Catalyst Strategic Consultants

We “won” it at the charity gala. Grant Scott had put an offering of a “sunset cruise” and a pic of the Sun Corona, his sturdy Wall fishboat.  We saw the auction sheet, dutifully bid and, finessing at the last moment, outbid.
The evening that worked was right after the eclipse.  Here, on Hornby, the eclipse was 80% or so.  Down on Sandpiper Beach, actually in the park on the bluff above, a congenial group gathered to witness.  Doug Chinnery brought his welding mask and a whole slew of alternate modes of viewing were produced.  One was to invert binoculars and see the image quite large on a blank sheet.  But the most miraculous was to see the crescent imprinted on the ground by the gap between leaves – a myriad of little reproductions of what was skyward.
Now Grant is revered amongst Hornbyites.  He was a commercial fisherman, yes, and that was his pursuit for years on the Wandalyne and then the much grander Sun Corona.  He has soaked up and dispersed the maritime wisdom of this region and for that is widely known and appreciated.  Principally, he is President of the Hornby Conservancy.
And as we pulled away from the Ford Cove dock bourn on the Naples yellow hull cleaving the mirrored water, we got him going about the herring run.  Each late march, early April, masses of herring come specially to this island to spawn.  The effect is galvanic, transmuting Tribune Bay into a milky aqua and attracting every hungry being who can swim or fly to the feast.
As Grant puts it, Herring are the middle of the food chain.  Below them are the plankton and super small critters they eat.  And voraciously hovering over the hand size herring are the salmon, seals, sea lions, otters, eagles, and above them the orcas and, recently returning to the Salish Sea, humpback and grey whales.  I threw in the last two just because they’re recent and great news – they don’t eat herring or salmon.
But the horse that Grant and many others are on is the preservation of this, the last large herring run on this coast.  Incredibly -and we don’t often see that word not over (and wrongly) employed – the Federal fisheries department still permits commercial fishing during the run!  This despite other runs having been wiped out, principally by seining where the boat runs an inescapable net around a ball and pulls the purse tight so they get them all.
Grant’s point of action is to get to Jimmy Pattison, the Vancouver entrepreneur and owner of many of the commercial fishing licences that do the deed.  He hopes he can prick Pattison’s conscience as a BC resident to stop the practice.
Not that Grant is an innocent economically.  He is a university educated forester and in his later years now, is Director of a fascinating First Nations company centered in Klatu, north of Bella Bella.  Revenues last year?  $20m – profit of $2m.
He is also a self-professed grad of the Lund School of Economics.  One of this tony friends hearing this, offered “I went to the London School of Economics.”  Grant was at pains to correct – that his degree came from the fish port across the Strait.  How’s that?
Well, when he fished from there, a bunch of young Turks observed you could get a bunch of piglets from a sow.  The Lund restaurant paid about $20 for the young porkers, dressed and finished.  You could buy a sow for $20!  And the resto’s compost served as food.  So a bunch of them did the figuring over a few beers and several bought sows.  Well, you know how it turned out. The fuel supply was constrained, so feed had to be found elsewhere.  The supply got glutted, the bistro paid less.  What do you do with all those piglets?  The Lund School of Economics was in session.
Ambling around the west end of the island – checkered tablecloth pinned to the top of the fish locker and picnic baskets of smoked white spring salmon, crab and cheese opened, plastic glasses of Pinot Grigio raised as the sun descended gold, then shooting fire into the clouds over Mount Washington, we toasted our good fortune – to be alive, to be here undulating gently on the silver channel, with cherished friendships on the poop deck of a sound ship and in the informing company of one of God’s great characters and a good steward of the world around him.
And the Sun Corona?  That’s what you can see of the sun when the moon occludes it.

Sincerely,
Doug Bouey
Catalyst Strategic Consultants Ltd.