President’s Message: 2025

With 2024 nearly done and 2025 almost here, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge some of the hard work that has been accomplished in the past year and reflect on some goals for the new year leading up to our next round of elections. We have had some big wins for the MCC with the expansion and election of 7 new positions including regional representatives (AB, SK, MB, NWT, NU), student representative, and a communications manager. We feel this approach will better represent the interests of our membership over such a large area. We also had multiple members attend and present at the National AFS Conference in Hawaii (myself included). We are also supporting the Alberta Native Trout Science Workshop / Gathering II in February 2025, connecting fellow fish fanatics with the goal of sharing information on ways to recover native trout in Alberta’s East Slopes.

When considering my goals as MCC President for 2023 to 2024, many have been accomplished but some remain that we will focus on in 2025. With the establishment of our new executive we now have the ability to better organize events and provide content for our membership. On top of the Alberta Native Trout Science Workshop / Gathering II we will be planning a series of webinars aimed to share fisheries related information and educational material for our members. With the creation of the Student Representative we have gained additional insight into what students need and we hope to deliver presentations and events that can facilitate early career development. We feel we have already created a good place for early career development through the creation of our job board and we encourage fisheries professionals to reach out when looking for employees as we can assist with spreading the word for hiring. We look forward to continuing to grow our membership and come up with creative ways to demonstrate value to our members.

Sincerely,

Benjamin C. Kissinger
MCC President