Cortes Currents

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/Folk U -On Friday, February 4th, Eric Peterson from the Tula Foundation and Hakai Institute joined host Manda Aufochs Gillespie to go deeper into ocean sciences and the unique opportunities that the Hakai Institute is able to provide in long term ocean observations.

Key questions:

What is today's research telling us about early peoples in this area?

What are we learning about the links between our marine environment and our ocean neighbours?

What is the state of our oceans? And

how is our little corner of the Earth important in today's ocean sciences?

Folk U Radio is taking old school viral every Friday at 1 PM and Mondays at 6:30 PM @CKTZ89.5FM or livestreamed at cortesradio.ca. Find repeats anytime at www.folku.ca/podcasts.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - In the conclusion of a 3 part series about the Dillon Creek wetlands restoration, Project Manager Maranda Cross talks about BC’s disappearing wetlands and the revegetation currently underway at Linnaea farm on Cortes Island.

“Forestry, agriculture and residential developments are our main threats to ecosystems on Cortes Island,” said Cross. “Many residential homes are built in wet places so they drain the landscape. It's such a common practice that I don't even know that people recognize it as draining wetlands, but every time a ditch is dug that moves water, a wetland is being drained or a stream is being straightened. The impacts of that are great, especially in densely populated areas.”

Cross said that the Lower Mainland has lost 90% of its wetlands and the range is 60 to 90% throughout southern British Columbia.

“On Cortes we're not as densely populated we still have some remaining intact wetlands around. So we're probably closer to 60%,” she said. “Everywhere I walk on Cortes Island, I see ditches and drained wetlands.”

The iconic western red cedar is among the species now forced to cope with a lowered elevation of groundwater in its habitat.

“That's why restored wetlands can be so crucial for this species,” said Cross. “We are bringing the groundwater levels back up, rehydrating and resaturating the soil.”

Last August, two of the pastures at Linnaea Farm were decompacted and the soil artificially shaped in the the high spots and low spots that exist in nature. The revegetation started shortly after that.

“We had some early rains in September, so we planted just about 300 native plants. I think 30 different species as well as a native seed mix that we collected locally from wetlands,” she said.

One of the species they are planting in the Dillon Creek wetlands is cottonwood. The early settlers thought of cottonwood as a weed, but recent studies found that it sequesters carbon at a greater rate than other species, because of its rapid growth in the first 20 years. Beaver love this tree’s high protein content and actually grow larger when eating cottonwood.

“I love cotton wood because it's also a medicinal plant. The resin in the cottonwood buds is usually collected after a big storm in March. In some places it's called Balm of Gilead,” said Cross. “It has propolis in it and it smells like this kind of sweet, aromatic smell. I make a salve out of that's very high in vitamin E, and antimicrobial and antifungal.

She knows of four or five cottonwood trees on Cortes. They are a wind pollinated species, but are spaced too far apart to pollinate each other.

One of them is where Cross once lived, on the hillside across the street from Linnaea farm. Ken Hanson lived there after he sold Linnea farm in 1978. There was a beautiful orchard, a garden and an old cottonwood tree on the south facing slope.

“The other place there's an old cottonwood tree is right at the north end of Cortes Bay. Those trees just aren't close enough to pollinate each other, so we've planted cottonwoods now at Linnea in the hopes that we'll be able to reestablish a population of cottonwoods that will naturally revegetate the area,” said Cross.

They also planted three different species of willows, a riparian species that will help stabilize the soil around the wetland.

“Our end goal is to leave vegetate the areas that we've disturbed because we have disturbed the soil. It was a vegetated field and then we brought in excavators and we dug it all up,” said Cross. “We exposed all this soil. If we don't put native species in there and use mulch and invasive species management, then that area will become overrun with invasive species like blackberry, holly and possibly Broom.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - As the second year comes to an end, Project Manager Miranda Cross described the growth of a sediment island within the new Dillon Creek wetland on Cortes Island and gave an overview of the restoration project.

This project arose as a response to the algae blooms in Hague and Gunflint Lakes. Nutrients are entering the lakes from septic tanks, gardens, ditches, roads, creeks and livestock around the shore of the lakes. After several years of monitoring the situation, a Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) feasibility study concluded that they restore the wetlands on Linnaea Farm to help remove nutrients from waters entering the lakes from Dillon Creek.

“It's a three-year project. So in the first year we were doing planning and permitting, getting everything in place. In year two, which is just coming to an end at the end of March, we had construction and revegetation. And in year three, we'll be continuing monitoring,” said Cross.

They will probably do some work in the upper Dillon Creek area this coming season, but have not yet decided what that will look like.

She reiterated the fact that Dillon Creek is one of many sources of nutrients entering the lake.

“Take a canoe and circle around the edges of the lakeshore. Look at all the places that water comes into the lake. In pretty much every single inlet you see these growing deltas of sediment being deposited and that's because pretty much every inlet has been modified by humans, whether it's roads or farms or homes,” explained Cross. “The exception to that would be little forest streams that are coming in from Kw'as Park, an area that hasn't been ditched and drained.”

One of the most intriguing developments in the new wetlands, at the mouth of Dillon Creek, is a growing sediment island. Cross estimates that it is composed of the equivalent of at least eight tandem sized dump truck loads of material from the creek. This was carried by fast channelized water travelling through the creek at high water.

“When it hits still water like the lake or a wetland, then all that sediment drops because it's not moving anymore,” she said.

Cross said this proves the wetlands is effectively filtering out nutrients that would otherwise have entered Gunflint Lake.

“This is a huge success for the project.”

But it also suggests that septic systems, runoff from farms and gardens etc are not the only source of nutrients entering the lakes.


“Soil, I think, is one of the nutrient sources that is often overlooked and it's a very large source of nutrients,” said Cross.”Soil particles carry nutrients, particularly silt, and when they're deposited into the lake through biological and chemical processes, the nutrients get released and that's what feeds the algae.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - As the second year of the Dillon Creek wetland restoration project on Cortes Island is coming to an end, project manager Miranda Cross gave an overview of the creek’s natural history and ways to restore it.

She explained how European settlement brought changes to the landscape.

“It’s very, very hard to find an unaltered stream in British Columbia or around the world,” said Cross.

When the pioneers dug ditches to drain the water from where they wanted to farm or live, they unintentionally changed the water table.

“When you dig a ditch, the elevation of water that's stored in the soil is reduced to the bottom of the ditch. So if you have a one metre deep ditch, then you're lowering the elevation of the water table by one metre. In some cases at Linnaea farm (where the Dillon Creek Wetlands Restoration project is taking place), the ditches are three metres deep. That's a very, very deep ditch,” explained Cross. “So the capacity of the soils to store water, as well as carbon, has been reduced greatly.”

Prior to its being transformed into pasture, the mouth of Dillon Creek would have been a patchwork of wet meadows, with “Fen and open water areas and then these big cedar forested swamps or possibly cottonwood.” The rains would periodically cause the creek to rise and spread over the land, where it slowed down and filtered into the soil.

This natural process was terminated when heavy equipment was employed to move the creek to the side of the fields. A deep ditch was dug, which both prevented the water from spreading across the floodplain and channeled it into Gunflint Lake.

“You have this narrow channel, that has steeped vertical sides. The stream doesn't have access to its flood plain. So rather than spreading out and slowing down, it has high shear stresses on the size of that ditch or stream. And it erodes the banks, particularly when there's a highly erodible soil like this glacial till that we have in the valley,” said Cross.

In other parts of Cortes Island, like Carrington Bay, they dragged logs out though the streams. This was relatively easy with a skid, but Cross pointed out it also straightened and ‘ditched’ the streams, so they continue to incise and erode today.

“In upper Dillon Creek, I don't think they did that because the stream is quite sinuous. It’s actually quite intact and healthy looking up there,” said Cross.

Rocks and fallen logs act as vertical grade control, slowing down the flow of the water.

“There is usually a little pool down below them, So it's great habitat for fish and frogs,” said Cross.

Ditches disturb the natural vertical grade control.

“If you see a little waterfall, that's just soil that is moving and it's deepening and widening the stream channel as it's moving,” added Cross. “These little waterfalls are moving their way up stream and they're putting at risk the forests surrounding them.”

She said they are not sure what they will be doing in the upper creek area yet, but there are ways to repair the damage to Dillon Creek.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The Cortes Community Economic Development Association (CCEDA) released their site design concept for the ‘Village Commons,’ in Mansons Landing, last week. This is the fruition of a public consultation process which actually began in 2004, more than a decade before CCEDA purchased the property. In today’s interview, project leader Kate Madigan talks about the six months of community meetings and input that led to the current design.

The first step was finding a consultant from outside the community to facilitate the process.

Madigan said that Dave Snider and Patricia Huntsman from the Pathways Landscape Group did an excellent job from start to finish.

They gave CCEDA a variety of ways to consult with the community:

sounding boards, where people could post thier ideas, were put up at the post office and Cortes Market in Mansons Landing, the Squirrel Cove General Store and ferry terminal waiting room in Whaletown.

An online bulletin board was set up for community members to post their ideas.

Around 20 people logged in to a virtual community cafe that Patricia and Dave facilitated.

Around 15 people showed up for a face to face meeting in Mansosn Hall last fall.

“It felt like we got a real diversity of perspectives,” explained Madigan. “We did have someone who really wanted there to be lots of space for small business people and we had people who did want to be able to drive into the site. There was some question as to whether we wanted there to be a road going through there and we had people saying you don't have to develop this all at once. Which is true, we don't have to do it all at once. We can just do a staged development we can keep it fairly undeveloped too. There's lots of people that feel it should remain park-like. There was just so many ideas and we were just very satisfied with it.”

The top three ideas appeared to be:

keep it small, keep it rural

a laundromat

an outdoor event venue.

There is a central covered area with stage capacities and an area for fires.

“So, we have the outdoor venue figured out and then some what's called flex spaces that could be used for anything. They're just buildings that could be office space,” said Madigan.

A laundromat might be more problematic. Space is limited (2.6 acres) and the only road goes one way, which might be problematic if a lot of people are using it to drive up to the laundromat. I mean, you have a load and people want to drive up to it.

“I don't know that this space would be conducive to a laundromat. There might be other spaces in Manson's that are more appropriate for that.” she said.

The Village Commons is fairly park-like right now. Madigan said the clearing is a nice place to enjoy the sun on winter days. There is a shallow well and CCEDA plans to convert its old wheeled kiosk into office space.

“We like this plan today, but in two years, something could change and we could say, you know what? It makes so much more sense to have this other thing. And how can we incorporate that into the plan?” she said.

Madigan expects the plan to unfold slowly, as funding and the availability of volunteers permit.

She added, “I really feel strongly that people seem to be pleased. I'm not hearing any negative feedback about this. I think the process was well received by the community and it really is due to the efforts of volunteers. CCEDA’s land working group is made up of Amy Robertson, Colin Funk, and Beatrix Baxter. They really did want to get this right according to the community's wishes and they continue to want to see that.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Quadra Island Action Network (Quadra ICAN) was given charitable status on January 20th, 2022.

“We became a non-profit in May 25th, 2020. After that happened, the steering committee had always wanted to be a charitable society because a lot of the grants required some type of financial umbrella. As a nonprofit, you would have to rely on another charitable society to manage the money and give tax receipts and things like that,” explained Jude McCormick.

Leona Skovgaard, Chair of Quadra ICAN’s steering committee, added, “Jude was the one who maintained the optimism throughout this process and took the time to really understand the process. The other steering committee members support or differ in a way, but we never got too much further into the details.”

To which McCormick responded, “I kind of knew the ‘government speak,’ so I wasn't quite as put off by their seemingly negative approach to the application.”

While she focused on the documents, Skovgaard mobilized Quadra ICAN’s membership and the teams working on 14 different projects.

“Leona got it out to everybody and said, ‘do this, we need to do this.’ So getting things done was definitely a joint effort,’” said McCormick.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Hollyhock celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The current CEO, Peter Wrinch, was just seven years old when Rex Weyler and some of his friends founded the leadership center in 1982. In a recent press release Wrinch states the institute’s program for this year, “focuses on our deep desire to heal disconnection with ourselves, each other, and the natural world in this moment.” 

 

Wrinch said Hollyhock has done some amazing work over the past 40 years, “like so many other organizations, so many other businesses, the pandemic has illustrated to us that we can't continue for the next 40 years with business as usual.”

 

“We're grounded in our history, standing in the present, but focused on the future. And I believe it looks different than what we've been doing thus far and I think we're really excited to explore that,” he said. 

 

“In this industrial or post-industrial society that has created so much wealth, the side effect has been a deep disconnection from ourselves. What are our real aspirations? What kind of society could we have if people were really free to dream and to connect to their deepest self?” asked Wrinch.

 

“Disconnection from self leads to a destructive disconnection from others and the natural world. When we are unable to live in our own awareness, we are divorced from our impact on others and nature. Our society is grappling with the consequences of this in systemic racism, income inequality, and the climate emergency.”

Hollyhock is entering 2022 with two new partnerships. 

 

One of their most important relationships is with the Klahoose First Nation, which has been developing for a number of years. Wrinch says the day the Klahoose landed their canoes at the beach in front of Hollyhock, in 2018, was “one of the most meaningful experiences in my life.”Last fall Wrinch joined Chief Kevin Peacey, and development corporation manager, Bruno Pereira, on the maiden voyage of the Klahoose water taxi ‘Goat One.’ Following that, the Hollyhock leadership team went to the Klahoose Wilderness Lodge for an end of season management retreat.

 

“Our whole team saw the wilderness lodge and just thought, ‘wow! We really have to figure out how to work with them!’”

 

Hollyhock program Director Ling Lo and lodge manager Chris Tate worked out the details of a partnership that would open the door for  Hollyhock’s guests to also stay in the Klahoose Wilderness Lodge. 

 

Hollyhock has also partnered with the Institute for Change Leaders, which was founded by former NDP MP and partner of the late NDP leader Jack Layton, Olivia Chow. 

 

“We looked at our catalog and we said, ‘one of the things we're missing is person to person organizing, mobilizing and who better to partner with than the ‘Institute for Change Leaders.’ So we're really excited to welcome Olivia and her team to Hollyhock,’” said Wrinch.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Quadra Singers released a video of the world premiere performance of Dr. John Hooper’s composition Corona Chorus, which they sang at the Quadra Community Centre on December 10th and 11th, 2021.

Hooper is a former Professor and Director of the School of Music at Concordia University of Edmonton, an examiner for the London School of Music and the Music Director of Island Voices. At the time of the Quadra performance, he was also the interim conductor for the Quadra Singers.

In the press release accompanying the audio that follows, choir president Joan Varley, said,“Singing together is a decades-long tradition in our small island community, and it was very hard to let that go in the spring of 2020 because of the pandemic. After two sessions online, we worked hard, following provincial guidance, to provide a safe environment to sing together again. Under Dr. Hooper’s leadership, this piece, it’s musical style and lyrics, really captures the mix of feelings and challenges that we’re facing during the pandemic. And the bonus was that he turned a really tough subject into something that shares the important public health message in a new way.”

This was the Quadra Singers 2021 Christmas concert and they followed strict safety protocols. The participants were fully vaccinated, kept two metres apart and washed their hands when entering the performance area.

Prior to the pandemic, there would have been 140 to 150 people in the audience. Due to COVID restrictions, the performance had to be scheduled over two nights to meet this capacity.

Dr Hooper introduced his composition by saying, “ I've written a piece attempting to communicate some aspects of our lived experience for music to communicate our reactions, our rules, our new realities, our frustrations, our life changes. And even some of our sadness over sickness and death. You'll hear many words that have become all too familiar to you. Yeah, I hope you'll also hear some optimism as we come out of this together, as well as some friendly finger-wagging and reminders along the way. I hope Corona chorus will make Dr. Henry proud.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Quadra Island Foundation made its first investment last month, as a foundation for a permanent endowment fund. $10,000 was invested through the Vancouver Foundation.

“That was raised from individuals within our community. We now have closer to $15,000 and so we've kept $5,000 in our bank account and we've just initiated the endowment fund. We feel very, very fortunate that we're in this position and we can speak to people like you and to the community at large and just say, ‘okay, we've started the seed money,’” said foundation Chair Michael Mascall.

The Vancouver Foundation manages several billion dollars of endowment funds in British Columbia and will not accept investments less than $10,000.

“It's got our foot in the door and we would like to say, yes, we're here,” said Mascall. “The Vancouver Foundation offers two streams of where you can put the money. One is for socially responsible investing, which is where we've put our money, and it's not involved so much in fossil fuels and mining operations and more into market transactions.”

He added, “The socially responsible investing has actually returned to a higher annual rate of return over the last five years compared to just investing in the full stock market. For us, this is a step forward and we've crossed a threshold in establishing the foundation with some sense of permanence for the longterm.”

The Quadra Foundation has raised about $38,000 in the ‘just over a year’ they’ve been in existence. Part of that money was used for set-up costs. These include hiring a lawyer and Sarah James, a local Quadra web designer who is building the foundation’s website.

“it's our public persona, that's let people know what our policies are, what our approach is, who the people are and how they can donate. And we'll take it from there,” said Mascall.

$10,000 was used for a Quadra ICAN project to put solar panels on the roof of Quadra Island Elementary School.

Mascall describes the Quadra Island Foundation as a vehicle for the community to make a donation (bequest, land donation) back to the community. They do not want to compete with the dozen or so existing charities on Quadra Island and so have not put their name forward on the Tru Value Spirit Points Board.

He spoke with the Cortes Island Foundation a year ago, when they were working on doing their policies and bylaws, and would like to share more information and knowledge.

“We are not Vancouver island and we're not the mainland,” said Mascall. “And as a result, we've got to be more self-reliant and this [$10,000 investment] is a tool helping us in our self-reliance.”

De Clarke/ Cortes Currents - Cortes residents on their travels about the island will have noticed some new roadside sights this January. Several sandwich boards bearing the CityWest logo have appeared in scattered locations, as well as road-work crews with some unusual, specialised heavy equipment.

All this activity is part of the initial phase of the Connected Coast project on Cortes Island.

The $4.3 million last-mile project is financed in part by the provincial government and operated by CityWest. […] The Connected Coast will provide backbone communication services to Cortes Island, as well as 138 other rural and remote communities, including 48 Indigenous communities – representing 44 First Nations – along the BC Coast from Prince Rupert, to Haida Gwaii, south to Vancouver, and around Vancouver Island.

—SRD press release Jan 27 2022