March 2026
Becoming streamkeepers: For Our Kids Burnaby and Beecher Creek
Becoming streamkeepers: For Our Kids Burnaby and Beecher Creek
For many of the families in For Our Kids Burnaby, Beecher Creek has played a central role in our lives. Our kids learned to play soccer in the playing field near the creek, the classes at the local elementary school release salmon fry into the water, and our families have picked salmonberries by the water since our kids were toddlers. When the Burnaby chapter of For Our Kids started in 2022, Beecher Creek was a natural spot for organizing park clean-ups and bringing our kids to learn about the plants and wildlife in our own neighbourhood.
Last year, our team started thinking about establishing some longer-term, larger-scale projects in our community. We’d organized garbage clean-ups, invasive species pulls, and native plantings in various locations around Burnaby, but we wanted to commit to consistent stewardship in one location in our own neighbourhood. With that goal in mind, we reached out to the Beecher Creek Streamkeepers, asking if we could team up with them on some projects.
That one phone call grew into something much bigger than we had imagined. We connected with Jim Atwater, an emeritus professor of Environmental Systems Engineering at the University of British Columbia who has been a streamkeeper at Beecher Creek for more than thirty years. He told us that he was ready to hand on the streamkeeping baton to a new generation of streamkeepers. It was the perfect timing for us—we told him we were ready and excited to take up the challenge!
Our first walk through the creek with Jim changed our perspective of this little corner of our community. Jim pointed out the boulders in the creek that he and his PhD students had placed themselves, recreating the natural meandering flow of the original creek so that fish could return to the water. He showed us trees that he and his Scouts troop had planted more than thirty years ago: conifers that were now towering over our heads and providing shade for the native plants the streamkeepers had reintroduced along the path. Standing by the creek with Jim on that first day, we realized the depth of the commitment we were making; in becoming streamkeepers, we’re promising to take up the work of restoring and maintaining the creek, hoping that the trees we plant will also be towering over our heads in three decades.
Over the past year, with Jim as our patient guide, we’ve taken our first steps as streamkeepers of Beecher Creek. In May 2025, we organized our first invasive species pull at the creek and were thrilled when more than 50 people—from For Our Kids, the school community, and the neighbourhood—came out to help us remove invasive plants like Himalayan blackberry, English ivy, and periwinkle. Since then, we’ve organized several more pulls and two planting events, led multiple school groups along the creek, and, most recently, started hosting monthly invasive pulls. Little by little, we’re planning to make our way along the rest of the trail that runs along the creek, removing the invasive plants and replacing them with the native species that are better for our waterways and the wildlife.
As part of our streamkeeping work, we’re working on building long-term relationships with the local elementary school and Scouting groups. We’ve worked with teachers at the school, who have helped us spread the word about our events and brought their classes down to the creek to learn and play. After a planting event in the fall, one teacher told us, “What a gift that experience was for myself and the kiddos. I had no idea it was so close, now I want to go every week! Thank you for facilitating such a beautiful opportunity to get hands on in nature.” We’re excited to keep leading classes in events at the creek, and we are planning to create some resources about waterways and native species to help teachers work with their students at the creek.
We have big dreams for the creek: a trailhead kiosk to teach people about the Streamkeepers, the creek, and the vegetation; a circle of logs where students can sit when they come visit Beecher; and an area to propagate native plants that we can grow along the path. We have a daunting amount to learn about taking care of the creek, and a lot of hard work to come, but we’re excited to keep working at Beecher Creek, growing a more climate-resilient, connected community as we do.
We always welcome new members to our streamkeeping group, and we are happy to answer questions about our work at Beecher Creek! You can follow us on Instagram @beechercreek or reach out to [email protected] with any questions. We are hosting our next work parties at the creek on March 29th and April 25th—if you’d like to join us, sign up here.
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