Every Tuesday for three years, a 78-year-old Tsartlip elder stands on the Malahat shoulder

Carl Olsen wakes at 5 a.m. in the house his grandfather built on the Tsartlip reserve, prays at the water's edge, and drives to the shoulder of the Malahat to hold a sign that reads "Save the Salmon." He's 78. He's been doing this every Tuesday for three years, through rain, snow and sickness.

What sent him out there in early 2023 was a provincial plan to widen a 1.7-kilometre stretch of highway that cuts through Goldstream Provincial Park. A 2024 environmental assessment found the work would mean permanent loss or alteration of salmon and amphibian habitat next to the Goldstream River, and the removal of roughly 715 trees.

Olsen, whose traditional name is ZȺWIZUT, knows the park as SELE₭TEȽ. To the W̱SÁNEĆ, it's one of their oldest fishing villages, a site they argue is protected by a Douglas Treaty put to paper 174 years ago that affirms their right to hunt and fish on those lands.

He worries most about the canopy that keeps the river cold. "It's about 12 degrees difference from the sun to the shade," he says. Lose the shade, he says, and you lose the fish.