Shaded Creek: Colquitz Park and Trail
It seemed like a miracle – two coho in full spawning regalia, hovering over a gravel bed in Colquitz Creek near Quick Bottom Park. Although there is another mile and half still to go to the creek’s source in Elk Lake, those two looked like they had reached their journey’s end. Gently swishing their tails against the strong current, they stayed poised over the gravel bed.
Only a few days before, tragedy had struck Colquitz Creek when over 1,000 litres of oil leaked into the tributary Swan Creek from a faulty heating tank, killing dozens of fish within hours. The oil had completely covered the salmon counting fence and it was feared that the entire run might be wiped out. But there they were, two wise survivors and champion swimmers who must have passed the danger point before the leak occurred, and were about to give birth to the next generation, however decimated.
Even in its wounded state, the Colquitz River Park and Trail – a necklace of parks strung along the Colquitz from its mouth in Portage Inlet – is a beautiful place to explore. According to one theory, “Colquitz” comes from a Celtic root for “shaded” or “dark” but in winter and early spring, the leafless canopy of big-leaf maple, alder and willow gives this “Shaded Creek” a light, airy feeling.
Walking upstream from the estuary in Cuthbert Holmes Park (by Tillicum Mall) the trail ducks under the No. 1 highway overpass. For those who know the Colquitz only in its serene summer guise, the sheer volume and speed of the water is startling. You can no longer cross the stream on the concrete steps set in the river bed: they are barely visible under the rushing water. Past Hyacinth Park, where Swan Creek joins the Colquitz, the trail emerges from the close canopy into a wide expanse of fields and wetlands. Wild rose, hawthorn, and tall grasses shelter a diverse assemblage of songbirds and their predators, such as Cooper’s Hawk and Peregrine Falcon. In the ponds and wetlands of Panama Park, winter and spring live cheek-by-jowl. The buoyant conk-a-ree!, the territorial song of the male Red-winged Blackbird, seems to echo from every cattail. We counted more than 20 pairs, each claiming their own piece of marsh for the future family. Sweet-voiced Song Sparrows are also getting ready to nest. Mallards have already paired off, bar the odd interspecies liaison, such as a Mallard-Pintail couple which we observed snoozing on the riverbank. In February they will begin courting in earnest, the “drakes” (males) pirouetting under the eyes of the demure females, who will take their time selecting their beau for the season. Yet, the over-wintering waterfowl are still sitting tight – the Wigeons and Pintails sharing the submerged meadows with a huge flock of Canada Geese, and the pond busy with diving Scaups, Buffleheads and Ring-necked Ducks. For these migratory ducks, it’s still winter. They may pair off, but their breeding grounds, hundreds or thousands of miles away in the North or in Interior B.C., are still enclosed in snow and ice.
The beauty uplifts, but does not take away the worry over what will happen to the fish in the Colquitz. If the various levels of government succeed in getting the clean-up done by April, then at least some of the offspring of the pair we saw will have a chance to swim out to sea and, in due season, come back and continue the lineage. The best chance we can give them is for many of us – say, one person for each of the pair’s three to five thousand eggs – to walk the Colquitz regularly, observe what happens and tell others about it. Above all, we need to remember what an oil spill looks and smells like – whether in the Colquitz, in the Goldstream last year or anywhere – lest, through ignorance and complacency we allow tanker traffic to bring the same fate to the salmon of the North Coast, and the food webs and communities that depend on them.
