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Book Review
| Fish Versus Power: An Environmental History of the Fraser River. By Matthew D. Evenden. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xvii + 309 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, tables, bibliography, index. $65.00.
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| The Fraser River in British Columbia is the world's most productive salmon river, yet as the river with North America's third largest discharge into the Pacific, it also holds tremendous potential for hydroelectric development. Matthew Evenden's Fish Versus Power explores the environmental history of Canada's third greatest river to explain why a river with such potential for hydropower has not been dammed, despite being located in a thoroughly industrialized country and in a province next to the nation with the twentieth century's most rapacious demand for energy. It is a complex story, which Evenden relates admirably, weaving into his narrative native advocacy, the competing interests of the fishing, canning, electric-power, and aluminum industries, Cold War politics, the differences between institutions and bureaucracies in Canada and the United States, and the history of fisheries science along with compelling descriptions of the river and its watershed. |
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An important event in the river's early twentieth-century history was a massive rockslide at Hells Gate, a narrow canyon about 180 miles above the river mouth on the Straight of Georgia between the mainland and Vancouver Island. Use of explosives in the construction of the Canadian National Railway's line along the canyon walls caused intermittent rockslides for several years beginning in 1911. By 1913 it was apparent that the debris in the river was blocking the upstream migration of spawning salmon, and yet on-going construction continued to cause slides into 1914. During salmon runs, observers described seeing the river teaming with fish thrashing in pools for several miles below the slide, unable to make further progress upstream. The slide was disastrous for the Fraser's salmon populations and caused immediate efforts to remove debris from the gate and to design fixes by which fish could pass the barrier. The on-going problem led as well to scientific investigations over the next few decades of fish behavior and river conditions that made it either possible or not for salmon to reach their spawning grounds. |
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In Evenden's telling, the Hells Gate rockslide was a seminal event in the river's history. The knowledge gained by trying to find means for salmon to swim past the Hells Gate blockage was accruing at the same time as stakeholders in the Columbia River were learning the damage the United States' great New Deal dams on that river had caused to its salmon fishery. Thus, the science and politics of salmon were nearly always visible if not always dominant factors as various politicians, experts, and interest groups debated other proposed uses for the Fraser and its waters. It is a complex history, and Evenden has organized his analysis well. Given the complexity, the conclusions at the end of each chapter are especially welcome. Fish Versus Power will interest historians of western North America and will be a useful model for environmental historians who emphasize the history of environmental sciences, international relations, and the cultures of institutions. The maps accompanying this book are superbly detailed, and they are placed throughout the text just where they are needed. |
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Fredric L. Quivik is a consulting historian of technology living in Philadelphia. |
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