Authors Norman and Allan Safarik present their book

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Wednesday, October 17th, 2012
6:30 PM to 7:30 PM

Part business story, part social history and part eco‐memoir, Bluebacks and Silver
Brights: A Lifetime in the B.C. Fisheries from Bounty to Plunder (June 15, 2012, ECW) is a collection of adventures on the Pacific coast and tells the story of a man who spent a lifetime working in the fishing industry. Norman, now ninety‐three, was born in Vancouver and worked in the fish business for over sixty‐five years running Vancouver Shellfish & Fish Company.

Containing stories about the hardworking fishermen who risked their lives to catch
fish as well as about the many colorful characters in the industry, Bluebacks and Silver Brights documents a way of life lost forever. Safarik�s unique retrospective also turns an eye towards the present day; in his opening chapter �After the catch� he describes a natural resource teetering on the edge of extinction:

Schoolboys played games catching [spawning salmon] by hand and releasing them back into the teeming masses. Today, hundreds of streams in British Columbia are barren �Canadian fisheries bureaucrats and politicians have consistently managed to bungle every aspect of fisheries conservation on both the East and West Coasts. Their astounding legacy of destruction, pollution, overfishing, over‐large fleets, herring roe fisheries, fish farming and lack of faith between nations in negotiating treaties and regulations � remain unsettled.

The authors passionately highlight a number of other current issues including how
the devastation of Pacific herring has lead to the destruction of the food chain, and how the current practice of farming fish on B.C.�s coast is �akin to growing wheat in flowerpots in Saskatchewan.� Bluebacks and Silver Brights is a riveting memoir set during the pinnacle of West Coast Fishing, and it is a book as likely to stir up nostalgia from the Gulf of Georgia to Prince Rupert as it is to provoke broader public debate.