It's been proven - songs are living, organic things that change over time, as much as people do.

Anie Hepher, a Cranbrook singer and songwriter, discovered this when she rewrote a 10-year-old song originally written when her mother passed away, for entry into a songwriting competition for the Salute to the Salmon Festival on the Adams River near Salmon Arm, B.C., which started last weekend.

In the process, the song about grief was transformed to one about jubilation, renewal and reconciliation.

Oh yes, Hepher's song - Salmon Hymn -also won first place in the competition, out of 37 entries from around the province.

"I've written songs, but I've never sat down and realized how a song can travel with you, that you can change it," Hepher said. "Being married to an artist, that's always the struggle of an artist - when is a painting actually complete. With some you hang on them because you're just not sure. And I feel that this is a song that's now complete.

"When I finished writing it, it felt truer than it's ever been. That in itself was a really incredible experience, because you realize that you do change and grow over 10 years. What you speak into a song is different than what it would have been 10 years ago."

The Salute to the Salmon Festival has been put on by the Adams River Society and the Little Shuswap Indian Band. This year saw more sockeye salmon than have been seen in 100 years swimming upriver to spawn. The event draws tourists from around the world, has well as having great local significance.

Hepher was urged to enter the songwriting competition by her sister Monika Wilson, who lives in Salmon Arm. And she started thinking about that 10-year-old song. Two inspirational factors came into play, she said.

Last year, Anie's husband Mike Hepher, along with Paul Reimer, was involved with the creation of the Ktunaxa reconciliation sculpture now on display at the airport. "(Because of this) I was drawn to the process of realizing that this is a people who have really been misunderstood," Anie said. "I was thinking more about that, and I really feel that they're coming into their own, that things are really shifting, especially in B.C. for the different bands here."

Anie researched the Adams River and the significance of the salmon to the people there, the different bands, like the Little Shuswap band. She said the Adams River was also where she saw the salmon run for the first time.

"So this song was not about grief, this was about homecoming."

At the Festival, the song entries were judged on the basis of a recording. Hepher first recorded the song at home. She said wanted a native drum, but used a djembe (an African drum) to get that feeling. She used an accordion to achieve a droning background, to represent the sound of water, and overdubbed her own voice to get a three-part harmony on the song.

After being judged the winning entry, Hepher was asked to perform the song at a music festival that kicked off Salute to the Salmon, on Sunday, Oct. 3. She was joined on stage by her sister, Monika Wilson, Cranbrook vocalist Shawna Plant, who accompanied Hepher to Salmon Arm, and a friend of Wilson's named Lisa Smith. A well-known drummer from Pemberton, Angelina Wells, was asked by organizers if she would also join in.

"That was really amazing," Hepher said," because when I got there I didn't know if it was going to happen or not."

Hepher said that CBC described her song as an anthem, which she tends to agree with. "It's very jubilant, and it's very simple. I was surprised how much the song fit in with the actual event. It was like a big homecoming party for the salmon. It was unbelievable."

In fact, the Adams River Society reported that attendance has so far topped 14,000, including the jam-packed festival on Sunday. More than 4,000 vehicles were in the parking lot and the highway leading to the park was bumper-to-bumper traffic that at times stretched for several kilometers back to the TransCanada Highway, news reports said.

"It was just a really joyous event," Hepher said. "I was really honoured."