1972: Trout Unlimited Canada Is Born
TUC Beginnings: The Spawn of a Good Idea!-By Bruce R. (Skip) Young Honorary Director Emeritus
Two and a half decades, a quarter of a century, or simply twenty-five years, defines a fair length of time. A healthy person’s lifetime is often no more than three such spans. Thus, it was a delightful surprise to be reminded of TUC’s pending silver anniversary in the pages of the Spring issue of Currents. The notation prodded one’s elder mind to recall the conception and beginnings of the movement in Canada, lo, these many and quickly passed years ago.
It all began during the late sixties in Montreal when a hitherto enviable environment for dedicated Quebec fishers came to an end. The provincial government of the day decreed the rights of private fishing clubs and company-owned fishing camps for use by members or friends, must cease. The thinking behind the new policy was that such facilities should be universally accessible to the public fisher. Overlooked was the fact the private clubs had been established for eons and their waters were historically well-maintained and controlled. Regular trout stocking took place, land use was rotated to control fishing pressure and minnows-for-bait fishing was forbidden. Over many years the pay-off was an excellent and healthy resource, able to sustain a fine recreational fishery for the clubs concerned. This quality came at a cost, of course, attested by the prevailing high membership fees, much of which underwrote resource and facility maintenance. Entries in the guest books of these camps, dating back almost a hundred years in a few cases, included the names of people who shaped the growth of the province and country.
Waters within company-owned properties became corporate showpieces and were well run to assure quality fishing. The majority were maintained on extensive lands which were leased to timber and paper companies with long-term forest cutting rights. The areas of the province covered by these tracts was considerable.
Quebec Waterways Change Course The law passed and the effects were soon felt. Although the previously inaccessible waters were visited by many new fishers, sadly, some chose to bring bad habits along with their gear. Minnows remaining in countless buckets at the end of the day were dumped overboard, resulting in a new peril to growing trout. As the minnows became a food source, many trout suffered mortally punctured organs from the tiny sticklebacks. Catch limits were ignored. Often, smaller trout would be tossed overboard when a larger catch was made later in the day. Trespassing became a new concern for leaseholders. There were incidents of assault on the too few wardens as they went about their duties. Protection, stocking, and maintenance were slow to be taken over by the provincial powers. Altogether it was a nasty time for the Quebec sportsperson, especially since replacement resource maintenance and increased enforcement had not been properly factored into the new policy cost forecasts.
How to respond to the dire challenges thus created by law? Certainly, no one person could overcome the monster, nor could one bat at the big provincial windmill with any hope of success. However, these events did inspire the advancement of some earlier thinking on the subject of forming a conservation and resource protection movement in Canada. Several years earlier, I had become a member of Trout Unlimited (U.S.) and an avid reader of Trout, their excellent quarterly journal. Often, I fished the Ausable River in upper New York State and come to meet and enjoy streamside chats with a number of American members. At first, TU seemed a model upon which a similar body might be formed to address cold water concerns in Canada. I met with a number of colleagues to advance the idea and seek their involvement. A significant move forward came out of a chance first meeting in Montreal with Dick Finlay, then Marketing Manager for the Orvis Company and President of the Battenkill Chapter of TU in southern Vermont. We agreed that identity and awareness were critical to establishing a movement. A new thought emerged – what if we offered to become associated with Trout Unlimited, follow its tenets and ideals, but with “Canadian content?” Dick supported this approach and made arrangements for us to meet with Pete Van Gytenbeek, then Executive Director of TU in Denver, Colorado.
Following a round of letters and telephone calls, Pete traveled to Montreal for first-hand discussions. By the end of his visit, we had worked to create the foundation for a non-profit, bilingual corporation. The board of TU National approved our proposals for a separate and distinct entity and gave us the use of their name and supplied technical support. Through Pete Van Gytenbeek’s and Trout Unlimited’s generosity, extensive reference and layout materials were made available to us to begin to map our graphic identity. Best of all, they gave us a film print of The Way of a Trout and later, the Curt Gowdy film If We Don’t, Who Will? These two films proved to be invaluable to the beginnings of TU in Canada. I began a speech/film circuit of fishing clubs, service organizations, schools, and other interested groups in Quebec, Ontario, and Newfoundland. It became a case of hitching a speech or two onto my travel agenda for my employer, and advertising agency.
1972: Trout Unlimited Canada Is Born A landmark meeting took place in Montreal, in the summer of 1972. It was attended by Pete Van Gytenbeek; Elliot Donnelly, Chairman of TU; John Spencer; and of course, our founding “Group of Seven”. We put signatures to agreements affecting the official birth of Trout Unlimited of Canada – Truite Atout du Canada. Our deliberations and signing occurred at the historic and exclusive Mount Stephen Club, where many years earlier, the barons of the time socialized, smoked cigars, and signed the start-up papers for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Our bilingual constitution and by-laws were formalized in December of the same year and our first membership cards were sold soon after.
The founding board was comprised of Skip Young, President; Philip Atkinson, Executive Vice-President; John Miller, Treasurer; Lew Louthood, Vice-President, Projects, and Communications; Don Miller, Vice-President and Legal Counsel; and Meredith Hayes, Secretary. The late Roderick Haig-Brown later became a Director at Large. He was also a Director on the American TU Board.
In addition to the promotion of cold water resource protection, TUC/TAC became active in the cause for the protection of the Atlantic Salmon. At the time, the species was about to be added to the endangered list, due to over-fishing. Individually, we had been members for some years, of the Atlantic Salmon Association, a long-established and influential club in Montreal. Hence, we affiliated TUC/TAC with the Atlantic Salmon Federation, an international lobbying body which was formed by Richard Buck, a director of Trout Unlimited in the U.S. Happily, with no small push from these organizations, both the Canadian and U.S. governments decreed the lifting of nets at the mouths of rivers up the east coast. Previously, salmon running to sea after spawning upriver had been netted as they returned to the ocean. A seven-year moratorium was also declared on the salmon fishery to allow recovery of the fish population and to allow for its removal from the endangered species roster.
We Wet Our Feet in the Ruisseau Noir
Building Plans for the Ruisseau Noir
The travel, speeches, and film showings for TUC/TAC continued with a new spark as we sought to identify an activity with which to demonstrate ”action orientation.” The search resulted in a potential restoration project on a ten-kilometer stretch of the Ruisseau Noir (Black Creek), a tributary of the North River near Ste. Agathe, a few miles north of Montreal. Before the construction and subsequent changes to the Quebec Autoroute running north through the Laurentians, the Ruisseau Noir had supported a fine recreational fishery for speckled trout. This roadwork resulted in extensive siltation and several man-made stream diversions. Alas, the trout population had plummeted with the destruction of spawning areas and food resources. The career specialties of our board members comprised a lawyer, a machine tools marketing executive, a weekend news magazine publisher, a senior financial consultant, an insurance/reinsurance specialist, and an advertising/PR account executive. In our first year, we were able to pool outside contacts and friends for many “favors” while planning the restoration of the designated river section.
During this preliminary stage, we created a large working map based on topographical maps of the area. Positions for section marker poles were 100 meters apart along the project length. A member of the board arranged for two local Boy Scout troops to place and set the poles according to the map.
Early Efforts: Hard Work and Ingenuity I arranged with Montreal radio station CJAD to fly in their helicopter on two successive Sunday afternoons during the autoroute traffic watch. The flight path was not far from our project site on the Ruisseau Noir. Between voice reports to the station, we flew passes along the stream so I could photograph a series of consecutive, overlapping lateral images from both sides of the creek. A set of vertical images was made as well. While crude from a scientific standard, the slides were effective in setting out our plan/work stages. They were projected and coordinated with the map markers. Some of the more serious problems with the river were clearly visible on the slides, as well as areas of concern originating from adjacent farms and cattle access to the river.
With the help of two fishery biologists who were “volunteered” from McGill University, we did a survey on foot along the river to determine the necessary repair work within each marked section.
The physical part of the river cleaning and bank was substantially aided thanks to the influence of another board member. One morning, at his request, we found a front loader and a bulldozer with operators on-site, courtesy of the Quebec Highways Department. Given the damage done at our location during the autoroute extension, possibly by the same equipment, the crews did a magnificent job of heavy course correction and banking which shortened the task time by no small amount. Once more, the volunteer Boy Scouts came out, charged by their earlier progress, and cleared brush and refuse.
A number of smaller but no less important contributions of materials and labor helped us to achieve our corrective and restorative objectives. All this was accomplished within just a year of TUC’s formal existence. During the winter of 1973-74, we presented gratitude awards to the Boy Scout groups for their community service as well as to others ranging from the marker pole supplier to the sandwich and coffee makers. Not overlooked were the sympathetic government officials who put aside red tape to direct the equipment and crews to our site, at no cost to TUC/TAC. Farmers and landowners along the stretch were advised of our progress and intent. They proved to be generally agreeable and willing to cooperate with our efforts. In the spring of 1974, the target section of the Ruisseau Noir was stocked with Speckled Trout fingerlings by the Quebec Fisheries Department. They thrived well to the extent that two years later the fish were of a catchable size and were reproducing. We announced the river’s recreational fishery had been restored. To my knowledge, this status remains.
Presentations, Partnerships, and Growth TUC/TAC’s membership continues to grow. We reached out to establish chapters and identify new projects. The Izaac Walton Fishing Club in Toronto was the first to join us, under the direction of Stephen Booth. If I am not mistaken, the late Phillip Keller also had a part in setting up the Izaac Walton Chapter of TU. Later the headquarters of TUC/TAC moved to Toronto, and then on to its present home in Calgary, Alberta.
Inevitably, things change as time moves on. My departure from the picture occurred late in 1974 when I moved to Ottawa with the Department of External Affairs. During a posting to Cleveland, Ohio, (1978-1983), I became a director of the Cuyahoga Chapter of TU. My ancient, trusty, but very heavy, Bell & Howell 16 mm projector plus my original prints of The Way of a Trout and If We Don’t, Who Will? were given to the chapter to help them continue with their cause. All told, my print of The Way of a Trout was shown as part of 132 speech presentations that I gave in Canada, plus numerous informal showings. I believe it still to be one of the outstanding films of a nature/wildlife genre. Back at TU in Canada, both films had been replaced earlier with new prints, augmented by some new titles. As well, a new and useful medium known as videotape was peeping over the horizon.
I regret the shortage of space to tell you more about that original “Group of Seven.” All the slides, records, maps, and other collateral relating to TUC/TAC’s beginnings and the river project were left in Montreal with the ongoing executive. I would be delighted to hear of or from any colleagues who may read this account. As a disclaimer, I must state that any errors or omissions are mine alone, due to the function of recollection twenty-five years after the facts.
Finally, all the hard work and achievement described herein came about not by the wave of an Orvis or Hardy wand, but by the labors and aspirations of many keen fishers who were dedicated to the ideals and principles espoused by Trout Unlimited. Without their support and backing, a different story would have worked itself out. It was a unique privilege to have known and worked alongside them. That Trout Unlimited Canada continues to grow and work is comforting and makes one feel all will be good in this land, one day.
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