WHEN THE JUNE 20, 2018, deadline to renew all the salmon farm tenures in the Broughton passed without a decision, the minister of agriculture, Lana Popham, said the province needed ninety more days before announcing the outcome of the government-to-government talks with the Broughton nations. Ninety days later, Popham said she and the province needed sixty more days. Sixty days after that, she said nothing.
One more week of deafening silence passed. I was certain the silence was only surface deep and that just below that surface all parties were vying to gain ground.
On December 14, 2018, a press conference to announce the results of the talks was held in the BC legislature. Lined up in front of the cameras were Popham, Premier Horgan, Chief Robert Chamberlin, the then-federal minister of fisheries, Jonathan Wilkinson, and representatives from Cermaq and Mowi, the companies affected. All of them nodded their heads to say that an agreement had been reached between the province, the federal government and three nations of the Broughton Archipelago, the ‘Namgis, Mamalilikulla, and Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis. The agreement laid out the orderly removal of most of the salmon farms from the archipelago over the next four years. Given the nearly invisible 2018 juvenile salmon out-migration, I thought: This is not going to be fast enough.
However, buried in the fine print of the agreement was a sword so sharp the four-year timeline was the lesser win. The nations now had the authority to screen the farm salmon going into their territories for PRV and all pathogens. The measure of how much control over the industry had been won by these nations was an addendum to the agreement in which Mowi had to ask permission from the nations to restock its farm at Sargeaunt Pass: “We will seek First Nations agreement…for this restocking to occur.” Mowi’s undertaking was signed by its CEO in Norway, Alf-Helge Aarskog, not by the head of the Canadian subsidiary in Campbell River.
These nations had stepped into the role that the minister of fisheries had abdicated. I am not sure if the minister was aware that he had made room for an ancient government to re-emerge. Robert Chamberlin looked exhausted, and was at the press conference in a wheelchair, suffering from significant health issues that he later recovered from. But going forward, nothing concerning salmon is going to happen in the Broughton Archipelago without First Nations oversight.
Wilkinson mostly studied his shoes.
Ernest Alfred, who had sparked the uprising that had led to this day, had travelled the three hundred kilometres from Alert Bay to be there at the conclusion of what he started. But he remained locked outside the legislature. He was given no reason why he couldn’t attend the press conference, but perhaps in this historic moment, government thought it could not be seen as having bowed to the pressure of activism.
I had been warned that “winning” feels differently than one anticipates. In the wake of the announcement, I realized I had no trust left. I couldn’t help wondering if we had actually won. Did the industry and the government have other cards up their sleeves? Would the wild salmon survive this?
On the next calm day, I untied my boat to go take a look at the first farm in the Broughton that was scheduled for decommissioning. For nineteen years I had witnessed and recorded the suffering, death and catastrophic ecosystem damage at the Mowi Glacier Falls farm site. This is where the tiny silver slips of salmon, freshly hatched from their pebbly winter nests in the Ahta River, met industrial aquaculture and died, their death an “externality” that sweetened shareholder profits. As I’ve mentioned, the Canada Pension Plan is one of the beneficiaries of four ministers of fisheries ignoring the laws of Canada in favour of this industry; our pensioners are unknowingly stealing from the grandchildren they love more than anything on Earth.
I cut a wake up the inlet in my speedboat towards the farm, relieved that Glacier Falls would be the first one to go, because the Ahta River has my heart. I hoped it wasn’t too late for the river; the 2018 out-migration of young salmon had been so weak, there was barely a pulse. The farm structure was still there, all the walkways and buildings, but as I drew alongside I saw there were no nets in the water and no fish. April Bencze, who had come with me, launched a drone and took the last photos of this industrial nightmare. Goosebumps prickled my skin as a weight lifted, and my lungs filled with the wet winter air. As I looked up, the woman’s face in the nearby mountainside was looking down, her eyebrows dusted with snow, giving her a restful look.
I opened a small container and released some of Twyla’s ashes into the water. Help heal this place, my friend.
In a few months, the few surviving Ahta River salmon fry arrived at this site. They were silvery, iridescent blue near their tails, their eyes deep gold and flecked with sparkling black. I silently apologized to them that it had taken so long that there were so few of them left, but this is what people do. We dare the worst to catch us, and then in the face of the worst, we do something brilliant.