Generally I'm not one to post photos of myself here on the blog but I got to spend some time talking with my ultimate hero, Rick Hansen, recently at the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Aquarium's annual fundraiser and had to post this one to offer some context about Rick's dedicated to ocean life. I ran in the 25th anniversary relay for his Man in Motion tour a couple of years back and in the few minutes we had together back then I managed to chat him up about a mutual love of ours: fishing. He's obviously known as the spinal cord research/accessibility dude who has raised many millions of dollars for those causes but something that's not as commonly known is that he's an avid sportfisherman and is the honourary chair of the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society. As we were talking at the Aquarium's gala Lorne Segal (President of Kingswood Properties and chair of We Day Vancouver) stopped to chat and Rick took the thread of our conversation and weaved it into telling him about how the closed containment sturgeon farm in Sechelt (which allows us to eat the same species as the endangered Fraser sturgeon) has helped scientists at the Aquarium figure out why and when the wild sturgeon are most vulnerable, and what can be done to bring them back from the brink. He then stressed how everybody needs to come together to work on solutions, for more problems than the ones in our oceans. Man that dude is awesome. #isupportvanaqua, and so does Rick.
This year's Night at the Aquarium gala that night raised more than $400,000 to conserve aquatic life, and Rick donated a Rick Hansen live auction prize for a day of sturgeon fishing out on the Fraser with him. More info can be found .
