Outdoor Recreation Council applauds BCIT for making a Guichon Creek spillway passable for salmon

Guichon Creek spillway - Mark Angelo photo

Sets a positive precedent for other urban streams - another milestone for creek that river advocate Mark Angelo has championed for 50 years 

The 100,000-member Outdoor Recreation Council of BC (ORCBC) applauds the BC Institute of Technology (BCIT) for the major work now underway to modify the last major impediment to the movement of salmon along Guichon Creek so that it will become “fish passable.” Their efforts also include the daylighting, or opening up, of a short stretch of the creek that has long been buried and paved over. 

“This is a great effort by BCIT and its partners to further restore this important urban stream, setting a positive precedent for what can be done along other damaged waterways,” said ORCBC Executive Director Louise Pedersen. She added, “Profiling the ongoing restoration of the creek represents a great message of hope as we end 2023”.

Modifications to the Guichon spillway, located on the BCIT Burnaby Campus, will now enable salmon to reach the upper sections of the stream south of BCIT. In recent years, streamkeepers have been dip-netting salmon over the 8-foot-high spillway. Efforts to undertake this work were prompted after the development of a sinkhole adjacent to the deteriorating 60-year-old culvert. 

“Impediments to the movement of salmon, such as spillways and poorly designed culverts, are unfortunately very common in cities, so BCIT’s effort to correct this is applauded,” said Mark Angelo, ORCBC Rivers Advisor, and a 50-year advocate for restoring Guichon Creek. Before his retirement, Angelo also headed BCIT’s Fish and Wildlife program for 37 years. 

The ORCBC has long been involved in efforts to better protect and restore urban rivers and streams through its work with member groups, its endangered rivers listing, and the coordination of BC Rivers Day.

Guichon Creek was once a dead stream more than 50 years ago, and the incredible effort to restore it was recently chronicled in Angelo’s acclaimed children’s book, The Little Creek That Could, the story of a stream that came back to life. 

Going back to the very early days of BCIT, Guichon Creek was polluted, lifeless and stripped of streamside vegetation. Much of the creek has now been restored and is, once again, a vibrant waterway in the community with significant fish and wildlife values. But a major issue that plagued the creek was a series of impediments, ranging from dams to improperly designed culverts, that hindered the movement of salmon. Slowly but surely, however, these impediments were removed. For example, Metro Vancouver installed a fishway at the Cariboo Dam in 2011, enabling salmon to access Guichon Creek; the Province upgraded the Guichon culvert under Highway 1 in 2013 to be fish-passable; and the City of Burnaby installed a fish-passable culvert on Guichon under the Deer Lake Parkway in 2021. The modification and decommissioning of the BCIT spillway will remove the final impediment. The current work is being done by B&B Construction.

“Guichon Creek has become a classic example of urban stream restoration and highlights the fact that we should never give up on any stream,” said Angelo, an Order of BC and Order of Canada recipient. He added, “Nature can heal itself if only we give it a chance.”