9. Rivers of Death
FROM THE GREEN DEPTHS of the offshore Atlantic many paths lead back to the coast.
They are paths followed by fis h; although uns een and intangible, they a re linked with the
outflow of wate rs from the c oas tal rivers. For thous ands upon thous ands of years the s almon
have known and followed thes e threads of fres h water that lead them back to the rive rs , each
returning to the tributary in which it s pent the firs t months or years of life. So, in the s ummer
and fall of 1953, the salmon of the river called Miramichi on the coast of New Brunswick moved
in from their feeding grounds in the far A tlantic and as cended thei r native river. I n the upper
reaches of the Miramichi, in streams that gather together a network of s hadowe d brooks , the
s almon depos ited their eggs that autumn in beds of gravel over which the s tream water flowed
s wift and cold. Such places , the waters heds of the great coniferous fores ts of s pruce and
balsam, of hemlock and pine, provide the kind of s pawning grounds that s almon mus t have in
orde r to s urvive.
These events repeated a pattern that was age-old, a pattern that had made the Miramichi one
of the finest salmon s treams in North Ame rica. But that year the patte rn was to be broken.
During the fall and winter the salmon eggs, large and thickshelled, lay in shallow gravel-filled
troughs , or redds , which the mothe r fis h had dug in the s tream bottom. In the col d of winter
they devel oped s lowly, as was their way, and only when s pring at las t brought thawing and
releas e to the fores t s treams did the young hatch. At firs t they hid a mong the pe bbles of the
stream bed—tiny fis h about half an inch long. They took no food, living in the large yolk sac. Not
until it was abs orbed would the y begin to s earch the s tream for s mall ins ects.
With the newly hatched s almon in the Miramichi that s pring of 1954 were young of previous
hatchings , salmon a year or two old, y oung fis h in brilliant coats marke d with bars and bright
red s pots. Thes e young fed voracious ly, s eeking out the s trange and varied ins ect life of the
s trea m. As the s ummer approache d, all this was changed. That year the waters hed of the
Northwest Miramichi was included in a vas t s praying program which the Canadian Government
had emba rked upon the pre vious year—a program des igned to save the forests from the spruce
budworm. The budworm is a native insect that attacks several kinds of evergreens. In eastern
Canada it seems to become extraordinarily abundant about every 35 years. The early 1950s had
s een s uch an ups urge in the budworm populations. To combat it, s praying with DDT was begun,
first in a small way, then at a s uddenly accelerated rate in 1953. Millions of acres of forests
were s praye d ins tead of thous ands as before, in an effort to save the balsams, which are the
mains tay of the pulp and pape r indus try.
So in 1954, in the month of June, the planes vis ited the fores ts of the Northwest Miramichi and
white clouds of s ettling mis t marke d the c ris s cross pattern of their flight. The s pray—one half
pound of DDT to the acre in a s olution of oil— filtered down through the bals am fores ts and
s ome of it finally reached the ground and the flowing streams. The pilots, their thoughts only on
their as s igned tas k, made no effort to avoid the s treams or to s hut off the s pray nozzles while
flying over them; but becaus e s pray drifts s o far in even the slightes t s tirrings of air, perhaps the
res ult would have been little different if they had.
Soon after the s praying had ended there were unmis takable s igns that all was not well. Within
wo days dead and dying fis h, including many young s almon, were found along the banks of the