Set Them Free

Today we drove out to the end of Burrard Inlet, the waterway that separates the city of Vancouver from North Vancouver. It's used as a shipping channel, and has a large harbor for loading grain, sugar, and goods from Canada and unloading all sorts of cargo from everywhere. Beyond the seaplanes, the railyards, the bustling harbor, the water narrows between the forested mountains and becomes a lovely, quiet bay where several small, cold rivers rushing with fertile water feed into it. Beside one of those small rivers, alongside the community center in the town of Port Moody lies a small fish hatchery. Every spring, they host a fingerling festival, and the community at large is invited to help deliver the small fingerling salmon to the river, and eventually, the sea.
The community center was large, and full of families escorting their kids to regular meets of Lacrosse, skating, hockey and various activities. In addition, there was a large area where Bobs and Lolo were performing (a singing mommy duo who seem to be everywhere, all the time in the greater Vancouver area) many booths were set up to encourage an eco-friendly lifestyle and support healthy marine life awareness in general. A representative from the Bob Barker anti-whaling ship was there too. Then behind the buildings, past the hot dog tent, over a bridge, across a wildly rushing stream, down a path lined with fresh green shoots, flowering bushes and full trees was the little hatchling pond, and a shed, filled with volunteers who passed little white buckets of fingerling chum salmon to every hand that reached out to take it.
In the sprinkling rain, we took our buckets to the stream a few yards away. Julian stopped to look down toward the thin, finger long fish. They were dark against the stark bucket. He gently dropped his little fingers down among the fish, and tenderly waved them through the water, feeling the fish dance between them, and pulling them up to reveal the silvery sides and keen black eyes. We knelt at the sandy streamside between the patches of grass, and the smooth stones and gently tipped the buckets into the clear, icy water. The little fish wriggled back and forth, back and forth between the safety of the white bucket and the infinite water filled world of their destiny. Until finally, the bucket pulled slowly away, they swam off into the rushing current, toward the sea.