Amid big-box stores and industrial zones, salmon are returning to Metro Vancouver streams [Video]

The metallic screech of a train rolling by. The constant hum of traffic on the nearby Trans-Canada Highway.

These are the sounds of the Brunette River in the fall, as it cuts through Burnaby, B.C. — and rising above the din of Metro Vancouver, the splashing of chum salmon as they push upstream to spawn. 

The salmon in the river are looking haggard by mid-November, their skin patchy and worn as they near the end of their lives.

But they continue the timeless cycle to produce the next generation of their keystone species.

Jason Hwang, vice-president of the Pacific Salmon Foundation, recalled growing up in Delta, south of Vancouver, and thinking “salmon were something that came into the Fraser River but swam on by the Lower Mainland to better habitat” farther inland.

Then, as a child, Hwang saw salmon spawning in Surrey’s Bear Creek.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. …