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Darlene Sherwin: Environmental volunteer going strong after 20 years

Co-founder of the Bertrand Creek Enhancement Society in Aldergrove
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KURT LANGMANN PHOTO It was just over twenty years ago that Darlene Sherwin helped establish the Bertrand Creek Enhancement Society in Aldergrove.

It was just over twenty years ago that Darlene Sherwin helped establish the Bertrand Creek Enhancement Society (BCES) in Aldergrove, with the backing of the Langley Environmental Partners Society.

A longtime resident of Aldergrove with her husband Reg, Darlene remains an active member and is the only founding member still associated with the BCES.

The BCES has been involved with streamside protection work projects, tree planting and community stream clean-ups over those twenty years in the Bertrand Creek, which winds its way through the downtown core of Aldergrove and travels south to the U.S., where it is a tributary of the Nooksack River. The creek is one of the few homes of two protected fish species, the Salish Sucker and Nooksack Dace.

Darlene has also worked as a special education teachers’ assistant for the past twenty years, 18 of those years at Aldergrove’s Shortreed Elementary School. Here, she has spearheaded the school’s Eco-Tigers Club, which meets monthly during lunch hour to take on projects such as building bird houses, and hearing a wide range of speakers share their knowledge on subjects such as owls and other raptors, bees, bunnies and pets.

Shortreed’s grade 2 students also raise a tank of chum salmon fry in partnership with the Nicomekl Enhancement Society, and in late April the students help release the chum smolts into the Nicomekl River in Langley. This is the practical part of their learning about the salmonid cycles.

Darlene has had the full support of her husband and now-grown son in all her work for the environment here, and now also has her two grandchildren participating in the projects and work bees. It’s become a family tradition.