Part of a creek that was buried under a post-secondary campus in Burnaby, B.C., decades ago has been brought to the surface again, in a bid to restore some of the Lower Mainland’s dwindling salmon habitat.
For thousands of years, chum salmon swam up Guichon Creek to spawn. But during construction of the Burnaby campus of the B.C. Institute of Technology (BCIT) in the 1960s, a 750-metre stretch of the waterway was sealed underground in a series of steel pipes and culverts, blocking passage for the fish.
Researchers say Guichon Creek, which feeds Still Creek, is one of dozens of ancient waterways across the Lower Mainland that served coho and chum salmon before they were paved over.
Over the past year, as part of an ongoing effort to restore Guichon Creek, the school uncovered part of the waterway in the hope that salmon would return. This fall is the first …