River conservationist Mark Angelo’s love of waterways began when he was a young boy growing up in Los Angeles ’s Hollywood Hills near the 4,000-acre Griffith Park nature reserve.

“I would just take off and hike into the hills. And, over the years, I got to know every gully and creek and intermittent stream bed in the park,” said Angelo, who has lived in Burnaby for five decades. “The time that I spent up in those hills had a big influence in terms of my love for the natural world .”

An unlikely influence on Angelo’s perspective and connection to nature was the famed L.A. River.

“It’s a river that’s encased in concrete. And I remember as a kid, my brother and I, we’d bike there. It was a little bit like an early version of a halfpipe skateboarding park,” said Angelo of the rive

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