I’m Carolyn Lee and I’m originally from Vancouver.

I grew up on the North Shore, so I had access to a lot of hiking trails and the main river that flowed through there was Capilano River so I grew up in the Capilano water shed. My favorite water body is the Capilano River. As a kid, I could actually bike down to the reservoir where my drinking water came from. Every time I went downtown or on my way to school, university, I would pass by the wastewater treatment plant that sat at the bottom of the river. So I could kinda see where my water came from and where it ended up later on. At the reservoir, there was also a fish hatchery because when they put the dam in the Coho salmon couldn’t migrate back up to spawn anymore. So that’s why they developed a fish hatchery.

A lot of my youth was just hanging out at the reservoir. There’s also a big suspension bridge in Vancouver, the Capilano suspension bridge. I also was a nature guide there. So I felt like a lot of my childhood and teenage years, and throughout university I was pretty well connected with that river. Also, the Capilano River was named after a Squamish Chief, Joe Capilano. So there is a Squamish First Nations community at the bottom of the river. During salmon season, they would set up rocks at the bottom of the river and harvest fish. So it’s nice to see the hatchery and the fish being harvested by humans. It was a great place to grow up.