Street Photography by Denis Bouvier.
These ghost-like salmon seem to be swimming through ghost-like buildings that are shifting in and out of reality. Everything appears ephemeral. Are they ghosts of past salmon, confused and wandering through our cities? Are they trying to alert us to an impending danger? These are questions that artist Paul Burke provokes in his installation, Ghost Salmon, currently in the lower lobby at the Four Seasons Hotel on Howe St. in Vancouver.
Burke works with his partner Anna Gustafson, who does visual storytelling through painting, raku and furniture. Burke is acclaimed for his folk-art animal sculptures. They created the Blue Horse Gallery on Saltspring Island and work from their studio there. The salmon sculptures were carved from red cedar and painted with casein-based milk paint. Ghost Salmon is the first of three annual exhibitions of theirs at the hotel.
Their work has been inspired by University of Victoria biologist T. E. Reimchen. He has done extensive research on the role of Pacific salmon in transporting essential nutrients to our forests. One study found that over a six-week salmon spawning period, eight bears had taken 3000 salmon into the forest. Most of these salmon had already spawned. About half of each salmon carcass was consumed by the bears and the remainder by eagles, marten, crows, ravens, gulls and more. The decomposing carcasses, together with the faecal and urine discharge from the above animals, provide essential nutrients not only to the forest’s trees but to all its vegetation and creatures, especially in the form of nitrogen. Although the main concentration of nutrients is near coastal rivers and streams where salmon spawn, traces of this salmon signature have been found as far inland as the Rockies. In short, wild salmon play an essential role in maintaining a healthy eco-system.
For the last six decades there has been a steady decline in salmon stocks, especially sockeye. Consequently, in 2009, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen was commissioned by the Federal government to establish an inquiry. After three years and $26 million spent, he concluded some of the main factors in salmon decline were: contamination and development along the Fraser River, potential harm from salmon farms that could be irreversible and global warming. Cohen found it regrettable that the government did not wait to see the conclusions of the inquiry before making legislative amendments in Bill C-38 which he felt lowered the standard of protection for Fraser River salmon. He also cited a conflict within Fisheries and Oceans Canada between conservation of wild salmon stocks and the promotion of fish farming.
It is troubling that the government does not strongly support the recommendations of its own commissioned inquiry and, according to a survey of government scientists, continues to muzzle those scientists whose environmental concerns conflict with business or industrial development.
Burke’s Ghost Salmon is part of the Four Seasons’ unique Artists In Residence program, established in 2011. It provides B.C. artists with a venue to display their art, not only enhancing the experience of guests but also connecting artists to local and international buyers who frequent the hotel. The current installation can be viewed until the end of June and the hotel has plans for the public to meet the artists over the coming months. Also with the Artists In Residence program, Tracy McMenemy is presently working in-house on several paintings in the upper lobby, outside the Yew Restaurant.
