hearing a lot about since arriving on the coast. Salmon have complex life cycles; the factors affecting their survival are many and varied, and overfishing is deemed to be one of them. For decades, British Columbia’s commercial fishermen have been pillaging these waters, selling their bounty to large, politically connected companies that distribute and sell to the retail market. In more recent years, the Canadian government has imposed restrictions on the areas that can be commercially fished, the amounts of catch that can be taken, and the number of boats permitted to take part. But people here still complain that those decisions—made by desk-bound bureaucrats with little local knowledge working thousands of miles away—are ineffective. Warming ocean and river waters and the proliferation of Atlantic salmon farms (which spread disease) on the British Columbia coast are also believed to have affected the life of local species. The drop in the number of migrating wild salmon has been drastic. “In the old days,” elders on the coast say, “you could walk across the backs of salmon in the river, so many there were.”
Larry shuffles out of the darkness holding onto a VHF radio receiver. He approaches the cookhouse and calls out for Marge. When she steps onto the deck, he tells her he’s concerned about a group of three young staff members who had canoed upriver after dinner to camp at the fish weir. They haven’t radioed in, he says, and they aren’t responding to his calls.
I remember seeing the three, led by a young university undergrad from Victoria named Audrey, leave late after dinner just as dusk was setting in. They postponed their departure to coincide with high tide, without which, especially in the recent period of drought, they wouldn’t be able to travel far upstream. I knew it was a few hours’ journey paddling and hiking to the weir, and it occurred to me that they were leaving very late.
After deliberating with his wife, Larry brings the radio receiver up to his face: “Achiever, this is Koeye Lodge.”
Everyone at the campfire is watching, silent. After a moment, Captain Brian Falconer’s relaxed voice crackles out of the radio speaker.
“Achiever here. Go ahead.”
“Hi, Achiever. Three of our staff went up to the weir in a canoe after dinner. They aren’t responding to our calls. I’m worried something’s happened. Any chance you could go upriver and look for them?”
“Yup. Not a problem.”
“Thanks, Brian.” Larry then radios to his daughter, Jess Housty, one of the directors at Qqs, and asks her to accompany the captain. Within minutes the sound of a boat engine in the bay growls to life. Achiever‘s inflatable Zodiac—a small, motorized raft dubbed Achiever Mobile—drones away up the mist-draped Koeye.
Larry and Marge, now jolted alert by worry, keep attempting to make contact with the women. A VHF receiver in the cookhouse beside the fire broadcasts their static-frazzled radio calls—all met with a silence as deep and boundless as the night around us. The calls keep going out. After a few minutes, from out of nowhere, a woman’s anxious voice explodes out of the VHF.
“We’re on the trail near the weir! But there’s bears all around us! Come quick!” It’s Audrey. There’s a breathless desperation in her voice, bordering on panic.
“We’ll be there soon,” Captain Brian replies calmly. “Hang in.”
Many more minutes pass without radio exchanges. A sinking feeling comes over me as the scenario carries forward without an update. I find myself trying to fill in gaps in the script as my mind grapples with the idea of being stranded in the thick, fog-filled rain forest in the blackness of night.
The radio crackles alive again with more of Audrey’s desperate pleas. “Where are you guys?“
“Just hold on, we’re almost there,” Brian responds, this time with more strain in his voice.
“Come as soon as you can! Pleeeeease!“ Audrey cries, sounding on the verge of tears.
The radio goes dead again, this time for a while. Then Larry’s voice comes over the VHF.
“Achiever Mobile, this is Koeye Lodge. What’s the situation?”
A female’s calm, exacting voice crackles back in reply: “Koeye Lodge, this is Jess. We found them. We’re on our way back.”
As the tension dissipates, I look around the dimming campfire and realize I’m the only one left. I turn on my head lamp and wander to my tent. Thirty minutes later, I’m still awake when Jess and the three women arrive back at camp. They are silent, but I sense gravity and exhaustion in their footfalls. Almost in unison, the zippers of