Gary Griffin chokes up as he describes seeing water flowing freely for the first time under a bridge replacing part of the Petitcodiac River causeway. For decades, Griffin publicly pushed for restoration of tidal flow on the river. Now he smiles as he looks out at the water from a park in Riverview. "That was the greatest feeling in the world," Griffin said of watching the water. "You don't know how good that feels after 50 years of trying to fix it." The sports fisherman came to Moncton in the late 1960s. At the time, a 20-year study of salmon populations completed in 1966 estimated salmon runs at 8,000 to 10,000 fish, the Times & Transcript reported.