6 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



part of two seasons, were opened. This provided sufficient water to 

 permit the salmon to reach the head of the river, but, owing to the 

 strong currents at the sluiceways, did not permit ingress of salmon to 

 the lake, and hence for five years the fish continued to mass and die 

 below the dam, while the spawning beds of Quesnel lake remained 

 barren of sockeye salmon. In the 'big year' of 1901, the run to the 

 Quesnel river was very large, but, owing to the failure to provide a 

 fishway, the spawning grounds of the lake remained unseeded that 

 year. The pack of 1905 was 500,000 cases less than in 1901, and has 

 commonly been attributed to failure in the seeding of the beds of the 

 Quesnel in 1901. In 1903, the Provincial Government constructed a 

 fishway, and, in 1905, several million sockeye undoubtedly entered 

 Quesnel lake, and the large spawning area apparently was well seeded. 

 The run of sockeye in 1909 was believed to have exceeded that of any 

 former year, and it has been estimated that 4,000,000 adult sockeye 

 salmon entered Quesnel lake through this fishway.* 



In 1913 and 1914, during the construction of the Canadian 

 Northern railway, a rock slide in the canon above Yale caused a 

 serious blocking of the Fraser river. The slide produced currents and 

 eddies of sych character as resulted in the holding back of millions of 

 salmon. This obstruction was more serious than that at Quesnel 

 lake, as it affected a larger area. Reports from the various spawning 

 grounds showed that the run reaching the grounds in 1913 was much 

 below that of former big years. At Quesnel lake, where facilities 

 existed for making an accurate estimate, only about 550,000 salmon 

 passed through the fishway, as compared with 4,000,000 in 

 1909. 



The assistant to the Commissioner of Fisheries of British Colum- 

 bia, in his report respecting conditions below the obstruction on the 

 Fraser, stated : "The waters of the lagoon at the mouth of the Spuzzum 

 were literally filled with sockeye, and the stream itself was also 

 crowded for the mile and one-half of its length to the falls, ....For a 

 distance of three miles and a half, from the Skuzzy rapids to Hell's- 

 gate below, the surface of all the eddies and the slack waters were 

 covered with sockeye,"!.... 



* Annual Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries, British Columbia, 1909, 

 pp. 1-13. 



t See ' Report on the Obstructed Condition of the Fraser River at Skuzzy Rapids, 

 China Bar, Hellgate and White Creek,' in Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries, 

 British Columbia, 1913, p. R39; also pp. R20 et seq; also Report {or 1914, p. N20. 



