SO MANY PEOPLE have helped me over the years. They were the silver lining, my safety net, teachers, inspiration and shelter in the storms. Every twist and turn of this seemingly endless road made me ask, What should I do now? Looking for answers, I found mentors, people whose perspectives added valuable depth and dimension. Thank you to Rick Routledge who has been endlessly generous with his time in not only designing sampling regimes for the many studies, but also offering thoughts on how to communicate with government and why I should not give up.
Thank you, Damien Gillis, for your political insight, Andrew Nikiforuk for shedding light on the dark side of politics and Helen Slinger for sharing a dram of whisky, humour and wisdom on how to communicate with people. Thank you to my sister, Woodleigh Hubbard, who checked in on me relentlessly and tried to get me to remember that I needed to take care of myself.
Thank you to Bob and Nancy Richter, who made it possible for me to stay in Echo Bay after my husband died, and to my dear friend Billy Proctor, who has taught me so much about the place I came to call home and took me on as his deckhand so that I could support my son.
Thank you to Dr. Daniel Pauly for telling people that I did not stick the lice on young wild salmon—that the lice epidemics were real. Thank you to Harvey Andrusak for being the first person in government to openly share my concerns. Thank you to Sabra Woodworth for so generously opening her home to me, taking care of my dogs when I had to leave them behind and, more than anyone, listening to me and providing feedback. Thank you to Bill and Donna MacKay for making it possible for me to get across Blackfish Sound no matter how hard the wind was blowing, and for opening their house to me and my children, as we waited for weather to get home.
Thank you to Paul Watson for sending me a ship and to the remarkable people who crewed that ship, in particular Carolina Castro, who knew how to protect the first sparks of the occupation that led to the removal of so many salmon farms. Thank you to the lawyers: Jeff Jones for steering me through the legal minefields that sought to destroy me and Greg McDade for all the progress we made at the Cohen Commission, for taking salmon farm regulation away from the province of BC, for so much advice over the years and for putting an end to the strange ruling that I could only approach Mowi salmon farms in a toy boat. Thanks to Margot Venton, Kegan Pepper-Smith, Morgan Blakely and Lara Tessaro at Ecojustice for winning the lawsuits that tried to stop the spread of piscine orthoreovirus from salmon farms. Thank you also to Sean Jones, whose work with the ‘Namgis to stop the spread of PRV brought the experts together to create a record of the true and terrible impact of this virus.
Thank you to Sarah Haney for making it possible to create a research station out of my home and to all the brilliant young scientists and volunteers who put so much time and effort into making the Salmon Coast Field Station into a scientific powerhouse. Thank you to Drs. Fred and Molly Kibenge for their bravery and hard work in tracking fish viruses with me. Thank you to Rudy North and Dick and Val Bradshaw for contributing the funds to make it possible for the Kibenges and myself to publish the first research on the ISA virus and piscine orthoreovirus in BC.
Thank you to Don Staniford and Anissa Reed for your unparalleled creativity, stamina and humour, which built all this into a movement to save this coast.
I want to thank Ernest Alfred for taking the step that set in motion the removal of salmon farms from the Broughton Archipelago. While many, many people were involved in making this happen, Ernest’s first step onto the farm at Swanson Island was the tipping point.
Thank you to William Wasden Jr. for teaching me about First Nation governance and to Millie Willie for her stark honesty on the relationship between the Indigenous and non-indigenous here in BC. Thank you to George Quocksister Jr. for his bravery in boarding the farms and bringing us the images of what was going on in their pens.
Thank you to the women who stood on the farms: Karissa Glendale, Nabidu Willie, Lindsey Mae Willie, Sherry Moon, Cassandra Alexis, Tsatsaqualis, Sii-am Hamilton, Julia Smith, Molina Dawson, Tabatha Milian, Maia Beauvais, Tidi Nelson, Andrea Cramner and Nic Dedeluk. Your determination, endurance and grace under fire formed a protective circle around the archipelago that no one could destroy!
Thank you to the leaders: Chiefs Don Svanvik, Robert Chamberlin, Willie Moon, Arthur Dick, Eric Joseph, Chaz Coon, Wesley Smith, Rick Johnson, Robert Mountain, and Richard Sumner. You walked through fire in service of your people.
Thank you to Minister Jonathan Wilkinson for hearing me out and taking a chance on me. Thank you to Minister Lana Popham for having the courage to stand up to the salmon farming industry and do what was right.
Thank you to Karen Wristen, Stan Proboszcz, John Werring, Craig Orr and Will Soltau for your decades of painstaking effort to make it easy for government to understand the mistruths perpetrated by their own bureaucracies. Thank you to Eric Hobson for decades of work to move the salmon farming industry into tanks on land to preserve jobs and wild salmon. That they ignored your work speaks to the dangerous alliance between industry and government, an alliance that is rapidly killing our planet.
Thank you to Dr. Larry Dill, who used his standing as a senior scientist to speak in plain terms to debunk the junk science in this territory. Thank you to April Bencze and Tavish Campbell, who generously donated their hard-won images to save the salmon of BC. Thank you to Sally Allan, who demanded financial order through the storms (I fear you and don’t dare to lose a receipt!). Thank you to Brad Crowther and Sandy Bodrug for all the hours you sampled the salmon of the Fraser River.
Thank you to Tony Allard and John Madden, who may have thought it would be easy for businessmen to bring politicians up to speed on the truth, and then did not give up. You have made a real difference.
And, finally, thank you, Anne Collins, for taking 120,000 words and making them readable.