Gunderson Slough in the Rain

A week ago Saturday, a drizzly, chilly afternoon, we visited one of the last "unimproved" sites along the lower Fraser River, a spit out into the river enclosing a slough and housing a higgledy-piggledy conglomeration of warehouses, rotting boathouses, rickety piers and assorted working boats. The railroad runs along the river bank, beyond that, a truck road; from there, the hill rises straight up, covered in scrubby bush and "weed" trees.

It is not a beautiful sight, but somehow, even in the rain, it has a certain decrepit charm and its own sense of a long, busy history. It has been in use since at least 1870, when the first cannery in B.C. was built on the site; it is now named after a Norwegian, Jacob Gunderson, who worked there in the last years of the 19th century.

Gunderson slough is home, according to a signpost beside the road, to (an) unidentified endangered species. A Google search turns up a mention of bar habitat for bottom-dwelling fish, as well as the red-listed stream-bank lupine and western grebes.

And it is scheduled for modernization; a new split-level highway will follow the shoreline here, just beyond the railroad tracks. Cement or stone walls will retain the banks instead of bush; traffic will double; earth-moving equipment will frighten off the grebes. The sagging old sheds will be gone.

It looks all very pretty on the propaganda the government puts out. I doubt that the reality will match.

Here are a couple of photos, as it is today, in the rain and mud.