There will be no Salmon in the Canyon Festival next month.
Festival organizer Kim North said last week the decision to cancel this year’s event was made for three reasons:
the unavailability of a local site because of water system construction work this summer at Cayoosh Creek Park Campground, the usual location for Salmon in the Canyon.
loss of some key outreach funds
time constraints.
North said organizers looked for other possible locations, “but there was no suitably green area large enough to hold a festival for 700-800 people that had both water and washrooms.”
She added, “It just seemed best to postpone until next year. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause. We will be back in full swing next year with a lot of new activities and great music.”
This year’s fifth annual festival was scheduled to be held Saturday, Aug. 18. The festival is jointly sponsored by the Lillooet Naturalist Society and Sek’wel’was (Cayoose Creek Band).
North said the Rivershed Society of BC’s annual rafting expedition is still scheduled to put in at Lillooet Aug. 18. Three local youths are on this year’s expedition, which carries participants by canoe and raft from the headwaters of the Fraser River in the Rocky Mountains to the river’s mouth at Vancouver. The youths are sponsored by the Lillooet Naturalist Society and the Cayoosh Band.
“A small group of people is still planning to welcome the rafting expedition at the power house and we’ll probably have a picnic lunch, but it will be low-key this year,” said North.
She said Salmon in the Canyon, which celebrates the importance of the salmon and the Fraser River system, had its simple beginnings in 2006 when six people welcomed environmental activist and now MP Fin Donnelly when he put it at Lillooet during an expedition down the river. Donnelly, who has twice swum the Fraser’s 1400 kilometre length, later established the Rivershed Society of BC to raise awareness of the need to make sustainable lifestyle choices along the river.
“It started with six people and now it’s grown to a festival for 700 or 800 people,” North remarked.
