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Kelowna  

Fish festival educates kids

Hundreds of people came out for the Kokanee salmon festival at Mission Creek Park on Sunday. 

The festival has been running for nearly 20 years and celebrates the Kokanee salmon as they spawn upriver. 

The spawning season runs from September into October. During this time more than 10,000 fish will head up Mission Creek. 

Leslie Finley is a park interpreter with the Regional District of the Central Okanagan and helped organize festival. 

She said the salmon festival is about celebrating the return of Kokanee salmon and educating the public on protecting the Okanagan watershed and the local environment. 

"This is one of the biggest festivals we've held in years," she said. "It's really important because some kids don't necessarily get a chance to come with their schools or their parents, but there's a festival it really draws out the kids who don't frequent the park already."

"Really the celebration is trying to spark an interest in the kids and hopefully get them to value what we have here in our parks."

Joanne Swain has been a part of the festival since it began. 

"I think the kids have to know what nature is all about and what happens in nature," she said. "I used to teach in West Kelowna and I brought my kids down here to see the spawning even before this was a park."

Organizers expected more than 3,000 people to attend the festival which ran from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. 

Twenty information booths and more than 50 volunteers were on hand to make the festival a reality. 

At the Central Okanagan Search and Rescue booth, a camera had been placed underwater and people could view the fish as they swam by. 

Other attractions included a giant nylon salmon for children to crawl into. Inside they were treated to a puppet show. 

 

 

 



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