There were a dozen media types on board — the usual array of long-haired young cameramen and tie-wearing reporters, plus a hand- ful of mostly-quiet shortcropped men in baseball hats and plaid shirts, open at the collar. Sitting a few seats ahcad of me was Brian Blomme, communica- tions boss for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. This was a media event. We were being flown from North Bay 45 minutes north over the Temagami wilderness, with sand- wiches and drinks (non-alcoholic) at the other end. I'd had a long rap with my cam- eraman, Todd Southgate, the night before at the motel in North Bay. He wanted to know if this was a good, “‘pure”’ story. Like, was it truly a positive thing for the en- vironment? Yes, it was. Yes, it was. In 1958, a provincial govern- ment fish biologist named Paul Graf had noticed that the Iekes were in an advanced state of decay — nearly dead — thanks to acid rain from the gigantic smoke stacks of not-so-distant Sudbury. Graf had the foresight to rescue 5,000 eggs from the handful of surviving Aurora trout living in the area. A year later, except for those eggs, the fish were all gone. As gone as the dinosaurs or the Dodo bird. A geological era before, those fish had been trapped in just three little lakes by the receding glaciers that gouged and leveled the Laurentian Shield. They evolved into a unique sub-species of trout, named ‘“‘Aurora’’ for their brilliant col- ors: flaming orange underbellies which last until they get older and acquire a wonderful array of speckles. For 32 years, while their home lakes lay inert and lifeless under the poisonous rains, biologists and their staff kept the descendents of those Aurora trout eggs alive in holding tanks. The period of time involved rep- resented six generations to the trout, who live an average of five years. And now, the seventh generation would be re-introduced to one of their ancient homes. During the Aurora trout’s exile from the natural world, something of a revolution had occurred, it seems. Tough new provincial regula- tions had forced the owners of the sulphurous mills in Sudbury to in- stall scrubbers and begin the task of methodically reducing the amount of pollutants they dump into the atmosphere. So this was a good, upbeat story, | assured my cameraman. Humanity was doing something decent for a change. That one biologist, Paul Graf, had played the role of a Noah of the North, for at least one sub-species. In- {9 outlets to serve you) THE TWIN Otier came in low over Whirligig Lake and banked so the video and still-camera guys could get shots of the place where 1,000 Aurora trout were to be released. VINYL DECKING 10-50% OFF All work guaranteed! * weatherproof * same day use © no peeling, cracking or bubbling « textured skid-resistant surtace Four Seasons Vinyl Deck 4 - Wednesday, May 30, 1990 - North Shore News Bos HUNTER © Eco-Logic © stead of an ark, he’d used a fibreglass tank and an oxygen pump. But it had worked. He’d kept the Aurora alive beyond the point where they definitely would have vanished forever. Hats off! Yet... The nagging thought remained that the Ministry of Natural Resources was doing this as a public relations stunt. After all, they had added nine tons of lime to Whirligig Lake to hopefully render the water habitable to the returning Aurora. Maybe this was premature. Maybe it wasn’t really time yet, even though the ministry con- fidently predicts the acid rain-caus- ing emissions from Sudbury will be down a lot further shortly, as more legislated clean-up schedules kick in. Maybe, just maybe, I fretted, there were political considerations, like the Liberal government's plan to call a fall election and run ona green platform. Why, after-ali, is communica- tions chief Blomme spending, money from his budget flying media up to witness the event, ex- cept to score in the public image game? Let’s be adult about this. So we set off from the motel in the morning en route to the Ministry of Natural Resources building in North Bay, the cam- eraman and me, with our scep- ticism entirely intact. Intact, that is, until we met some of the men who had engineered the survival of the Aurora trout. These were the untalkative short-haired guys in baseball hats and plaid shirts open at the collar, who joined us on the Twin Otter for the flight with the 1,000 trout back to their restored ancestoral home. Guys like biologists John Gunn, George Duckworth, Ed Snucins, Chuck McCrudden, limnologist Bill Keller, and field assistants like boat operator Robert Kirk: straight-talking men, with a quiet sense of humor, probably a little dull in the long run, but solid, scientific, and shy about what they do. But as modest as they were, once they got talking, the passion and pride came out. And something more. They knew they were in- volved in Something Big. It might only be a rare sub- species of fish, peculiar to the near-north of Ontario. But it was, in its own right, an entire race of creature. And these guys had saved it from oblivion. So maybe there was a PR angle, a political angle, the whole cynical works. But, at bot- tom, the undertaking was pure. | could find nothing to quibble with. In our day and age, saving a species is probably the highest call- ing you can aspire to. Hats off one more time, and no “*yet’’ about it. 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