Spotting a tiny fish in a small stream has opened a floodgate of questions and ideas for two Powell River educators.
Ryan Barfoot, sustainability and ecological educator for Powell River’s school district, and Karin Westland, sustainability education coordinator, often jog through property in Townsite that once was the location of a golf course. A small stream flows along a steep bank just below Laburnum Avenue. Next to the stream is a path, which is frequented by walkers and joggers.
Despite no longer being an active golf course, the trails on the property continue to be well-used by residents as well as visitors, both for recreation and as a transportation corridor linking to Willingdon Beach Trail and Westview.
A few weeks ago, Barfoot and Westland were jogging on the path. “I just looked to my left, as I always do when I jog by here, and I saw a small fish,” Barfoot said. “I came back, took a closer look and identified it as a cutthroat trout.”
Westland said she and Barfoot jog in the area almost daily. “We’re always scanning the landscape for birds and fish,” she said. “This is the first time we’ve noticed a fish in the stream and it brought a lot of questions to our minds.”
The couple is wondering where the stream comes from, where the outfall is, where it starts, is it simply stormwater runoff or is it part of a larger river system that’s buried underneath the city itself. The fish also signals nature’s resilience, the couple said.
“As a Townsite resident, it’s important to feel some stewardship over the place you live, to watch out for the place you live and to be a caretaker,” said Barfoot. “It takes all of us with all of our eyes and all of our efforts to step up and take on that responsibility.”
Barfoot, an avid fly-fisherman, checked with some of his friends about the fish and one told him he had seen cutthroat trout in the stream about five years ago. “That’s a good sign,” Barfoot said. “He saw two cutthroat in this creek on numerous different occasions and they were both 18 inches in size. That is significantly larger than the one we saw. The one we saw was about six inches.”
With two schools close by and a strong emphasis on project-based learning, Barfoot said he thinks having students become stewards of a stream “would be a great project. There’s lots of potential for both of the schools to work together on a project like this. Lots of hands-on learning would be involved.”
Westland said she thinks there is enormous opportunity for greater awareness in the community around what people are putting into the water and where that goes. “Given that this is at the base of a hill, I think there is certainly the potential for anything that is going on in the streets of Townsite to eventually make its way here,” she said. “If there are fish living in this habitat, that’s a worthwhile consideration.”
What people do at home trickles down and affects the local streams, Barfoot said. “If they dump paint down their drain, for example, it could end up here.”
Westland said the stream isn’t always pristine. “Truthfully, I have seen it suds up at times and smelled different detergents and cleaners,” she said. “There have been different times when it’s a very different sensory experience running along here, when there is something that shouldn’t be there.”
The property is owned by PRSC Ltd., a partnership between the City of Powell River, Tla’Amin (Sliammon) First Nation and Catalyst Paper Corporation. There is an accepted offer on the parcel, but PRSC has stated it is not in the position to discuss who is seeking to purchase the property until the deal is completed.
The city’s subdivision procedures bylaw and infrastructure design and construction bylaw require that a riparian area assessment be prepared by a qualified environmental professional to assess the impacts of development within 30 metres of a fish-bearing watercourse. The regulation is designed to protect fish habitat from development next to streams.
