Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Bruce Ellingson is this year's recipient of this year’s Jo Anne Green Award. Every year, the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) give this to a Cortes Islander who has made a significant contribution to the environmental wellbeing of the community.

“I'm just going to tell you a little bit about Jo Ann Green. So Jo Ann Green was an exemplary environmentalist who came to Cortes in 1969, and she immediately became involved in social environmental activities on the island,” explained Helen Hall, Eecutive Director of FOCI.

“She was a leader in the formation of Friends of Cortes Island, and she was an active homemaker in support of home services on the island too. She represents the spirit of Cortes Island's resilience and it's residents recognition of the vital importance of the natural environment. In recognition of all of that, we developed the Jo Ann Green Award in 2001.”

“So it's been running now for well over 20 years, and I'm delighted to say that this year's winner is Bruce Eliingsen, who has worked tirelessly for the natural environment on the island, particularly through his work in eco Forestry and I would just like to read out his nomination.”

“Bruce Ellingsen consistently and humbly, year after year, commits himself to better forestry practices on Cortes and supports the community in various other ways. Watching him work on the perimeter fence around the natural burial area at Manson's cemetery for close to two months, putting in posts and rails that he purchased. So the cemetery can be a place where trees grow, is just another example of his steady and cheerful dedication. So ,well done to Bruce.”

Bruce Ellingsen: “Thank you very much for that, Helen. That's a great honor for me to be awarded this Jo Ann Green Award. Having known her and interacted with her in her early days on the island.”

“It was probably shortly after she arrived on Cortes, when Raven Lumber came to start their logging on the South Point Road area in 1979, and that certainly engaged all of the Cortes community and the concerns around the rapid change to the island environment with the modern harvesting activities that were going on over that period and into the eighties. We engaged in ongoing discussions about the impact of it, how people felt about it, mostly at Gorge Hall. We put out a survey that we had a very good response to and generated something approaching 80% consensus in the long run, after all of these discussions, that Cortes community wanted to be actively involved in the management of the forest on Cortes as broadly as possible.”

“That's continued, I feel comfortable in saying that support of around 80% of the population for what we're doing with the eco Forestry approach and getting the community forest in the long run in partnership with the Klahoose First Nation has been a very good start to the island community, taking control of management of the forest on the island and that'll be continuing and hopefully be broadened in the coming years.”

Cortes Currents: Do you want to say a couple of words about the natural burial site?

Bruce Ellingsen: “Yes, I will, Well, after Ginny passed in 2019, I naturally was focused much more on the end of life period, which I'm into now, not knowing exactly when I might clock out as sometimes is said, and my days as a human on this beautiful earth of ours.”

“With all the thoughts of my own and conversations with other people, sharing ideas about end of life and what comes and goes in a lifetime I'm very comfortable with my body being endured in the natural burial site as opposed to six feet down in the conventional burial site within the Manson Cemetery.”

Roy L hales/ Cortes Currents - According to the government’s 2022 Climate Change Accountability Report, B.C. is currently on course to meet 85% of its emissions targets for 2025.

“We are making progress. I don’t want to discount the effort the provincial governement has made, but they've made very clear climate commitments and they're very clearly not on track to meet them,” explained Peter McCartney of the Wilderness Committee.

 “Every year the BC government is required by law to put out climate accountability reports that show their progress towards meeting emission targets. We have consistently not been on track to meet the climate commitments that the provincial government has made. This year we see that again. We are about 15% of the way from meeting our targets in 2025.”

He added, “There’s only a few short years to make up that gap, but also even that number is a little misleading because a lot of these Projections that they make are based on assumptions and not actual policies that are imminent or in place. They just sort of say that they'll be reducing so much from oil and gas or from transportation without actually knowing what the policies to do that are going to be.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Assuming they don’t get snowed out, Cortes Literacy is holding a mandatory training for their new Rabuten Kobo e-readers today. Manda Aufochs Gillespie explained this is connected to Cortes Island’s new book club.

 Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “This book club is a hybrid of just another community organized volunteer 'Let's everybody pitch in book club' like we have seen multiple times before on Cortes and an attempt to blend with a program that Cortes Literacy is doing with Rabuten Kobo, which brings 20 digital eReaders into our community to loan and reuse, as well as a subscription to the Kobo Plus book library. They basically saw a need in rural and remote communities. People had no access to books during COVID. Libraries shut down, community halls shut down, schools shut down, and people in these remote communities had no access to books and reading material.”

“I thought, oh my goodness, this is exactly the thing that we need for our community. I was so distressed about that lack of access to reading material during COVID. So I put in an application and we now have 20 Kobo e-readers on the island and that we get to use for those in the book club who want to use them.”

Cortes Currents: How many books are there in the system?

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “Apparently, it's thousands. I will say that the Kobo Plus subscription seems to focus on new releases, and so I find that it works best if you blend your Kobo Plus subscription on your Kobo with your public library card. This allows you access to all the books that the library has digitally accessible, as well as the Kobo plus subscription books. This is a great way to go. Anybody with a Kobo eReader or other eReader device can use their library card to basically check books out of the library like you would, except for their digital books.”

Cortes Currents: Is there some kind of payment plan involved?

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “No.”

Cortes Currents: No? It's free?

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A new study published by the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, states that 70% of the samples taken from 56 fish farms had PRV-1.

One of the co-authors is independent biologist Alexandra Morton, who explained, “The study was my concept and I funded a lot of the analysis and did a lot of the sampling myself. It was truly collaborative with Clayoquot Action sampling the Farms in Clayoquot Sound. An extraordinary man, Dr. Neil Fraser from Powell River got in his speed boat and went to the central coast. The Wild Fish Conservancy down in Washington State, sampled farms there. So it was a sustained effort by a lot of people, and then Dr. Gideon Mordecai did the analysis of the relationship between the different strains that we picked up.”

Cortes Currents reached out to Dr Mordecai, lead author of this paper and a Research Associate with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC. He is currently on vacation but emailed that he will be ‘happy to chat’ after he returns.

I also wrote the BC Salmon Farmers Association and was provided with a few immediate observations from Brian Kingzett, their Director of Science and Policy. I will read these out after discussing some of the findings of this paper.

Some of the Discovery Island sites where Morton and her colleagues took samples are also within our broadcast area. So I asked Morton for any details she had about Raza Island, which is off the Northern tip of Cortes Island, and the Okisollo Channel, which is between Quadra and Sonora Islands.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - Explore the magic of scientific storytelling with the creators and scientists from the Hakai Institute who join host Manda Aufochs Gillespie and Cortes Island Academy students on this Friday's Folk U Radio at 1 p.m.

We will discuss science communication done well and Hakai's new short video series.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - It is November 26 and there are still no Chum Salmon in Basil Creek. Normally they would have returned a month ago, but there was a prolonged drought this year. While the water level has risen, there are still no fish.

“It's getting to be late for Chum, but we're seeing other populations come in late. We might see Chum return into the next few weeks, it's very possible. This year is definitely characterized by a lot of weird conditions,” said Matthew Clarke, DFO’s Head for stock assessment in North Vancouver Island north from Black Creek to Cape Caution, which is actually on the Mainland. His area also includes Cortes and Quadra Islands.

In this morning’s story Clarke gives an overview of the salmon returns throughout his area, as well three reasons why the late return on Basil Creek might not be as disastrous as it sounds.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - ‘Giving Tuesday’ is just five days away. The Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society (FTCCIS) is trying to raise $10,000 for the valuation and assessment which will hopefully lead to their purchasing two parcels of forest. There are actually several components to this story. This morning we are going to talk to two young women involved with the new Children’s Forest Video made for this fund raising drive.

Mark Vonesch - I am grateful we have such a competent volunteer fire department on Cortes.

The November 23 incident was a scary reminder of how important it is to have effective emergency response on our island.

I ran into Eli McKenty, our Interim Fire Chief, and asked if he would share what happened:

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Whaletown Commons, on Cortes Island, is growing. A 9½ acre parcel of forest is being added to the northwest corner of this Regional Park.

At their November 23 Board meeting, the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) Board passed the motion to annex this parcel of Crown land in less than two minutes.

The principal voice in the audio clip taken from that meeting is SRD Chair Mark Baker, who quickly ran through the motions to suspend a second and third reading to the final vote.

If you listen very carefully, you might be able to hear Baker acknowledging Cortes Island Director Mark Vonesch moving that Bylaw 479, to authorize the aquisition of this property, be adopted. Director Julie Colborne added, “I’ll second that.” The motion carried with no opposition.

The story actually began more than four years ago. Former Regional Director Noba Anderson brought forward the motion to ask the province for this parcel at the Board’s June 20, 2018, meeting.

One of the main trails in the park runs through a 3.87 hectare (9½ acre) parcel of crown land, butting up to the northwest corner of the park.

The staff report states, “In order to ensure the Whaletown Commons trail system remains intact into the future and to protect the natural attributes of the Crown land parcel, which are similar to that of Whaletown Commons, staff is recommending adding this parcel of land to the park.”

The estimated cost of this aquisition was $450, for application and reistration fees, to be taken from the Electoral Area B community parks budget.

The Province of British Columbia approved the SRD’s application to occupy this parcel of land, and provided a license of occupation.

Cortes Island residents contributed $75,000 towards the purchase of Whalteown Commons in 2014. At that time, Hubert Havalar explained why it is important to the community.

“  It's just a wonderful habitat area for wildlife, including the fish, certainly lots of deer. We know that it's a major corridor for cougar and wolf especially. It's a green space that connects the north end of Cortes Island with that area south of the roads, Channel Rock, and out towards Marina Island. The wolf activity there is well documented. There were certainly those environmental habitat reasons for protecting an area like that. There were the social reasons of its geographical centeredness on the community, and certainly we thought if the community could possibly purchase that property, it would afford us a very long term access to whatever we wanted to do.”

There is now another 9.5 acres to do it in.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Sandra Wood, Executive Director of the Cortes Community Housing Society, had two important news updates.

Firstly, she has some more details about the Open House, for the Rainbow Ridge affordable housing project, at Mansons Hall on November 30.

“That's Wednesday, one week away and it'll be an open house style meeting where people can drop in any time between 3 in the afternoon and 6 in the evening. We're encouraging people to stop in after they pick up their kids from school, or stop in on their way home from work,” explained Wood.

“We're going to have lots of interesting information for people to look at, which will include our new site plans, the new town home plans. People can look at the floor plan layouts of the one, two, and three bedroom town homes. We'll have our landscape plan, our storm water plan. We'll have a number of our directors and staff there to help answer questions and to record any ideas that people have that they'd like to share with us. We're going to do a short formal presentation at 5:00. So people can also stay for that event and we're going to have lots of fun activities for the children. We will have arts and crafts projects to entertain the kids and we will have some games, prizes and door prizes - as well as the Home Book, which is poetry and short stories about Cortes that will be available for sale if people are looking for stocking stuffers, and a really nice gift to ship away to friends and family.”

She also had news about the Gregg Road real estate sale.

 “Exciting news! The Cortes Community Housing Society has sold a one acre commercial property in downtown Manson's Landing. It's on the corner of Sutil Point Road and Gregg Road.The new owner is Richard Andrews, who many people will know as a local builder and contractor, as well as entrepreneur,” said Wood.

“My understanding is that Richard is planning to build a commercial building on the main floor and a rental apartment up above. So that's an exciting prospect for the community to have some more business space within the Manson's Landing core, in addition to another rental apartment within walking distance of the shops and services.”

“The great news is that the Cortes Community Housing Society was able to get our asking price, and we have now an extra $200,000 to put towards the Rainbow Ridge Housing Project. So that's good news all around. Thank you especially to the donor, a local owner of that property, who donated it to the Housing Society with the express desire that it be used to help build more rental housing on Cortes.”