A charity sale of fresh herring from our fishing community to help children with cancer.

Pacific herring is a bright little fish that hangs out in schools, sort of like kids.

It’s a resilient species — the foundation of our coastal eco-system and vital to future generations of fish, whales and seabirds. In short, it’s the small fry that impacts so many.

So it’s fitting that B.C. fishermen picked this feisty pilchard for their grassroots project to raise funds to help children when they’re at their most vulnerable. Every year, when the herring fishery opens in mid-winter, local fishermen take a few days out of their schedule to head out on the water and fish for their own unique charity — Fishermen Helping Kids with Cancer (FHKWC).

They unload their silvery catch at the docks at Steveston and Victoria — some 75 tonnes of fresh herring — for a one- day sale that attracts chefs and seafood lovers from far and wide. With scores of volunteers to help, they bag and sell 10- and 20-pound bags of whole herring for $15 and $20 respectively. It’s an incredible bargain and one of the few opportunities you’ll find to stock up on this amazing little fish to smoke, pickle or just roast whole for dinner.

Co-ordinating the catch
It’s estimated that up to 10 million pilchards range along our western coastline, from Northern B.C. to California and Peru. Though government regulators have closed the fishery at various times over years, the stocks are healthy in the Strait of Georgia today and the fishery usually opens in December. The seiners head out to the herring-rich waters near French Creek on Vancouver Island, but herring can be an elusive little fish and fishers must work late into the night to catch it.

“At this time of year, you don’t see them that often until night. They come up off the bottom and come into the beach, and then at daylight they go back out to the deep water,” fisherman Brent Melan explains after one such wintery expedition for FHKWC.

“I’ve seen thousands of tons of herring disappear into the deep water. You don’t see them when they don’t want to be seen.”

The fishing boat owners, skippers and fishermen donate their time, fuel, equipment — even their licences and quota — to bring in the herring for the annual charity sale. The catch is loaded into the hold on ice for the journey back to Steveston, just 24-48 hours out of the water and perfect for eating when it reaches the city docks.

Herring is caring
B.C. fishermen have long sold herring to help raise funds for charity. An annual herring sale was a Steveston tradition from 1951 to 2007, with commercial fishermen donating their catch to support a local fund for orphans.

The first FHKWC sale, held in 2011, helped revive that tradition, and this year, the charity announced that it passed the $1 million fund-raising mark, donating every cent raised to the oncology programs at the BC Children’s Hospital.

A childhood cancer diagnosis is a frightening time for children, their parents, siblings and extended families, and the focus of FHKWC is to help them all get through it.

The money collected is not for equipment or cancer research or salaries — it’s to buy small diversions such as books and video games for teenagers and toys for toddlers, or to create places to play while undergoing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

Imagine being a child in isolation, confined to a hospital room for weeks or even months after a life-saving bone marrow transplant. With funds from FHKWC, there are now personalized kits for kids, a “bone marrow transplant box” for each child who undergoes the procedure, with anything from iPads to novels, puzzles, blankets, stuffed animals and cosy clothing.

One oncology nurse described the fishermen’s ongoing funding as something that’s “evolved with the hospital and how we deliver care.” It’s a charity that’s helped shape the oncology department’s unique culture, which includes an oncology teen group and a sibling support centre, a creative play space for visiting siblings, and technology that allows kids to escape into virtual worlds while receiving treatments.

A girl and her legacy
The impetus for all of this fishing community largesse was one young girl, Nicole Eidsvik, a lovely and steadfast sup- porter of all of the kids she met while undergoing treatment for her own cancer. She helped plan the first herring sale, sharing her experiences and advice, so that organizers could make sure all funds were used to truly help kids and their families.

Sadly, Nicole died at age 17, just days before the first sale was held in Steveston, but her legacy lives on.

And Nicole’s father, Phil Eidsvik, once a commercial fisherman himself, says it’s been a help to his family, too.

“Something good comes out of something terrible,” he says.

Nicole wanted the charity to focus on helping kids and families during their time at BC Children’s Hospital, with anything that could create a sense of comfort and “normalcy” during a time that is anything but. The nurses who support families through these trying times say the money has helped them, too, because kids can look forward to a favourite toy when they arrive for treatment in the oncology department.

“When two guys [fishermen] came up with the idea to raise money with a herring sale, Nicole said: ‘Not for me, for all of the kids’,” says Eidsvik.

“Our experience is like what happens to every family,” he adds. “Nicole did not like going to the hospital but now kids have stuff that’s fun to do while they’re there.”

In praise of herring
A small fish — usually just about quarter of a pound or 100 grams — herring is the kind of fish that often ends up smoked, canned or pickled. But it’s also wonderful when grilled or roasted whole.

At the last FHKWC herring sale in Victoria, which is held at Finest at Sea, a shop and processing plant at the Victo- ria sales’ location, owner Bob Fraumeni served up house-smoked kippered herring on breakfast sandwiches to those who attended the early morning event.

Eidsvik says he likes to grill fresh herring whole, simply doused with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.

“Slip a table knife under the gills and the fillet comes right off, and you can toss the rest away” he says.

We may not appreciate the wonderful fresh herring schooling in our cold coastal waters, but in other parts of the world herring is a prized delicacy. Canned sprats, cold-smoked kippers, German pickled rollmops, salted tuyo from the Phillipines or Scandinavian salted herring and Spanish boquerones — all are among the ways the world enjoys these small fish.

And though local fisheries experts and chefs suggest we eat more herring rather than concentrating on other less sustainable species, sadly, most of the Pacific herring we harvest today is ground up for fish meal to feed farmed fish or sold for bait and pet food, and never finds its way to our tables.

But on the annual FHKWC sale day, thousands of savvy customers show up for the chance to take home a bag of these delicious little fish (some scooping up as many as 20 bags). Demand has grown for the fish and now there’s even a system to prepay for your order online at the FHKWC website and arrange a scheduled pickup time to avoid congestion at the dock.

The 2025 sale takes place in mid-January (dates TBA) at Steveston dock and Finest at Sea in Victoria. If you’ve never tried preparing fresh herring, this is your once-a-year chance.

Vancouver seafood expert and chef Quang Dang, quoted on the charity’s website, says it all: “A lot of the crowd were surprised to see how great the herring tastes, but when the product is this fresh, it’s so good — it’s not fishy, it’s full of flavour and really good for you, too.”

Fishermen Helping Kids with Cancer Herring sale 12820 Trites Rd., Richmond

Finest At Sea
27 Erie St., Victoria

fhkwc.ca | [email protected] | @fhkwc.ca