Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents The Cortes Community Housing Society has just released a video about the design work they have completed, with the help of Iredale Architecture, on the Rainbow Ridge project.

“ We're very lucky to have Bill Weaver, the video maker on our board of directors. Bill is actually our vice president and one of the things he's so gifted at is capturing video and photos. One of the things he's been trying to do since the beginning of the project is really record the process that the housing society has gone through,” said Sandra Wood, Executive Director of the Housing Society.

“I think Bill has done a beautiful job in capturing footage along the way and really trying to demonstrate the care and thought that we're putting into this project. The experts that we've invited as our architects and landscape designers and stormwater designers, are people who we really felt understood Cortes and could add something of value to our community and bring an environmental sensitivity to the project.”

The video starts out with Richard Iredale, of Iredale Architecture saying, “Islands can tend to become only accessible to either the very young or the very prosperous. So the idea of affordable housing in a more rural community is intriguing because making housing available to people of all ages and all income brackets strengthens that community. I partly lived on Mayne Island for a big chunk of my life, so I've had a firsthand sense of what it's like to participate and volunteer and feel like you can make a difference.”

His firm has done a lot of work in the Gulf Islands, as well as downtown Vancouver.

Wood added, “Things like the landscape plan are not just about making the property pretty for the future tenants, the landscaping will have an actual function on the property because we're all living in a watershed. The things that we need to put in place on Rainbow Ridge are critical to ensuring the lakes are protected and the whole neighborhood continues to be a really healthy and beautiful ecology. This will be our third attempt to get government funding to start construction. I think we'll be better prepared now than we've ever been before as far as having more of the planning and design work done in advance, and to have a budget that's really solid and professionally costed in today's dollars.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Cortes Children’s Forest Trust has just released an incredible video, as part of fundraiser that will end of Tuesday November 29, 2022.

As the audio is strong enough to stand on its’ own, that is today’s program.

If you live on Cortes, you may recognise a few of these people by their voices: Al Huuskonen, Andy Ellingsen, Bruce Ellingsen, Christine Robinson, Daniel Tucker. Emma Mathieu, Kai Harvey, Kiera Tsaknoas, Paul Stamets, Tosh Harvey, Tzeporah Berman and Zyla Schmidt.

While you can imagine the trees, streams and animals in that video, it is not the same as seeing them. So I have embedded a link to the film on Cortes Currents, but you will also find it on the Cortes Childrens Forest Trust website.

As many of you know, the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society is attempting to purchase five parcels of land from Mosaic Forest Management.

This has been a breakthrough year in that Mosaic hsa now placed three of these parcels into a carbon offset program that will provide protection for the next 25 years, during which the Society will to continue to raise funds to pursue them. purchase of these parcels.

Negotiations are currently ongoing for the remaining two parcels.

The Children's Forest Trust released this film inhopes of raising $10,000 to pay for the valuation and assessment needed for the final stage of negotiations.

 

Donations to the Children's Forest Trust (FTCCIS) are fully tax-deductible and you will be provided with a receipt for that purpose.

They are also offering a copy of Forest Alphabet: Artistic Visions of a Forest in Trust to the Children, written by their alumni in 2010, to all who make a donation of $100 or more.

You can find a link to the donation page on the Cortes Children’s Trust website, or the written version of this article.

as well as where you can make a donation, but you can also find it on the Cortes Childrens Forest Trust website

Cortes Island Academy/ Folk U -

De Clarke/ Cortes Currents - It’s pretty common knowledge that we have a housing crisis on Cortes. In fact, there’s a “housing crisis” in many — perhaps most — popular or attractive places in North America and Europe right now. One of the factors often mentioned is AirBnB. This phenomenon (AirBnB now has global impact and qualifies as a Phenomenon!) vividly illustrates the predicament of “good for one is not necessarily good for all” — also sometimes known as “smart for one, dumb for all”.

A classic case of negative returns: the urban car

A more familiar example of this predicament might be the private automobile. The automobile is a highly desirable technology: it offers a combination of freedom, comfort and convenience that any human would find hard to resist. It can travel faster than a horse-drawn carriage and is (these days) simpler to operate. It keeps us dry and warm while in transit, and we can come and go as we please without having to check train or bus schedules. It’s hardly surprising that once the price point fell sufficiently (hat tip to Mr Ford), everyone wanted one.

But… as with most magic-carpet stories, there’s a catch. If enough people within a limited area (like a city!) all want and obtain private automobiles, the utility of those automobiles (and the amenity of the city as a whole) starts to degrade. There are diminishing returns, and finally negative returns, as their popularity (and our investment in them) increases. In the 70’s it was estimated that the time to transit any major US city by car had fallen back to something just below horse and buggy speed; this was due to “traffic congestion,” or more plainly put, too many cars. The car had been so successful that it was undermining its own utility.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The boats stored along the shoreline in Mansons Landing Provincial Park have been given a reprieve.

For the 15 most derelict vessels, this means another 30 days before they are removed by BC Parks. Cortes Currents followed three Park Rangers down the beach to watch them tag their first vessel, a fibreglass dinghy with holes torn out of its bottom. Another derelict vessel was being used as the roof of a crude shelter in the trees.

There were a total of 57 boats in the park when the rangers arrived last month. Some have since been removed, but there are still a considerable number on the beach. Most of them look seaworthy.

Half a dozen community members had a long but amiable conversation with the rangers in the parking lot. It was immediately apprarent that this was a complex issue that may take years to fully resolve.

While it is now clear that the boats will all eventually have to be moved outside of the park, it is not certain when.

Someone pointed out that the neighbouring summer homes were only accessible by water and their owners had been leaving their boats on the beach. This brought up another problem. They are not allowed to leave their vehicles in the parking lot overnight.

What are the boundaries of the park?

Mike Manson, a retired surveyor and descendant of the family that once owned the park, brought a map depicting the Ministry of Transportation land. He and the Rangers proceeded to plot out its dimentions.

Another question is how does the dock at Mansons Landing fit into this discussion.

Harbourmaster Jenny Hartwick explained the dock’s future is tentative at this point.

“The mandate of small craft harbours is to support the commercial fishing industry across Canada. It owns, operates and maintains harbours that it considers core to the commercial fishing and agriculture industry. So any facilities that it does not consider core are then considered for divestiture. In the case of the Manson's dock, it is on the 10 year divestiture list, which means that within the next 10 years, it is possible that it may be considered for divestiture.”

The larger question was whether it will be possible to find a place for the boats outside of the park but close to the water. A couple of ideas were discussed, but nothing definite settled upon.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - Learn more about sociocracy, a holistic governance system, and its uses externally and internally as Tamias joins host Manda Aufochs Gillespie and teens from the Cortes Island Academy Tools for TruthTelling podcasting course in this special Folk U Radio episode.

Sociocracy as a form of governance uses consent decision-making and a linked circle structure to distribute power through an organization while supporting efficiency and clarity.

Tamias is practicing using sociocracy to organize the parts of its own psyche, and that turns out to be a powerful self-therapy technique with some unexpected lessons to offer.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Eli McKenty had been Cortes Island’s Interim Fire Chief for 15 days when I interviewed him. He was actually the Department’s preferred choice as Fire Chief five months ago, but turned the job down, so they hired someone from Alberta. After five months of a six month trial period, the Cortes Island Fire Department came to the conclusion that ‘aspects of Dave Ives’ leadership style were at odds with the culture of our fire department’ and he was dismissed. McKenty agreed to be the Fire Chief until they can find a replacement.

“I've been a member of the Cortes Fire Department for a little over eight years. I've really enjoyed my time on the Fire Department, I think that it's great to be able to serve the community,” he explained.

“ Fire Departments in British Columbia can operate at one of three levels. There are Exterior Firefighting Departments, Interior Firefighting Departments, and Full Service Departments. Most departments in small rural communities are Exterior Operations Fire Departments, which has always been the case for Cortes.”

“Under our Contract with the Strathcona Regional District (SRD), we are not required to train for or go into burning buildings. Our Department is not supposed to be required to go into a burning building. We can go into a building where there's been a kitchen fire, a chimney fire, or we can go in and check for extensions into attic spaces, and so on.”

“That is our contracted service level, but it doesn't say that if we are properly trained and equipped we can't enter burning buildings. To the extent that we have the volunteers who are committed to the training and we have the proper equipment, we can choose to provide interior services on a case by case basis.”

“We have a goal of training members who are able to commit the time and effort to the point where in the future we would have enough trained members to conduct interior operations if we had to. But it's a fairly advanced level compared to exterior operations and is not a service that this department has previously offered that I'm aware of.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - According to Lynn Jordan, former president of the Cortes Island Museum, there have been telephones on Cortez Island for more than 110 years. They arrived in 1910, along with telegraphs, but only in the stores.

“Telegrams were really cheap. They were so much for 10 words and so much for a hundred words. People got really good at confining their messages to 10 words. Telegraphs that came in for people were just put in an envelope and then pinned on the bulletin board at the store. Then they either had to check themselves or a friend would tell them that there was a message there for them,” she said.

There are two slightly different accounts of the early phone service arrival in the Cortes Island Museum’s history booklets. The Mansons Landing volume states telegraph and hand crank phone services went into the stores at Mansons Landing, Seaford, Squirrel Cove and Whaletown in 1910.

The Squirrel Cove booklet states:

“David and Mary Forest lived with their children in a tent in 1912 near Mansons Landing, while he scouted out the best spot to settle. He chose Squirrel Cove to build his home with a small store on the front. By 1914 David Forest had built a wharf in front of his home. The following year he built a small post office close to the family wharf.”

Telephones started going into private residents not long after that.

“Going back to the Mary Island logging family, in the 1920s they had a crank phone on the wall in their house. There was nobody from British Columbia telephone who came to string the lines or anything. It was all done by locals and work bees and they strung the lines on poles in some cases, but also they used the trees,” said Jordan.

“Ned Breeze and his wife, Eliza, who lived right on the shallow side of the entrance into Gorge Harbor, had a crank phone in their house in the late twenties. The line for that was strung from the Northeast corner where Ben Fulton lives today. It's at the bottom of the hill where Hanson Creek comes in and the road has two little bridges over the creek. It would've gone along the shore all the way out to the entrance of the Gorge Harbor and it was strung on trees all the way out there. There was nobody else living on that side at that time. There was later, but they would've had phones added in from the same line.”

Four phone networks sprung up, in connection with the regular Union Steamship stops at Whaletown, Mansons Landing, Squirrel Cove and Cortes Bay. There was no operator and participating households could only phone people within their network. (i.e.,- someone in Whaletown could not phone Mansons, etc.)

Eventually, Jordan believes it was during the 1930s, radio phones were installed on Union Steamships so they could notify ports when they expected to arrive.

She told the story of a Mr. Hawkins, who lived at the mouth of Mansons Lagoon, who was shipping hundreds of eggs to hotels in Vancouver every week. So he had a phone strung across the lagoon, from the Mansons Landing Store, to his house.

One day a new float plane pilot delivering some passengers from Campbell River, found a crowd of people cheering him when he pulled up to the dock at Mansons Landing.

“It was evening and the light wasn't all that good. So he came in and everybody who happened to be around there, people on boats and people from the store, everybody came down to the dock to welcome him. They gave him a round of applause and started congratulating him. He had no idea why they were doing this. He had actually flown underneath the phone line that Hawkins had strung across the entrance which at that time did not have any markers on it. Very shortly after that, there were markers hung on that line, but nobody had told him about the line. He just came in really low to land,” said Jordan.

She does not know when the old crank telephone system ceased, but believes it was probably more of gradual phase out.

De Clarke/ Cortes Currents - As Currents recently reported, homelessness is not just “an American thing,” or “a big-city thing,” or even “a Vancouver Island thing.” Homelessness is also here on Cortes, where a recent survey found that about 50 people rated their housing situation as “unstable,” and 11 were living rough (with no permanent shelter, in tents or other makeshift accommodation).

Although “housing” might sound like a single issue, it has has knock-on effects throughout our community.

Homelessness contributes significantly to the “derelict boat” problem haunting Cortes’ harbours and other waterfronts. Lack of affordable housing contributes significantly to the difficulty island businesses face in hiring adequate staff. Lack of affordable housing contributes to a shortage of the basic support services that many of Cortes’ older and more secure residents need as they age in place: firewood, gardening, gutter and roof cleaning, etc. Lack of affordable housing closes off options, leaving some women unable to leave abusive domestic situations. Though a relatively small number of Cortes residents are housing-insecure, the phenomenon of housing insecurity affects us all.

In Campbell River, homelessness increasingly impacts the downtown area, troubling shoppers and frustrating business owners. Some homeless people suffer from mental health issues, substance abuse issues, and/or PTSD. Their behaviour can be erratic and sometimes alarming. They are, on the other hand, also uniquely vulnerable to theft, harassment and violence — as in the recent, scandalous incidents in which Campbell River teens attacked homeless people.

Throughout BC, municipalities are struggling with “the homeless problem.”

Photo by Nachelle Nocom on Unsplash

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Efficiency Canada has just released its 2022 Canadian Energy Efficiency scorecard and British Columbia leads the rankings for the fourth year in a row.

“BC’s updated climate plan includes several nation leading policies. Now the province needs to implement them,” it states in the report.

The province scored 55 out of 100 possible points. It was followed by Nova Scotia and Quebec, which were given 50 and 48 points respectively. Alberta, Newfoundland and Saskatchewan were given the lowest marks.

The updated CleanBC Roadmap to 2030 calls for all new buildings to be net zero carbon and all new space and water heating equipment to be at least 100% efficient by 2030. All new home sale listings are to include an energy efficiency label and BC is adopting the PACE system, which allows homeowners to finance energy upgrades through their property taxes.

There is also an accelerated zero-emission vehicle mandate; and a proposed cap on GHG emissions from natural gas utilities

“While BC scores high on buildings, transportation, and industry, it remains in the middle for energy efficiency programs.”

“Both BC Hydro and FortisBC (electric) opted away from the most aggressive cost-effective energy savings scenarios in their latest long-term resource plans, emphasizing the risk of missing these targets due to lack of participation. However, higher savings targets are in line with BC Hydro’s “accelerated electrification scenario” wherein the province meets its net-zero emission goals. Planned caps on natural gas utility GHG emissions should also call for a ramp-up in natural gas savings.

“There is a risk that utilities are not fully aligned with the province’s net-zero goals. The province’s electricity and natural gas savings goals are not high by Canadian or North American standards.”

BC’s average annual electricity savings target in 2021 were only half those of Nova Scotia, and far less than many American states. Similarly, natural gas savings from utility programs were only a quarter of the rate achieved by California.

“BC policymakers should be asking themselves how they can achieve more aggressive energy savings without creating undue uncertainty for utility system planners.”