The “obstructionist” profile of Ivan Thompson
Ivan Thompson has been a professional grifter as long as we have known him. Ivan Thompson holds a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degree from Queen’s University, as well as a Master of Education (M.Ed.) degree from the University of Victoria. He began his professional life as a counselor and educator, working as a teacher in the 1980s, and it looks like the only pace he could find a job was working for the Lake Babine Nation in Burns Lake on the reserve. Even before he started working for the Babine Lake Band. Ivan was employed from 2007 to 2017 as a program officer for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Wild Salmon Ecosystems Initiative funded by the The American Tides Foundation, aka the MakeWay Foundation., and then oversaw the associated Pacific Salmon Watersheds Fund at The American Tides Foundation, aka the MakeWay Foundation. for five years.
Ivan Thompson is connected to several conservation, academic, and environmental organizations, primarily focusing on watershed security, wild salmon preservation, and ecological governance. His key affiliations include:
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University of Victoria: Works as a community practitioner fellow at the Centre for Global Studies, associated with the POLIS Project’s watershed security and wildfire resilience initiatives.
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The Stronghold Fund: Serves as a board member for this impact fund for salmon.
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Wild Salmon Center: Served as a three-term member of the Board of Directors from 2015 to 2023. A Wild Salmon Center profile specifically shows Thompson with Greg Knox of SkeenaWild during a Skeena River board excursion. Thompson was on the Wild Salmon Center board from 2015–2023.
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MakeWay (formerly Tides Canada) Foundation: Previously oversaw the Pacific Salmon Watersheds Fund.
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Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation: Previously worked as a program officer for the Wild Salmon Ecosystems Initiative.
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Skeena Watershed Conservation: Thompson has spent decades working on conservation efforts to safeguard the Skeena watershed and estuary, alongside figures like SkeenaWild’s Greg Knox.
- Shared Networks: He is closely tied to the Wild Salmon Center (serving as a board member from 2015 to 2023 and subsequently on the board of The Stronghold Fund), an organization that frequently collaborates and interacts with SkeenaWild on protecting British Columbia’s wild salmon ecosystems.
- There is direct evidence of him working alongside SkeenaWild personnel. A 2012 salmon-planning workshop lists Ivan Thompson (Moore Foundation) and Greg Knox (Skeena Wild) among the participants; Jim Pojar is also listed as a SkeenaWild trustee.
- POLIS Project on Ecological Governance: Works as a Community Practitioner Fellow with the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies, supporting watershed security and wildfire resilience initiatives.
- Thompson also wrote a 2020 article for the Moore Foundation about the Skeena salmon ecosystem; the article identifies the image as courtesy of Wild Skeena Conservation Trust.
Locally we have known about Ivan Thompson going back to when he was chumming with Greg Knox and Taylor Bachrach and his wife Michelle Larstone both with ties to the Sierra Club of BC
