Both the weather and salmon cooperated for this year’s Horsefly River Salmon Festival, making it one of the busiest in and out of the water.
“We’re estimating about 700 people came this year,” says Helen Englund, Treasurer of the Horsefly River Roundtable. “We had local people from Horsefly, Williams Lake, Likely, Anahim, and Nazko. Some provincially from Abbotsford, Vernon, Chilliwack, Kitimat, and Vancouver. We also had international visitors from Washington, Germany, and Switzerland.”
At this year’s festival, there was an assortment of activities to choose from and local musicians, artisans, stewardship partners, such as Baker Creek, the Rivershed Society, Fraser Watershed, Scout Island, and the Cariboo Conservation Society. There was even a local herbalist with creams and medicines they were able to make by foraging the local plantlife.
The Horsefly River Roundtable worked with the Rivershed Society and Scout Island to bring back education activities for kids from the Williams Lake and Horsefly schools on the Friday before the Festival. Englund says these lessons had been on an eight-year hiatus due to lower funds and volunteers.
“It was great to bring it back this year. We had about 60 kids from the schools broken up into two groups with different activities to learn about the salmon,” says Englund. “We hope to repeat this every year. Education and information have been the real purpose of the Salmon Festival, as well as people coming out to relax for the weekend.”
“That’s everybody’s highlight. That’s an activity we do each year, and I don’t see us ever not doing it.”
The salmon wasn’t just enjoyed by the humans coming to visit Horsefly River. Englund says the day after the festival, Horsefly locals spotted a grizzly bear and grizzly cubs playing and fishing in the river, enjoying the abundance of salmon as well.
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