Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - When Cortes Currents asked the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) who to interview for more in depth coverage of ‘species at risk,’ they responded ‘Jenna Cragg.’ That was last January, which shows how busy she is. Sabina Leader-Mense described Cragg as one of FOCI’s key ‘go to’ species at risk biologists, who provides the facts that FOCI brings into the community.

In the emails we exchanged prior to this interview, Cragg specifically mentioned five species: the Marbled Murrelet, Great Blue Heron, Double Crested Cormorant, Pelagic Cormorant and Western Screech Owl.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - Are you ready for a major disaster?

Folk U joined Cortes Island’s Emergency Responders, Cortes Radio’s emergency communications team, & your neighbours on Friday April 22nd at 1 p.m. to learn more about what will happen in the case of a sustained, long-term disaster and what YOU can do to help ensure you and your family are ready.

The event took place under the CCEDA tent (behind the Cortes Radio station).

Cortesians were invited to bring their neighbours and ideas to a live broadcast under the CCEDA tent (behind the Cortes Radio station).

It was live streamed on FolkURadio @CKTZ89.5 FM and on the web at cortesradio.ca

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - On Friday, April 22, a federal court h ruled that Former federal Fisheries and Oceans Minister Bernadette Jordan breached the rights of B.C. salmon farmers to procedural fairness when she ordered them to phase out operations in the Discovery Islands by June 2022.

Justice Elizabeth Heneghan pointed out that by September 2020, the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat produced nine scientific reports that concluded aquaculture in the Discovery Islands poses no more than a minimal risk of harm to migrating Fraser River Sockeye salmon.

“The reports were available to the Minister and DFO. DFO does not dispute this conclusion,”

”I do not agree with the minister’s position that the applicants had either constructive or actual notice of her decision regarding renewal of the fish farm licences.”

"I also agree with the applicants that they were denied the opportunity to meaningfully respond to concerns.”

Jordan made her decision after consulting with seven First Nations in the Discovery Islands, but Heneghan states the fish farms, “were not privy to the concerns raised by several First Nations, as described in the summary of consultations.”

On April 5, 2021, the court granted the industry an injunction that would have allowed them to continue stocking fish farms until the closure date.

Heneghan reversed Jordan’s decision to ignore the imjunction:

“The decision of the minister will be set aside and the injunction granted on April 5, 2021 will remain in effect,” she wrote.

“The applicants have shown that the decision was made in breach of their rights to procedural fairness.”

It is not yet certain what Heneghan’s ruling will mean to the future of the fish farm industry in the Discovery Islands, or the Canadian government’s decision to end open net fish farming by 2025.

As of the end of March, only one of the 19 fish farms in the Discovery Islands was still operational.

The BC Salmon Farmers issued a press release stating they are “encouraged that the Federal Court has set aside the Decision of the Minister to remove salmon farming in the Discovery Islands and has upheld the earlier injunction granted on April 5, 2021. This is a positive development for the coastal Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in which we operate, and the thousands of family-supporting jobs our sector sustains. We will be reaching out to First Nations in whose territories we operate to review this decision and will have more to say in the following days and weeks ahead.”

Max Thaysen/ Cortes Currents - This January, at the Friends of Cortes Island Annual General Meeting, Bruce Harrison was awarded the Jo Anne Green Environmental Award. The Jo Anne Green award is an honour for leadership in community-based environmental awareness, protection and restoration. Jo Anne Green was a founder of the Friends of Cortes Island and an inspiration for many on Cortes to care for this place and imagine a reciprocal relationship with our ecosystems.

The letter that nominates Harrison reads as follows:

“

Bruce has been a resident of Cortes Island for about 30 years. He has always exemplified what it means to have a small footprint in terms of his own lifestyle (he is often seen commuting on his bike between Whaletown and Manson's) and over the past few years he has made significant contributions through the work he has done constructing and maintaining access trails which are now widely used by the community. His work on the trails at the Ester Rd. beach access, the Whaletown Commons, and the adjacent Crown land have all been a great benefit to the wider community and in fact have helped to secure the Crown land as protected park land. The trail access in the Whaletown Commons area has made Whaletown into a very walkable neighbourhood which has significantly decreased the need for motorized vehicles.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -The Strathcona Regional District is in the midst of a 30 day survey of rural housing insecurity and service needs. The Campbell River and District Coalition to end homelessness emailed copies to every Vancouver Island Regional Library in the district. The coalition found a network of volunteers ready to work with them on Cortes Island and there were also some individuals on Quadra, but some areas can only be reached through social media. The survey comes to an end on Wednesday, May 11, 2022.

“I would love for people to take a look at the survey. It only takes 10 minutes. It is geared towards those who feel that their housing situation is either unaffordable or inappropriate for any reason. Or those who feel that they have service needs that are not being met in their community,” said Stefanie Hendrickson, the coalition’s coordinator.

It was designed to identify the needs of people living in a seasonal rental, outbuilding, RV, or sleeping on someone’s couch. There are also multiple families who live under one roof to make it affordable, or in places that lack running water or plumbing, or refrigeration etc. Some people have accessibility or other physical needs that are not met where they live. Others cannot afford the rent, or are living in different communities from where they live.

Hendrickson said that the coalition has been in communication with the Cortes Community Housing Society throughout the whole process.

“We were initially going to do our own survey and then got connected to the Campbell River and District to End Homelessness and realized they were doing something very similar,” said Mark Vonesch, from the Cortes Community Housing Society.

So the two groups partnered on one survey.

Vonesch says that everywhere he goes on Cortes, the number one issue is housing.

“Whether you're talking to business folks who have trouble finding housing for their employees, or people who've been here all their life and can't find stable year round housing. The number of people, living in vans, on boats and in unstable housing is alarmingly high,” he said. “Since I've been on Cortes, you hear stories of single mothers and young families having to move out of their place in June and live in tents or shelter for the summer and then struggled to find housing again in the fall. That's just like an ongoing cycle for, for so many people on the island. I think we all know somebody who is dealing with that or has dealt with it in the past.”

He spoke from personal experience both as an employer, whose employees needed accommodation, and as a tenant.

A couple of community members and the local food bank helped promote the survey on Quadra Island, but the coalition did not have any contacts on Read Island.

There are some unique needs on islands, like Cortes.

“Things such as people having to leave the community to access educational needs when their children reach a certain age, or folks living on boats,” said Hendrickson.

She added that while a homeless person in Campbell River can camp out in Nuns Creek Park, but the islands don't have a designated area.

The coalition reached out to communities like Gold River, Tahsis and Sayward through the Vancouver Island Regional Library,

“Other than that, we are really relying on social media. The SRD has actually supported this, so they have a link up on their website where people can access it. We've been really relying on word of mouth, getting people to email the survey link to their contact lists and a few community newsletters have picked it up,” explained Hendrickson.

“It's just been very sort of a natural how it's come, which is quite unique way of doing surveying, but given the fast region and how rural and remote it is, it was sort of decided that that would, that would really be the only way to get the word out to as many people as possible.”

Homelessness has surveyed the SRD’s rural areas.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - In the three years since they hired Bruno Pereira, Qathen Xwegus Management Corporation (QXMC) has purchased the Klahoose Wilderness Resort, Gorge Harbour Marina, a water taxi, a piece of ocean front property for a combined campsite/RV park and entered into the seaweed farm business. They intend to add another 20 rental units, a larger store and gas station at the Gorge. QXMC is also contemplating a hydroponic vegetable farm and electrifying their land transport fleet.

“I know there is a buzzword going around ‘Environmental Social Governance’ (ESG), and I do believe and I adhere to those principles a lot, but what does it mean for us in terms of daily operation?” explained Bruno Pereira is the Manager of Qathen Xwegus. “So every new project that we start, we try to make it right from the start. Even if it means a little bit more investments here, a little bit more investments there at the end it is what we will create for the future.”

It has been a little over three years since a ‘head hunting company’ asked if he wanted to help the Klahoose First Nation reset QXMC.

“That was the term they used ‘reset’ and I love a challenge. I said, “Yeah, let's move to BC and let's make things happen for these people.’”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - There were two public forestry events, while Mosaic visited Cortes Island this week.

About 135 people attended the mixed in-person/ZOOM ‘Celebrating our Forests’ meeting at Mansons Hall on the evening of April 20, 2022.

Around 16 people joined Mosaic on at least one of the two field walks of proposed cutblocks the following day. (Someone went on both trips.)

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - More than 20 people gathered at the Klahoose hatchery in Squirrel Cove to watch around 5,000 Chum fry be released back into Basil Creek on Wednesday, April 20, 2022. Six of them were women and girls from the Klahoose village, who came to sing a prayer song. Seven were homeschool students, enrolled in the Partners in Education (PIE) program, who came with their mothers. There were also a handful of Cortes Island streamkeepers, three Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) personal and two reporters.

The salmon fry were survivors.

Klahoose Fisheries Officer Byron Harry explained that close to 20,000 chum eggs had been inside in-stream incubation boxes, in Basil Creek, before a combination of heavy snowfalls and winter rains caused the creek to rise.

The water was too high for the Cortes Island streamkeepers to approach, the first time they tried to check the boxes.

“By the time that stream came down enough to get at them, they were in fact, mostly smothered with gravel and silt that had washed down the creek in I'd say, unprecedented amounts really,” said streamkeeper Cec Robinson. “Anyway, there was a rescue effort and, I guess it was closer to 5,000, perhaps that we managed to salvage from the silted in boxes in the creek.”

The fry have been at the Klahoose hatchery for the past four weeks.

They were about to be returned to the creek.

As everyone waited for DFO, a number of children and adults gathered to watch the fry school together in the hatchery trough.

“They're used to darkness because we have a cover on the troughs all the time. They're just trying to hide, and get away from any movement that's happening about the water,” explained Harry.

The fry were scooped up in nets and a relay of volunteers carried bucket fulls to where a fish transport tank was waiting.

A DFO truck had hauled the tank across, from the Quinsam Hatchery in Campbell River, on the ferry.

When the tank was full, everyone got in their cars and drove down to Basil Creek. Most of the vehicles parked close to the Squirrel Cove General Store, but the hatchery vehicle parked over the culvert at Basil Creek.

Two of the DFO proceeded to scoop the fry into waiting buckets, which volunteers transported to the creek.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) was something talked about in the past tense, when Delores Broten and Don Malcom moved to Cortes in 1987.

In the first of a series of posts about the origins of FOCI, Broten and talks about the 1990 logging blockade that inspired FOCI’s rebirth as well as the award-winning environmental magazine called ‘the Watershed Sentinel.’

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Reuben Buerge has been surfing sea kayaks in our area for the past 10 to 12 years.

This relatively new sport only reached North America during the 1980s and Buerge is not aware of reaching the waters off Quadra Island more than two decades ago.

“Surfing sea kayaks is a pretty kind of niche-y thing. You really only see it in a few areas in the world and we're lucky enough to have that amazing feature in our backyard that's perfect for us,” he explained.

“It's not something people do everywhere because There's not features like this everywhere in the world. There's one more on our coast called Skookumchuck, that's a really popular spot for whitewater kayakers, but surfing sea kayaks is a pretty kind of niche-y thing. You really only see it in a few areas in the world and we're lucky enough to have that amazing feature in our backyard that's perfect for us.”

There are two places to surf kayaks off Quadra Island.

Surge Narrows is only a 15 minute paddle from the government dock at Hoskins landing. A 3-4 foot wave forms during the flood, which makes this a relatively safe place to learn how to handle a kayak

in fast moving tidal water.

“You wouldn't necessarily want to be going there alone. It can be hazardous still. You want to know how to roll your kayak and have a good group of people around you in case anything goes wrong,” said Buerge.

“A modified a sea kayak seems to work best in most of these waves, but every once in a while you see guys join the party with a shorter standup paddle board or even a surfboard.”

He explained that most sea kayaks are not ideal to surf. They’re about 18 feet long, straight and paddle well, but they ‘don't have much rocker.’

“The ones we use are around 15 and a half feet long and they have a whole lot of of rocker in them. They're shaped like a banana and it allows us to really be maneuverable in these waves,” he said. “You're totally locked right into your kayak. You got a spray skirt on, so your airtight, waterproof. Water can't enter your kayak.”

The biggest waves are the Okisollo Rapids, at Cooper Point on the northern tip of Quadra island.

“On a big flood tide, you usually need about nine knots of current to make a nice, big way for you. It'll get up to 5, 6 feet, with a deep kind of hole so that's definitely a lot more intimidating, a lot more consequence behind the wave and a lot more Water moving through,” said Buerge.

He has never heard of anyone getting hurt.

“The people that are coming to these areas are usually pretty well-prepared with immersion gear, but we're all wearing dry suits, PFDs (personal floatation devices) and we have rescue harnesses as well. So we can rescue friends that might've capsized and weren't able to roll up. We can get them back into their kayak pretty quick,” said Buerge.

He added that people can watch videos of kayak surfing on YouTube and local courses teaching people how to use a kayak safely and have fun.