Mark Angelo

Mark Angelo, CM OBC (born 14 March 1951) is a Canadian river conservationist, writer, speaker, teacher and paddler. He founded and is the chair of BC Rivers Day and World Rivers Day. In 2009, Angelo was appointed as the inaugural chair of the Rivers Institute at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) Prior to that, he was the long-time head of the Fish, Wildlife and Recreation Program at BCIT. Angelo has received the Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada in recognition of his river conservation efforts.[1] In 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Simon Fraser University for his river conservation work both locally and globally.[1]

Mark Angelo
Mark Angelo
Born (1951-03-14) March 14, 1951
NationalityCanadian
Occupationconservationist
Spouse(s)Kathie
Children2
Parent(s)Shirley Ann Richards and Edmond Angelo

Career

Angelo graduated from the University of Montana, and then moved to Vancouver, British Columbia.

He was involved in numerous river conservation and restoration initiatives including restoring heavily damaged urban streams such as Guichon Creek in Burnaby and Still Creek in Vancouver. In the early 2000s, he was involved in cleaning up Britannia Creek, which in 2011 saw salmon return for the first time in a century.[2][3][4][5] In September 1980, Angelo organized a major cleanup of the Thompson River in the southern interior of British Columbia. The event later became known as BC Rivers Day.[6][7] In 2005, Angelo helped set up the World River Day,[8][9] a now annual event on the final Sunday in September, celebrated by millions people in more than 60 countries.[10]

Angelo has traveled on hundreds of waterways, including the Zambezi,[11] Nile, Mekong, Amazon, and Yangtze.[12] From 2003 to 2007, he hosted the National Geographic on-line program, "Riverworld; a personal journey to the world's wildest rivers[12]"; in 2008, he launched his follow-up program, Wild Water, Wild Earth, with presentations across North America.[13]

In late November 2011, Angelo announced his retirement from full-time work and was honored with the title, Chair Emeritus of the Rivers Institute. In 2012, the City of Burnaby honored Angelo by naming a local city stream, Angelo Creek, after him.[14] In 2014, the 40,000 member BC Wildlife Federation presented Angelo with the Barsby Award, the highest honor their organization can bestow, in recognition of Angelo’s lifelong efforts to protect waterways. Angelo was also installed into the Fraser River Hall of Fame at a gala event hosted by the Fraser River Discovery Center.[15] In 2015, he was named as one of Canada's 100 greatest modern day explorers by Canadian Geographic magazine.[16]

In 2016, the feature film documentary, RiverBlue, chronicled Angelo’s three year around-the-world journey by river from 2012 to 2015 during which he uncovered and documented the extensive freshwater pollution impacts of the global fashion industry.[17][18][19][20] The film was praised for its efforts to make the fashion industry more sustainable and ethical.[17][18][21] RiverBlue went on to win several international awards including best documentary feature at the United Kingdom’s largest independent film festival, Raindance.[22] RiverBlue was also honored at the 2018 World Water Forum in Brasilia, the world’s largest water-related gathering, receiving both the AFD Best Film Award and the prestigious Green Drop Award honoring the film from 2017 that best promoted sustainability.[23]

In the fall of 2017, Angelo traveled along the Tijuana River from Mexico into California documenting cross border pollution issues as the lead subject for an ABC news investigative story by ABC 10 news anchor, Kimberly Hunt.[24] While sewage pollution in the river had been previously documented, Angelo’s work was among the first to document the extent of toxic industrial pollution plaguing the river, much of it stemming from Tijuana’s manufacturing plants of which many are US owned.[25] The news feature was subsequently nominated for a 2018 Emmy Award.[26]

Positions

Angelo served as a past Chair and inaugural member of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council.[27] In addition, Angelo also served as the first non-government provincial representative and Chair of the Canadian Heritage Rivers Board. He was also the inaugural Chair of the BC Heritage River System from 1997 to 2001, and from 1998 to 2000, Angelo was chaired the BC Park Legacy Panel. As long time Rivers Chair for the Outdoor Recreation Council of BC, Angelo also coordinated the compilation of BC's annual "most endangered rivers" list from its inception in 1993 to 2018.[28][29] The compilation of this list, done in concert with the 100,000 member Outdoor Recreation Council of British Columbia, helps provide important profile for a number of key river issues across the Province.[29]

Angelo is a Fellow International member of the New York-based Explorers Club as well as a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. In October 2011, Angelo was awarded a special lifetime achievement award by the BCIT Alumni and Foundation, and in November 2011, Angelo was also presented with the 'Land Champion Award' by the Real Estate Foundation of BC.

Personal life

Angelo is the son of Australian born actress Shirley Ann Richards, and Edmond Angelo.[30] Angelo and his wife Kathie have two daughters, Kelly and Lindsay, and two grandchildren, Tucker and Grey.

gollark: Well, sleeping the right amount is probably important to health.
gollark: So you keep saying.
gollark: The road mostly doesn't have hard control problems. It just has issues like modelling human drivers and dealing with weird inconsistent signage and whatever.
gollark: I don't know enough about helicopters or RL.
gollark: That's mostly in the processing end. And we can kind of replicate that.

References
  1. "SFU News Online - Six of Canada's finest to receive honorary degrees - May 28, 2009". sfu.ca.
  2. "Britannia Creek in the pink — salmon, that is" (Online article). The Squamish Chief. September 14, 2011. Retrieved April 19, 2015.
  3. McArthur, Aaron. "Pink salmon are back". Global News. Global TV. Retrieved April 19, 2015.
  4. "Fish Return to Britannia Creek!". YouTube. Global TV. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  5. Hume, Mark (September 18, 2011). "Fish return to Howe Sound, once a toxic dead zone". Globe and Mail. Retrieved May 4, 2015.
  6. "World Rivers Day". synchronicityearth.org.
  7. "River clean up will celebrate World Rivers Day in Cowichan". cowichanwatershedboard.ca.
  8. "World Rivers Day". GoodSpeaks.
  9. "Love Your Local River On World Rivers Day". keepbritaintidy.org.
  10. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-07-01. Retrieved 2015-06-29.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  11. "Mark Angelo paddles on the Zambezi - RiverBlue". RiverBlue.
  12. "Around-the-World by River". news.nationalgeographic.com. Retrieved 2015-10-12.
  13. "World Rivers Day - the history of the event and its founder". Retrieved 1 May 2018.
  14. Bellamy, Andrea (October 25, 2012). "Burnaby creek named for BCIT Rivers Institute Chair Mark Angelo". British Columbia Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on September 28, 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-29.
  15. "Mark Angelo to be inducted in the Fraser River Hall of Fame". rivershed.com. 2014-06-06.
  16. "Burnaby man named top explorer". Burnaby NewsLeader.
  17. Kelway, Rosie (22 April 2015). "Change Agent: Mark Angelo". Viva Magazine. Auckland, New Zealand. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  18. Gee, Dana (27 March 2017). "Documentary film explores and exposes how our river are "dye-ing"". Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  19. Azpiri, Jon (28 September 2016). "BC Filmmaker exposes how fashion industry pollutes worlds waterway". Global News Canada. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  20. Kelly, Suzannah (28 September 2016). "RiverBlue; the man and message behind the movie". BCIT News. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  21. Hernandez, Jon (12 March 2017). "'We all have a pair of jeans': Polluting fashion industry goes under the lens; RiverBlue showcases the damaging effect of the global fashion industry — and potential solutions". CBC News. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  22. "RiverBlue; winner of 2017 Beat documentary, Raindance 2017 film festival London". 2017-09-28. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  23. Ip, Stephanie (20 March 2018). "Canadian Documentary honoured at World Water Forum". Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  24. Hunt, Kimberly (17 November 2017). "Toxic Soup of Chemicals Flows from Tijuana River into San Diego". ABC News (YouTube Video Source). Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  25. Hunt, Kimberly (22 November 2017). "San Diegans Swimming in Toxic Sludge of the Tijuana River". ABC News. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  26. "Emmy Award Nominations 2018, News Environment Category, National Academy Television Arts and Sciences". Archived from the original on 2018-05-05. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  27. "Treat water as scarce resource and manage water better for fish and people, says Fisheries Council". www.worldfishingtoday.com. Retrieved 2015-10-12.
  28. "The 2014 Endangered Rivers List for BC". orcbc.ca. Outdoor Recreation Council of British Columbia. Retrieved 2015-06-29.
  29. Pynn, Larry (26 March 2018). "Outdoor Recreation names BC's most endangered rivers". Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  30. "Golden age's film star dies". Sydney Morning Herald. 27 August 2006. Retrieved 20 May 2012.
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