It started out as just a family gathering, and 25 years later has grown to a yearly event. Dozens of volunteers gather at an irrigation canal viaduct near Fort Macleod to rescue trapped fish.
The water from the canal is used for irrigation purposes for farms all around the Fort Macleod area.
Water from the Old Man river is extracted into the nearly 100-year-old canal in the spring and summer months, then drained at the end of the farming season, leaving no way for fish to escape.
When it was built, a fish exclusion gate was never built-in, leaving thousands of fish in the canals.
“At that time there were basically no environmental standards much less awareness,” said Fish Rescue co-founder Harley Bastien. “As a result of that there’s been a lot of fish… over the hundred or so years, who knows how many millions have been lost.”
Organizers say that over the past 25 years of the fish rescue they have rescued over 250,000 fish.
“This is my home area and we drove by and saw a bunch of fish that were basically stranded,” said Bastien. “They were in a dire straight so we popped into action as quick as we could. We didn’t save all the fish but we saved what we could.”
Volunteers walk the 1 kilometer stretch of tunnel pushing the fish toward the opening. They then catch and place the fish into a tank to be later released back into the river.
Carly Bastien is Harley’s daughter and has been saving the fish since she was 11-years-old.
“It feels really good because it’s like giving back,” said Bastien. “To my culture, protecting the environment and all the living beings is really important including the water people, which are the fish.”
People drove in from around southern Alberta, one woman traveled back from California to be a part of this life saving rescue.
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