Brown's Bay Packing Co. Ltd Processes Farm-Fresh Salmon in B.C.

Value and Vision in Food Processing on Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island native Stephen Hall is Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Brown's Bay Packing of Campbell River, B.C..  

Creative Salmon Organic Looking back and ahead

Celebrating a quarter century in business was both cause for celebration and reason to look back at how it all began. Tofino’s Creative Salmon – Canada’s first certified organic farm salmon producer – celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2015. General Manager Tim Rundle has worked at Creative Salmon for 22 years. Like many managers at the company he worked his way up, taking on the GM role in 2008.

Rundle credits the company’s first General Manager, Bill Vernon, with envisioning what Creative would be – and pushing to make it happen. Vernon started salmon farming in 1983, first on the Sunshine Coast, and later starting farms in Tofino. There were four employees and a farm stocked 20,000 Chinook.

By 2015, Creative Salmon had grown to employ 55 people full-time year round, operating four farms simultaneously with its six site tenures, and through its parent-company Lions Gate Fisheries processes its Chinook and distributes the fish to locations in Canada, the United States, and Japan.

Although Atlantic salmon forms the bulk – about 90% – of salmon farming in B.C., Creative Salmon has always raised just Chinook, choosing to do things differently. “In a world of very large companies farming salmon, we needed to find a competitive edge. The challenges were many,” recalls Vernon, “but so were the successes.”

Creative Salmon was the first salmon farming company in B.C. to hire a full-time Aboriginal liaison. That first liaison was Tla-o-qui-aht hereditary chief Bruce Frank, who now chairs the Creative Salmon/Tla-o- qui-aht Fish Farm Committee which was established under a formal protocol with the Nation signed in July 2014. 

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“My first message to Creative all those many years ago was simple,” recalls Frank. “I told them to pack up and get out of my Nation’s territory.” Frank says much has changed and credits lots of communication and relationship building over the years.

Creative Salmon was also the first salmon farming company in B.C. to implement an Environmental Monitoring Program – long before environmental monitoring was a government requirement. Vernon says this concern for the environment extended to other areas including the decision to not use copper or chemical antifoulants on nets, early use of underwater cameras during feeding, and the decision to move away from antibiotic use. Creative Salmon has not treated its market fish with antibiotic since 2001.

Although organic practices started in the early days for Creative Salmon, it wasn’t until May 2012 that the Canadian government published the Canadian Organic Aquaculture Standard. As a founding member of the Pacific Organic Seafood Association, Creative Salmon was a driving force in seeing the certification established. Creative certified to the organic standard in December 2013. 

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Spencer Evans was Creative Salmon’s General Manager after Vernon – from 2002 to 2008. After leaving Creative Salmon, Evans worked for aquaculture operations in many parts of the world including Tasmania, Malaysia, and Mexico. He calls Creative Salmon’s organic certification a fantastic accomplishment and a true milestone.

“The farming practices that we developed at Creative over time are some of the best I have ever seen anywhere,” says Evans. “To this day I try to carry them forward into other operations I get involved with. Although one of the smallest salmon farming companies in the world, Creative Salmon is North America’s largest supplier of Pacific Chinook (King) salmon."

The company is fully integrated, from producing its own broodstock and smolts at its hatchery in Chemainus to raising and harvesting the fish in Clayoquot Sound and processing the fish in a plant on the dock in Tofino.

“Creative Salmon has much to be proud of,” says Rundle. “Certainly with our recent history, organic certification and signing our protocol with the Tla-o-qui-aht is top of mind, but Creative has always pushed to be different and to always get better. Here’s to the next 25 years.”

Tla-o-qui-aht’s Canoe Creek Hydro a work of reclamation and restoration

Sayo Masso is liaison officer for the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation in one of their major initiatives, the Ha'uukmin Tribal Park, including the Upper Kennedy watershed, as a place of cultural and economic importance, "We conducted ceremonial gatherings and visited sacred sites," said  Masso.  "Pools in the river provided an abundant fishery to families and there was a village at the mouth of the Kennedy River."

The tribal park contains (in part) the Upper Kennedy River, "Our people moved through lakes in the winter and returned to the ocean in season," said  Masso. "We lived on the coast during summer and as a whaling people we observed the migration patterns of gray whales." Potlatch culture is hereditary and Nuu-Chah-Nulth communities like Tla-o-qui-aht are linked by close families, common meetings at winter feasts, and a lot of kinship with other coastal communities; interestingly, said  Masso, "Some of our closest ties are with the Makah Nation in Washington State."

Bringing the Ha'uukmin Tribal Park to life on behalf of Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation "seemed to take forever," said  Masso, "and years of research was followed by years of implementation including the last couple of years of serious dialogue. We had to study the area closely in terms of hydrology and fish habitat, institute a stream keeper’s course, and begin teaching members to be park guardians and stream keepers. We're really happy this is happening as we speak."

The Tla-o-qui-aht desire to share the magnificent lands and waters of their heritage is not carte blanche; visitors will be made aware of Tla-o-qui-aht stewardship, said  Masso, "Self-determination is on the horizon. We have focussed the initial effort on the Upper Kennedy before we construct new hatcheries," Chinook salmon and sockeye to be reared in separate hatcheries, Chinook hatchery to be built first.

The Tla-o-qui-aht place name for Kennedy River Basin, Haa'uukmin, is "roughly translated as Feast Bowl." The Kennedy Basin is about 60 km from Tofino and the Canoe Creek Hydro project presents the administration with an infrastructure opportunity to create wider visitations to their tribal park. "We are planning to establish a family-oriented picnic area by the Canoe Creek Run-of-River hydro generating station and we have envisioned our land use plan for long-term development in outlying forestry, gravel pits, and out-posts for adventure tours. Guardian and stream keeper courses are giving the administration a professional presence in our tribal park 

He added, "In upcoming phases of the Tribal Park, we will be providingrangering services and safe transit through a network of trails, and access fees will contribute to building and implementing tribal park objectives. We are examining carbon credits to value our trees while they're standing. Tla-o-qui-aht faces systemic issues in Canadian forestry," and will use every means to circumvent the slaughter of forests, "Carbon Credits help us assert a role in using and managing the watershed in a manner that reflects Tla-o-qui-aht Laws of Iisaak, (~Respect), and Hishukish Tsawaak, (Everything is one ~interconnectedness of Life)."

Tla-o-qui-aht implemented two land use zones in their traditional territory; one is entitled Uuyaathluknish Management Zone, which means 'We take care,' and  Masso said, "This is a management area that needs gentle impacts and restoration plans. Use and access must be sustainable and not negatively impacting water quality objectives and fish stock objectives." Qyaasinhap, the second management zone - Leave as you've found it, is generally allocated to the Old Growth Forest corridors in Clayoquot River Valley and Clayoqout plateau.

Uuyaathluknish is already impacted and needs rehabilitation, which is being done in part through the Canoe Creek Hydro project, "We promoted the hydro development in the rehabilitation area, an area already impacted by the highway and logging," an area that requires careful management for the multiple uses that are visioned. "On this side is the low-impact sustainable use area our plans says, Let's deliver fish out of this watershed."

Qyaasinhap is putting wider stewardship back in the local area of the central westcoast and Tofino, said  Masso. 'Leave it as you found it' means the Clayoquot Arm and Plateau Preserve will continue to serve as ground zero for research in climate change and education-oriented relations with colleges and universities. There is a research Centre up Clayoquot Arm and we working with the University of Victoria and with other education institutions to college-certify training in stewardship, and other research partnerships.

"Meanwhile we have two forest licenses in our territory," said  Masso, "and the thinking is that we have to do whatever is needed to move forestry to be more sustainable for our grandchildren and to create a 150-year rotation on harvesting rather than the present 80 rotation. We will examine timber uses and plan the harvest ourselves. We will evaluate the forest companies by how many jobs they create for how many trees they take, not by how many millions it makes."

History contains a couple of important drivers for the established tribal park. "Families quarantined themselves back in the Kennedy watershed during the introduction of plagues," and later, "The Meares Island court case acknowledged the Island in Clayoquot Sound as Tla-oqui-aht TitleLand in 1984, which laid the groundwork for the Hawiih (hereditary chiefs) to work on establishment of the Meares Island Tribal Park declaration.  This declaration formed the framework for the Tribal Park at Kennedy Lake."

As a matter of purely cultural concern the nation requires a quantity of old growth fir and cedar to carry on traditional practices of the potlatch, "We have canoe carvers and totem poles and Long Houses to build."