VANCOUVER, B.C. – August 31, 2026 – The Green Channel has published Exhibit 2148, the only video record of the Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the decline of Fraser River sockeye salmon, filmed by one person with one camera.
It began by accident. In the fall of 2010, after a protest that brought over a thousand people across the Burrard Street Bridge in the pouring rain, filmmaker Scott Renyard walked a block to the Federal Court building and sat in the back row of the gallery. He was hoping to get a few shots of an empty courtroom for a film he was working on. By the end of the day he had been offered the only camera position in the room.
Canadian inquiries typically reserve a camera position for media. Mainstream outlets had set up to record but were not following the proceedings closely, so the spot went unclaimed.
Renyard filmed from a fixed position at the front of the courtroom, beside Commissioner Cohen, for up to seven hours a day. Only one camera was permitted at a time, so he swung between speakers as they talked, with no way of knowing who would speak next.
“It became a version of whack-a-mole, since it was important to me to be on the speaker for every sentence spoken,” said Scott Renyard.
He recorded 119 of the inquiry’s 133 hearing days across 2010 and 2011, unpaid, buying hard drives out of his own pocket to store the footage. The 14 days that went unfilmed were mostly at the very start, before he knew the camera position was available.
The commission entered 2,147 exhibits into its record, later reduced to 2,145. Renyard named his collection Exhibit 2148, the unofficial last exhibit. It runs to eight seasons covering 27 topics, divided into episodes that match the segments of the official hearing transcripts.
“Our wild sockeye populations were at stake and there was real value in knowing what all the stakeholders’ positions were and why,” said Renyard. “If the public can see what everyone was fighting over, they can weigh in and expect better from our governments.”
Two feature documentaries came out of the footage. Trial of an Iconic Species assembles the scientific and political testimony into a courtroom investigation of what is killing the salmon. The Unofficial Trial of Alexandra Morton follows the independent biologist through two days on the stand, where lawyers for government and industry questioned her credentials and integrity rather than her research.
Exhibit 2148 is streaming now on The Green Channel, the environmental documentary streaming platform.
About The Green Channel
The Green Channel is a Canadian environmental documentary streaming platform with a growing library of exclusive films and series: thegreenchannel.tv
Media ContactCompany Name: The Green Channel Inc.Contact Person: Scott RenyardEmail: Send EmailCity: VancouverState: British ColumbiaCountry: CanadaWebsite: https://thegreenchannel.tv/
