps indicated a large inland floodable marsh, north of the present river dykes, with a winding stream which must be the estuary of MUSQUEAM CREEK. The narrative provides very little details as to how the explorers reached the inland village. The high tide and a convenient stream channel must have been helpful!

The narrative of Simon Fraser continues near the present Musqueam Reserve and can be found in the book GENESIS OF VANCOUVER CITY, explorations of its site 1791, 1792, and 1808 by TOMAS BARTROLI.

It’s 198 years later, JULY THE SECOND, and as I stop along the North Arm of the Fraser, I look at my watch and I wait as in my mind the great cedar canoe passes down river to the sea, a sea the river people called Pas hil roe. My last stop is on Deering Island. I stare down river, for it is 2 o’clock and I can in my mind see 24 explorers pushing a great cedar canoe into a marsh that is now gone.It is the end of Simon Fraser’s voyage to find a great sea. July 2nd 2006 was a wonderful day for me, but nobody sat next to me on the bench in Deering Island; it was only me and the river; I had a great day!!

Terry Slack