Hundreds of families made their way to Horsefly River on the weekend to see the spawning sockeye salmon and enjoy family-friendly activities to celebrate their return.
Festival goers visited info booths and displays from DFO, Scout Island Nature Centre, B.C. Invasive Species Council, Cariboo Chilcotin Invasive Plant Committee, the Northern Shuswap Tribal Council and Mount Polley Mines.
They also enjoyed watching fish dissections and the fish camera, creating a Gyotaku (Japanese fish painting) cloth, painting a wooden salmon for the Stream of Dreams project, and making sparkly paper fish hats and colourful canvases through Maureen Chappell’s Creative Hands.
T-shirts were also for sale and information on the sockeye run provided during the festival that was held in conjunction with B.C. Rivers Day.
The weekend also included opportunities for riparian-guided walks and nature walks, which helped visitors learn about the local area and about the majestic sockeye salmon that had travelled a whopping 620 kilometres from the mouth of the Fraser River to their birth place at Horsefly River.
Only between two and 10 of the 4,000 eggs laid by each female salmon will make it back to the spawning grounds as adults in four years’ time to continue the cycle anew.