Remembrance Day: Honoring our Veterans

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November 11th is a day to remember those who fought for our future and safety. 

The Listuguj Veteran’s Committee held the Remembrance day ceremonies at the Listuguj Community Development Center this year. It started at 10:30 a.m.

Half of the (Bingo) Hall was decorated, with a long table running midway through the room to accommodate our veterans.

At the front laid the Canadian, American, Prisoners of War, Listuguj American Veterans Flags,  along with the Veteran’s Cenotaph.

Shortly after the doors opened, people started filling the seats.

“I was very amazed with the turnout,” said Mary Bradstreet, one of the organizers. “This was a larger attendance – much more than what we usually get.” 

The service started with the Spirit Bear drum group, singing, while the veteran’s entered. After placing the flags alongside the cenotaph, the veterans took their seats at the table.

The ceremony opened, and Bradstreet introduced Chief Darcy Gray. He spoke of the profound impact these men had on the families, here at home.

Peter Arseneault, Chief of Police,  also spoke of the connections to family.

“There is a lot of pride – family pride – with individuals that have served in the military,” he said. 

Arsenault also noted that there’s been somewhat of a revival in honoring veterans of the past, and those of today.

The Royal Canadian Legion used to hold Remembrance Day ceremonies in Listuguj. However, many veterans served in the American Armed Forces, not the Canadian. This created some issues, and the ceremonies were ultimately discontinued.

“We didn’t have that voice or presence of the veterans for a long long time,” Arsenault said.

In 2009, the Veteran’s Committee was created to change that. The first step was creating a veteran’s monument. It was unveiled at AGS, on June 21st, 2010.

The next step was establishing a permanent home for our Veterans.

“We talked about the Veterans Lodge,” Bradstreet said. “This goes all the way back to when Michael Isaac Sr. was still alive and well. That was his dream, to have a veteran’s lodge. John Melvin Vicaire, Patrick Isaac, James Isaac – they were  key, instrumental, in getting that Veteran’s Lodge.”

Remembrance Day holds a lot of meaning for many of us.

It’s important that we continue to remember, and honor, all that these men sacrificed, for the good of their families, and the community.

Salmon Summit 3

Salmon Summit 3

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The Salmon Summit has been held in Listuguj for three years now. It was created to bring people and organizations with interests in the Restigouche watershed together.

Over the course of two days, Salmon Summit 3 was held at the Bingo Hall. Discussions and focus group sessions were held, showing the amount of work and data that needs to be analyzed and shared.

The summit began as a means to talk about the diverse relationships with the salmon, but is now growing into a truly collaborative approach to managing and protecting the water, and all that it sustains.

There are people like Carole-Anne Gillis, a cost-shared fisheries biologist, working for several organizations, to gather information and understand Everything from stock assessments, to testing fish for viruses or bacterial infections.

“We’re doing a lot of basic fundamental research,” Gillis said. “To answer questions that we can then follow through with management.”

The benefit of the summit, is various groups can work toward mutually beneficial goals. The first step, however, is Identifying the challenges to achieving them.

“Discussion groups today were about identifying them,” said Kirt Dedam, the Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy Coordinator, with Listuguj Fisheries. “How can we work toward solutions? So that everybody – when they go away today, will have something to work towards.”

The hope is that people can return next year, for Salmon Summit 4, and say they followed through with their commitments.

“This is how we want to keep growing this thing,” Dedam said.

The summit has always been intended to serve multiple purposes. Representing the Aboriginal perspective has always been one of the key goals. Dedam believes a lot of people were taking this perspective away with them this year.

“There’s a lot of talk about ‘two-eyed seeing,’” Dedam said. “Seeing from a western science and an Aboriginal perspective too. But how do you blend the two?  So I think that’s one of the things that people get from these meetings. Plus, we learn more about the science that’s going on, which is important too. ”

A main focus has always been building relationships and trust among the various groups, and Dedam was pleased to see a lot of participation this year.

Discussions around what the future may hold for the summit has also begun.

“We’re starting to expand our view,” Dedam said. “And where we want to go with this is maybe inviting other watersheds in the area, from other provinces, other communities, other First Nations, and start being more inclusive, and keep growing this.”

Halloween in Listuguj

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Photo by Denise Barnaby

The importance of thermal refuges for Salmon

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Salmon are sensitive to everything in the environment, even relatively small differences in the  the temperature of the water.

“Anything above 23 celsius, they have a hard time doing their biological function,” said Carol-Anne Gillis, a cost-shared biologist, working with the GMRC, the Listuguj Fisheries, and the Restigouche River Watershed Management Council (RRWMC).

She is working on the Strategic Management of Thermal Refuges in the Restigouche River Watershed project. They are looking at preserving – and enhancing – areas of cold water in the river that the salmon tend to hang around. These are important areas, at several different stages in their life cycle of the salmon.

If you ever travelled down the Restigouche River, and stepped out of your canoe into surprisingly cold water – you’re not crazy. There can be as much as a 10 degree difference in some places. There are now 1,825 classified “thermal refuges” identified.

There are “seeps,” where groundwater seeps into the river, and there are “confluence plumes”  where streams meet the main river, and start to spread out. Often, the cold water from a stream will meet the river, and be pushed to the side.

“So you might have this cold water space, but it’s only like a foot wide, and it’s on the shoreline,” said Gillis.

Part of Gillis’ work is to find ways to enhance these confluence plumes.

“What we can also do is create these instream structures where you can kind of, either give more energy to the small stream, so it can have a bigger space for fish in the main stem,” she said. “It’s kind of alike a cone. So instead of having a streamline of cold water on the shore line, hugging the shore line, well you can divert it, and create a bigger cone of cold water. So there’s more volume for fish.”

The seeps are a little more complicated to protect. They are protected the same way many other aspects of the river’s health is maintained – managing nearby land use.