Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Team Awesome served more than 200 people at this year’s free Christmas Dinner Take-out on Cortes Island. That’s 50% less than last year. Given the sub zero temperatures and slippery snow covered roads, the organizers were surprised that so many showed up.

In the thank-you, which Noah Davison and Izabelle Perry posted in the Tideline, “We were so touched by all the neighbours and friends that helped each other pick up and deliver meals. It was such a heartwarming and joyful sight to see!”

The Christmas day take-out was primarily financed by Whaletown Community Club, through a BC Community Gaming Grant, but the special touches are only possible because of donations of time, food and money from members of the community.

The long thank-you list includes:

Billie, Dova, Peter Jackel, Lovena and Ryan Harvey for peeling carrots and potatoes;

De Clarke for the turkey deboning marathon

Kelly for picking 250 beautiful sprigs of rosemary.

Amanda and her family for baking and decorating 405 cookies

Wayne Cruickshanks for stepping in and doing SO many dishes!

Shiva for decorating all the desert bags, help with dishes and setting up the distribution station in Whaletown.

Becky and Scoot Knutsen for donating 50 lbs of potatoes.

Jim Kearney for helping with the delivery and dispensing of meals in Mansons Landing

Wayne Roberts for helping with traffic and meal distribution at the Manson’s Hall.

Davidson and Perry also thanked all their suppliers:

Bill and Tammy, Aynsley, Abi, Joel and all the Gorge Store staff (also the Floathouse Restaurant)

Johnny and the Mainroad crew for plowing the Hall parking lots and road

Sara of Wildflower Produce at Reef Point Farm for the delicious, local produce.

Farhad of Fungisle for the locally grown king oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms for our veg stuffing.

“We would call it a success mostly because we learned from our mistakes last year. And also because we were able to get help from a few volunteers this year at went a lot smoother. We also didn't have to spend a day and a half peeling potatoes because we had people helping us,” Perry told Cortes Currents. “Last year was quite the endeavour. We had more food to prep and we didn't accept any volunteer help because of our plan to have only one household preparing the whole meal.”

In addition to accepting to more volunteer help, this Christmas Team Awesome opted to serve meals cold - which eliminated the stress of trying to get them into people’s hands while still hot.

“This year, we were ready ahead of time and the delivery time was a lot shorter, which meant that there was no traffic jam. Also we benefited from dividing up the pickup locations this year: one at Madisons Hall and one at Gorge Hall,” said Perry.

In the Tideline, she wrote:

“An enormous thank you goes out to Bernice (McGowan) and Howie (Roman) for answering my phone call on Christmas Day! Thank you to Sean (Coyote) for going to collect the Hall keys and saving Christmas Dinner distribution in Whaletown. It’s a minor oversight to let Noah drive away to Manson’s with all the keys and lock us out of the Gorge Hall.”

Returning home after it was all over, she and Noah found an anonymous thank-you hanging from their back gate - a bottle of wine.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The chill that started just before Christmas has been particularly hard on the house challenged population of Campbell River, Quadra Island and Cortes Island.

People are living uninsulated houses, trailers, boats, cabins, cars, or tents.

While Campbell River previously had an emergency shelter program between November and March, it was not able to open this year due to COVID restrictions.

The City of Campbell River, Strathcona Regional District (SRD) and Campbell River Coalition to End Homelessness have been using the Campbell River Community Centre, between 8 PM and 8 AM , since December 24th.

interviews with Sue Moen, interviews with Sue Moen, from the Campbell River and District Coalition to end Homelessness, Izabelle Perry, from the Whaletown Community Club and an email from Tanya Henck from the Cortes Island Womens centre about the impacts this cold snap has had on the area’s house challenged community.

, Izabelle Perry, from the Whaletown Community Club and an email from Tanya Henck from the Cortes Island Women's centre about the impacts this cold snap has had on the area’s house challenged community.

Photo credit: Sue Moen interviews from the Campbell River and District Coalition to end Homelessness - submitted photo

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - Holiday stories, music, and ... perhaps even call-in caroling.. this week on Folk U Radio: Friday at 1 p.m. as Norleen Lillico joins host Manda Aufochs Gillespie for a festive and fun holiday show.

AND we invite neighbours to help make this an extra special holiday show by calling-in to CAROL over the phone. Call 250-935-0200 to participate!

Questions? Requests? Email [email protected].

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

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - It has been more than a month since the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, presented a series of devastating reports about Canada’s inept performance in addressing the climate crisis to the House of Commons.

Jerry DeMarco said. “there is a need for the federal government to achieve real outcomes on environmental protection and sustainable development—not just words on paper or unfulfilled promises. All too often, Canada’s environmental commitments are not met with the actions needed to protect air, land, water and wildlife, now and for future generations. And that is a trend we urgently need to reverse,” said Jerry DeMarco. “We've had nine plans over the last 31 years, from 1990 to now, and none of them have achieved their objectives.”

Meanwhile Canada’s emissions have risen 20-21%.

While he believes there is still time to reach net zero emissions by 2050, DeMarco pointed out that the longer Canada waits the more difficult this will be.

DeMarco singled out to projects as examples of the government working at cross purposes with itself.

“A common denominator between both the TMX expansion and the emissions reduction fund is that they were hastily produced decisions. And it's not unusual for governments to focus on short term expediency at the expense of long-term gains and these are examples of that. The government states to the international community and in binding treaties, like the UN convention on climate change that is going to do its part to prevent catastrophic climate change, but then short term expediency can essentially trump that and what ends up happening is you have increased emissions because countless short-term expedient decisions add up in a way that undermine the longterm goal.”

He compared reducing Canada’s emissions to pushing a large rock up a difficult hill. At the moment Canada is dispatching one team to push up the hill and other teams to push it back down.

It has been more than a month since the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, presented a series of devastating reports about Canada’s inept performance in addressing the climate crisis to the House of Commons.

Jerry DeMarco said. “there is a need for the federal government to achieve real outcomes on environmental protection and sustainable development—not just words on paper or unfulfilled promises. All too often, Canada’s environmental commitments are not met with the actions needed to protect air, land, water and wildlife, now and for future generations. And that is a trend we urgently need to reverse,” said Jerry DeMarco. “We've had nine plans over the last 31 years, from 1990 to now, and none of them have achieved their objectives.”

Meanwhile Canada’s emissions have risen 20-21%.

While he believes there is still time to reach net zero emissions by 2050, DeMarco pointed out that the longer Canada waits the more difficult this will be.

DeMarco singled out to projects as examples of the government working at cross purposes with itself.

“A common denominator between both the TMX expansion and the emissions reduction fund is that they were hastily produced decisions. And it's not unusual for governments to focus on short term expediency at the expense of long-term gains and these are examples of that. The government states to the international community and in binding treaties, like the UN convention on climate change that is going to do its part to prevent catastrophic climate change, but then short term expediency can essentially trump that and what ends up happening is you have increased emissions because countless short-term expedient decisions add up in a way that undermine the longterm goal.”

He compared reducing Canada’s emissions to pushing a large rock up a difficult hill. At the moment Canada is dispatching one team to push up the hill and other teams to push it back down.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - According to North Island - Powell River MP Rachel Blaney more than 88,000 seniors are being cut off from the guaranteed income supplement (GIS) they received prior to the pandemic. She said that statistic originated with the parliamentary budget officer. Hundreds of people have called Blaney’s office about this, Including “people from Campbell River, Comox Valley, Powell River, Quadra Island, Port McNeil.”

“I wouldn't be surprised if it's every community. This is a widespread issue,” explained Blaney.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Southern discovery islands beach cleanup is now finished.

“The last truck load of debris left our yard this morning. So we're now just into the final stages of cleaning up our own yard as a result of all the little styrofoam balls and things,” said Brianne Quesnel

Her company, Spirit of the West Adventures, was awarded a contract to clean up between 200 and 400 kilometres of shoreline in the southern Discovery Islands through the provincial government’s Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative. This is a provincially funded program designed to support B.C.’s coastal communities as they recover from the COVID-19 economic downturn and loss of tourism. There has been a long standing need to collect the plastics, styrofoam and other debris that has been accumulating on beaches.

Quesnel emailed a tally which showed that more than half of the 347 kilometres of shoreline Spirit of the West Adventures cleaned was on Quadra Island. They also cleaned almost the entire circumference of Read and Marina Islands, as well as significant portions of Cortes and Maurelle Islands and 4 km of Grant and Mittlenatch Islands.

“We collected 45 tons over two months. That's a just staggering number for us. About 55% of what we were able to collect was suitable for recycling, which is the really cool part, and then a large amount was also reused by locals for a variety of reasons,” said Quesnel. “Every day was an adventure.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - When Jan Zwicky talked about the need to be independent of the grid, she mentioned a 60 second outage at 4 AM last year. Zwicky wasn’t aware there was a problem until she went into the basement three days later. Her freezer, which had been packed with food, was off. Most of the contents were ruined.

Zwicky said she is not dependant on a computer and has a back-up system that can keep the lights on, “ But boy, I don't want that freezer to fall apart!”

“So I think I can, can encourage all of us as it were to do that kind of energy inventory. Where do you really need it? What would it take to keep you functional?” she said.

Mike Gall added, “We've we've learned very quickly in the past two years, And then in particular, in the last two months, the how fragile our systems of sustaining our society truly are.”

Quadra Island receives its electricity from Vancouver Island.

“All the takes is a severing of that artery and suddenly we're into a 2, 3, 4 week scramble to try and live with literally no electricity available to us other than what we can do by running generators or some secondary means of supplying our electrical requirements,” he said.

Jan Zwicky and Mike Gall are members if Quadra Island’s Energy Self Sufficiency team, one of several groups that came out of the community meeting that launched ICAN, in March 2020.

“It was suggested that we divide up into interest groups and energy was one of them. I ended up talking with Rod Burns and Jack Segal, those were the two folks most interested in energy. I'm really aware of the places where for me electrical energy is essential and I don't trust the grid staying up,” Zwicky explained.

She remembers Quadra losing power for 10 days, when a hurricane struck in 2014.

Zwicky was living in Edmonton in 1994, when the Northridge earthquake in California took out Alberta’s grid.

That was when it dawned on her, “This is a continental system. You can't count on it's being there if there's a crisis somewhere else.”

“We believe that there will be upcoming stresses on the energy system. There's going to be a way more price hikes , but also a lot of our energy contributes to climate crisis, said Zwicky. “We’re encouraging awareness of ways in which energy can be conserved to make your life less dependent on the grid and then awareness of alternative ways of satisfying your energy needs to make you even more independent of the grid.”

The energy self sufficiency team is working on a number of projects right now. They're putting solar panels on the roof of Quadra Elementary School and intend to hold workshops on: an inexpensive DYI window insulation; testing cleaning, and recharging batteries; and on the pros and cons of various solar heating systems.

They also supported the recent Canoe Pass Tidal energy project on Quadra Island which, according to the Quadra ICAN website,” hinged on government’s willingness to allow a non-profit island energy co-op to participate in BC Hydro’s net metering program.”

However the Energy Self Sufficiency team says Quadra residents will need to do more than just produce more energy.

“The first steps is the conservation mode learning all the techniques that you can possibly garner to bring your energy consumption levels down,” said Gall.

Photo credit: firewood, an alternate energy source used in many Cortes and Quadra Island homes - courtesy Quadra Ican

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Reel Youth had a year of in-person programming scheduled when the pandemic arrived, in March 2020. Everything had to be cancelled.

“We quickly realized that we had to try something new, to innovate,” explained Mark Vonesch.

In the fifth of a series about Reel Youth, he and Erica Køhn explain how this local media company flourished.

The local media company has made over 250 films since the COVID 19 pandemic started.

“We had to figure out a new way to operate and zoom seem to be the way so many people were communicating. So we turned to some of the work that we had done before in schools and in communities with a poetry based program,”said Køhn.

“So within a week of COVID we released a new program called together apart. And it was bringing you people of all ages. We had like 12 to 77 years old joined the program. They made short films about their experience in COVID and the current cultural phenomenon of what we're all experiencing,” added Vonesch.

Cortes Currents has already introduced Seren Anderson’s film ‘Where I am’ as an example of the kind of film high School students will be making through the partner’s in education program this January.

Ester Stijbos, editor of the Tideline, produced another of the films in this series. She describes herself as being from the West Coast of BC, from Tofino, Cortes Island and Victoria.

Danielle Weiss was among the other Cortes residents that made a film.

“It was exciting to work our first program. I think all of us at real youth joined in the program to be all hands on deck because we just really weren't sure what to expect. Then we slowly finessed it into the current programming, which often uses two, sometimes three facilitators,” said Køhn.

She added that some of the youth have become ‘serial participants’ who now enrol whenever they have a new program.

Vonesch describes Reel Youth’s next step as persuading the organizations normally work with to go online.

“We use zoom bring everyone together instead of us going to the community and providing all the equipment the youth are using their cell phones or whatever cameras they have at home. We're still able to have the same impact as far as giving kids increased confidence, and new new filmmaking skills,” he explained.

Many of these involve people from widely dispersed locations.

Vonesh explained that the new Youth and Seniors projects bring together people who are in different cities and rural locations. The interviews are conducted in ZOOM rooms and incorporate video footage shot on cell phones.

There are still in-person programs on Cortes as well.

In ‘Climate Tripping,” Dennis Mense takes his students Esianna Hargrave, Rose Goulet and Lily Allen on a field trip. Melina Mora-Reiko was one of the producers. The film as shot at Linnaea Farm and the Cortes Island Free Store.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society will hold its AGM

on January 29th, 2022.

It has been close to 12 years since Sabina Leader-Mense and Christine Robinson launched the initiative to purchase 600 acres from Island Timberlands forest holdings.

“The forest lands surrounding Carrington Lagoon are so important in terms of providing a wildlife corridor to the northern wilds of Cortes. It just offered itself up and we thought, ‘how could anyone resist a children's forest?’” explained Robinson.

Many people have taken up the vision since then.

Robinson specifically mentioned Chris Dragseth and Andrew Smyth, the society’s current Chair and Treasurer.

After the pandemic hit in the Spring of 2020, the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island partnered with Desta Beattie and the Cortes Community Health Association to offer a series of weekly zoom calls with a slightly different focus each week. Children were encouraged to go out into nature, find specific natural treasures, and bring pictures to the calls. Robinson remembers the week her computer screen filled up with images of frogs and tadpoles.

After people could meet in person again, there were monthly Sunday walks through the Children’s Forest. Groups of 4 to 20 children and adults participated.

“We never quite know where we're going to go. although a favourite is always down to Grandmother Grove, where James Creek flows into Carrington Lagoon. We often have a campfire,” said Robinson.

Dragseth gave an update on how the negotiations to purchase the Children’s forest, which have been ongoing since 2013, are proceeding.

“At this point I'd characterize the meetings with Mosaic as very positive,” he said.

They have yet to agree on a price.

“We'll see where we are this time next year, but we're always hopeful that we're moving in the right direction,” said Dragseth. “Mosaic has basically confirmed that we are the people they're talking to, as it relates to the five parcels in Carrington Bay, and nobody else is in the picture.

Meanwhile the Trust has lined up some donors for when the sale finally goes through and continues to raise the funds for daily operations.

Last year, the target was $2,000.

“This year we set a target at $10,000 and we hit that and then some, so we've got money in the bank to help us do the operational stuff around negotiations,” explained Dragseth.

Robinson added, “When we first started the project, I thought maybe five years. At the outside maybe ten, but surely by the time I have grandchildren. Well, I have three grandchildren and I hope that in the next year or two, they will have the pleasure of walking through the children's forest under different owners.”

She proceeded to list upcoming events:

The Annual Christmas Bird count, in partnership with the Cortes Island Museum, on January 2nd.

The society’s AGM on January 29th.

“We expect to have a wonderful young alumni who was part of the original children's forest book and has been involved in activities over the years” said Robinson.

Kiera Tsakonas recently graduated from SFU and will be joining the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island board as a youth spokespeople.

Dragseth said they were unable to book a guest speaker for the AGM, but are trying to organize something shortly afterwards.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A recent report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states “the total number of marine species at risk in the Salish Sea has doubled from 2002 to 2015.”

The accompanying map shows they are referring to an area that stretches from the Puget Sound to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and north beyond Cortes and Quadra Islands.

“As of December 2015, nearly 20% of all fish species in the Salish Sea ecosystem are designated as either threatened, endangered or have new data that suggest they may be at-risk. As well, approximately 34% of all birds and 43% of all mammals that use this ecosystem are threatened, endangered or are candidates for status assessments,” the report says.

“It's really sad news, that came out this year,” explained Christian Wilhelmsen executive director of the Georgia Strait Alliance.

She claims we are seeing these numbers because Canada and the United States have failed to address urbanization and loss of habitat issues that were identified 30 years ago.

“Pollution remains a problem, even though we're tackling some issues like wastewater. That's getting better in our region, but we have other sources of pollution runoff from cities, stormwater, agricultural runoff. These are continuing as our population grows and of course, the lens, which is exacerbating the problem, is climate change,” said Wilhelmson.

“Animals are under stress because of pollution, habitat loss, then you add the stress of climate change with water temperatures rising, and you have species that are struggling because of it. It's affecting their food sources; It's affecting their ability to reproduce.”

She pointed to salmon as a specific example. For thousands of years their eggs have hatched when food sources become higher in concentration. The rising river temperatures have thrown this alignment out, and brought about a decline in the salmon population.

That is because of climate change.

Add acidification, which is literally changing the chemistry of our oceans, and shellfish are affected.

So the birds, marine and terrestrial animals that feed on fish and shellfish are impacted.

Southern resident killer whales have so many toxins in their system that their ability to fight off disease is reduced.

Wilhelmson compared the situation to a big ball of yarn that is unravelling and making things worse.