Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The recent mega-floods have brought an opportunity to rectify one of the problems that has long plagued salmon runs in the Lower Fraser Valley. Hundreds of miles of outdated flood protection infrastructure has been chopping fish up when they return home to spawn. Now much of it will have to be repaired or replaced. The Watershed Watch Salmon Society sees this as the opportunity to install ‘fish friendly’ flood infrastructure in its place.

Lina Azeez Connected Waters Campaign Manager with the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, said this problem can also be found in Vancouver Island communities like Campbell River, the Comox Valley and Greater Victoria.

“The scales are quite different, but the issue is similar. They also have a lot of barriers to fish passage, a lot of the waterways on these rivers are also dikes. So definitely this is an issue that's not just in the Lower Mainland, it's on Vancouver Island as well. But the reason we have decided to focus on the Fraser river is because it's one of the biggest salmon rivers in the world,” she said. ”If we are able to change the way we manage for floods in the Lower Mainland, that will have positive repercussions for all watersheds across BC.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada will spend $647 million to help salmon stocks recover, which could be negated if they also decide to spend “billions of dollars on the same old flood control systems that continue to kill salmon.”

The Watershed Watch has identified 1,500 km of ‘fish killing’ dikes, pumps and flood protection infrastructure in the Lower Fraser Valley.

Azeez pointed out that, “modern, fish-friendly pumps are now available.”

She said they are already being installed south of the border, in Washington state.

Photo credit: Lina Azeez checking a fish trap on a waterway impacted by flood control structures - courtesy Watershed Watch Salmon Society

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The first shipment of baskets, for what was to become the Nzuri Basket company, arrived on Cortes Island in August, 2020.

Jenny Hartwick didn’t set out to found a company. She brought some baskets home from a trip to Kenya the previous March. They were intended as gifts for friends and family.

“It wasn't until we were back in Canada and I'd given away all of my baskets and I had everybody saying to me, ‘Wow, these are amazing can you get more of them?’ that I thought, gee, maybe I can look into that and so that's kind of, that was the start of where it came from,” explained Hartwick.

That first shipment was meant to be a one time event, but sold out within a week.

“So, I thought, okay, well, I'll just bring in one more order and we'll see what happens and it's snowballed now to the point that they're being wholesaled to some other shops as far away as Winnipeg and Ontario. We're now on order order six, which is actually just with the shipping company right now. On average, I'm shipping about 400 to 500 baskets at a time.”

Her story is more complex than that.

Jenny’s mother-in-law, Heather Hartwick, had been going to Kenya for the past three decades. This had been initially been as part of semester abroad program and, after that ended, she and her husband operated an ecotourism business.

This was closing down in March 2020, and Jenny wanted her kids to see Nana’s ‘other life’ before it came to an end. So she and her family were in a contingent of 23 Cortes Island residents that visited Kenya.

That was also when COVID 19 reached Africa, and Jenny’s family was on the last plane to fly out of Nairobi Airport before the border closed. (You can read about that story here)

While they were in Kenya, Heather Hartwick took her daughter-in-law to the roadside stand where she has been purchasing baskets for the past 15 years.

“I loved the baskets. So I bought way too many, and brought them home as gifts for friends and family,” said Jenny.

The first challenge Jenny faced, after deciding to order a shipment, was contacting her supplier. Her ‘basket lady,’ Medi, doesn’t have a store. She spreads out a carpet under a tree and puts her baskets on it.

However Jenny has made some contacts in Kenya, “So I called up my friend, Dan and he sent another friend to visit her on the side of the road to get her phone number.”

Medi had never shipped her baskets out of the country, but agreed to be the supplier providing Jenny looked after the other arrangements.

All of the baskets come from one village and most of the weavers are either Medi’s family or friends.

“I don't bargain with the women. So what they want for a basket is what they get,” said Jenny. “The other thing is it's a handmade product, so I don't ever ask for a particular basket.”

As most of the dyes are natural colours, they follow the seasons. Jenny does not receive yellow baskets in December, for example, the yellow dye is made from a flower that is not blooming at that time of year.

“I love the fact that last night, before I went to bed, I was on a video messenger call with my friend in Kenya. He had messaged me to say, ‘Hey, the next order of baskets is already.’ I ended up on a 25-minute-messenger-call with him, and he was giving me a tour of his backyard in Kenya. Then this morning I got up and called my basket lady. She was at home holding her 18 month old grand baby, who I could hear blabbering away on the phone,” explained Jenny.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Wilderness Committee has just finished a survey that shows gas and oil company lobbyists are contacting the BC provincial Government two or three times a day. This is not new, they were also making overtures to the previous BC Liberal regime, but it does raise the question of whether they are shaping the policies that determine the future of all British Columbians.

Climate Campaigner Peter McCartney says 14 of 15 of the top fracking companies in the province are actually receiving more in drilling credits than they pay in taxes and royalties.

“Since the last election, we knew that there were some big policy pieces coming out this year that would affect the gas industry. I was interested to find out how often the industry was lobbying the provincial government. So we just looked back to the lobbyist registry and I kept a spreadsheet going of each time that gas companies, LNG consortium's, and their industry associations met with the provincial government. It turns out more than 750 times since the last election, so just over last year,” said McCartney..

He did not know how often the environmental movement has contacted the government, but thinks the Wilderness Committee may have contacted the government a couple dozen times since the last election. These meetings primarily arise when environmental groups “create a problem for them” and they want to know how to respond.

McCartney explained that while gas industry lobbyists work through their behind-the-scenes connections, the environmental movement’s voice “comes from the thousands of people that support us.”

Some of the policies that have come up since the NDP government was reelected:

The government has brought in “the BC clean BC roadmap, which was really soft and left the door open for a brand new fossil fuel industry with fracking and LNG.”

The courts sided with the Blueberry River First Nation, which means government will have to negotiate all new infrastructure in the region.

The current royalty review will determine how much rent gas companies will pay to access the gas that is owned by the people of British Columbia.

What can the public do to ensure its voice is heard?

“The lobbyist registry is a really good tool. I think there needs to be public pressure for the government to stop meeting with fossil fuel lobbyists, their only purpose is to secure their own business model and climate action. Why would we be making climate policy with the worst polluters in the room? So we put together this little Twitter bot that tweets out every time one of these fossil fuels is meeting with the provincial government,” said McCarney.

“These meetings should be out in the open and accessible to all. Businesses and companies that operate in a community have an obligation to be a part of that community and make sure that local people are benefiting from the work that goes on but they shouldn't be writing policy behind closed doors.”

Photo credit: BC Legislature and the Inner Harbour at night by Zemistor via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Cortes Currents -Learn more about this ancient form of practicing medicine and health. Janine Maila, acupressurist, health practitioner, and teacher of Chinese Medicine joins host Manda Aufochs Gillespie this Friday at 1 p.m. on CKTZ 89.5FM or livestream on cortesradio.ca.

Tune in and learn:

- what is health from a TCM perspective;

- the basics of the five element theory;

- Chinese dietetics and how to eat for different constitutions.

& more.

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 - The Cortes Island Evacuation Plan is almost finished.

“I am just begging every Cortes Islander to pick up and go through the plan before all this happens. So everybody is aware. Too many people wait until the very last minute to try and figure out how things work,” said Strathcona Regional District (SRD) Protective Services Coordinator Shaun Koopman. “Please don't wait till the last minute to educate yourself about evacuations and emergency support services and how you're going to be notified and whether or not you have insurance and, and all those important evacuation considerations.”

He scheduled four-90-minute ZOOM conferences for concerned residents:

Wednesday December 9th: 7:00-8:30pm

Friday December 11th: 9:00-10:30am

Friday December 11th: 2:00-3:30pm

Tuesday December 15th” 6:00-7:30pm

While the most likely scenarios involve only a small part of Cortes, Koopman said there are situations where a full island evacuation could be called for and it is his business to prepare for the unlikely.

The most evacuation likely scenario involves something like a wildfire. There has not been a fire larger than 10 hectares on Cortes Island in the historical record, which started in 1950. So affected residents will most likely be moved to one of the island’s five designated reception centres: Cortes Island School; Linnaea Farm Education Building;

Gorge Hall; Mansons Hall; Klahoose Administration Building

“We would let them know which one to register at depending on the time that it happens and the amount of volunteers that are available,” explained Koopman.

“We're always looking for people to volunteer with emergency support services. There's nothing better than on that worst day of your life when you've been displaced from your home, showing up and see no train professional, familiar faces from your community, being the ones to ask you, how can we help?” said Koopman.

“You can learn more about ESS by contacting me at [email protected] and as always just encourage residents to write to me with any ideas, suggestions, concerns that they have, whether it's evacuation or any type of emergency preparedness.”

Other contact information for Shaun Koopman:

email: [email protected]

Phone: 250-830-6702.

Top photo credit: David Stanley - The Cortes Island Ferry via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A youth filmmaking initiative with international reach has its’ office in Mansons Hall, on Cortes Island. In the second of a series of programs about Reel Youth, Mark Vonesch and Erica Køhn tell the story of how this initiative came into being.

“I think I'm most drawn to the work because I see the impact. Filmmaking and storytelling is a beautiful thing, but it is really like providing a program to young people and to communities that leaves them stronger and more resilient, no matter what career they take,” said Vonesh

Køhn added, “Each film is so unique and has such a different flavour. There's something immersive and deep and personal about the resulting films that draws us to doing them again and again, because they are so illuminating and the young people are so proud of what they do.

Between 10% and 15% of youth that pass through their program pursue it as a career, but Vonesch said the skills they learn will be useful for whatever they do.

“If you can speak up about something you care about, and you can do it in a compelling way, you're gonna be able to convince your dad to let you use this truck. You can convince your boss to give you a raise,” he said, by way of example.

Vonesch traced the origins of Reel Youth back to the day he spent $300 on a video camera. He found it in a pawn shop, in a dusty town in Saskatchewan. Vonesch was between semesters, planting trees to pay for his education. The treeplanting subculture was one of his first subjects and, after obtaining his business degree, made a little documentary about tree planting.

He also started volunteering with a youth arts empowerment organization called Power of Hope, which is what brought him to Cortes Island. He facilitated their summer camp at Linnaea Farm for a couple of years. That is where Vonesch started making films with young people.

“Then in 2003, I wrote a bunch of grants in Vancouver. I sort of over promised on them, said we do a lot with very little money. Got basically every grant I wrote and that was sort of the birth of Reel Youth,” he said.

That was when Erica Køhn, who was his girlfriend at that time, came into the picture.

“I really encouraged him, if he wanted to do it, to make a commitment, not to tree plant and to do it as if his work depended on it,” she said.

The two have been working full time ever since them.

Photo credit: Mark Vonesch and Erica Køhn at a film festival in 2013 - courtesy Reel Youth

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - In the third instalment of Cortes Currents Reel Youth series, Mark Voenish and Erica Køhn talk about Youth and Seniors programs.

“Our youth and senior film programs, or youth and elder film programs, are probably about 30% - 40% of the work we do. It's one of the most powerful projects that we've done,” said Vonesch.

The interviews with Trude Albright Sweeney, Dianne Hanson and Ed Piggott were in a 2015 series devoted to the rich history of Cortes Island and its residents.

Photo Credit- photographers in the 2015 Youth and Seniors Program on Cortes Island - Reel Youth

De Clarke/ Cortes Currents - Episode 4 of Cortes at Fairy Creek: the complicated politics of logging and land rights in BC, the complicated outcomes; media coverage, legal and political responses

Photo credit: Elder Bill Jones talks to a policeman with media looking on. - Photo courtesy Fairy Creek Logging Blockade Facebook page

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The first of two school programs that Reel Youth hopes to run on Cortes Island during 2022 is already approved.

“We have a program launching in January. That's for Partners in Education (PIE) students, mostly middle school youth who are doing a homeschooling course,” said Mark Vonesch, Director of Reel Youth.

There are currently 9 Cortes Island enrolled in the PIE program through school District 47 in Powell River.

Some are among the 12 students, aged 9 to 14, that signed up for the course that starts in January.

It will be using a ‘fill in the blanks’ structure similar to mad libs comic books.

“We've taken that concept and developed something called the ‘I am from’ poem. People fill in the blanks with their personal life experiences and their family culture. That is going to be the base of their film. Then they shoot visuals to go on top of it, pick music and edit it all,” explained Vonesch.

The course will end with a virtual film festival.

Erica Køhn co-founded Reel Youth, along with Vonesch, 15 years ago, and will be one of the facilitators for the upcoming PIE program.

The other facilitator will be Marianne Barry, who has already worked with Cortes young people on a number of other projects.

Reel Youth has worked with school boards all across Canada, but this program is special.

“It is the first time that working with partners in education and having middle school aged kids on Cortes get credit for their program,” said Vonesch.

“We're also in conversation with School district 72 (Greater Campbell River) and a group of people on Cortes that sees the need for a high school programming tap in here. We're developing a five week fully credited high school course where youth from the island can participate. Also, the idea is to bring youth from outside of Cortes and have them board here and to be able to get high school credits for participating in the program.”

Køhn said they are still fleshing the course contents out, but are already hearing feedback from people excited about the prospect of a local course where young people can be immersed in filmmaking.

“One of our specialties is looking at curriculum beyond just filmmaking: looking at Social, at English, at languages, Geography, anything that is needing to be covered and finding ways of winding them into our programming,” she explained.

“So I think it's going to be a lot more than just learning filmmaking. It's going to be collaborative art. It's going to be young people working together and meeting each other and working intensively together.

Voenisch said most of Reel Youth’s programs are off island, but they love working on Cortes where they have an office and already know many of the youth, parents and the community.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - After a century of operation, British Columbia’s oldest newsprint mill is closing down. Catalyst’s tiskʷat (tees-kwat) Mill, in Powell River, has been in operation since 1912. At one point one in every 25 newspapers worldwide used their paper. The mill closed down, for what initially though to be a temporary curtailment, on November 22nd. On December 1st their parent company, Paper Excellence, announced the closure was indefinite.

Graham Kissak, Vice President of corporate Communications emailed Cortes Currents that tiskʷat (tees-kwat) is no longer able to compete in a market plagued by an ongoing contraction of global paper markets and paper prices.

The company plans to offer employees jobs at Paper Excellence’s other facilities.

UNIFOR Local 75 president Bill Spence told the Powell River Peak, “They have to feed their families, so if there is an opportunity elsewhere, then that’s good for the members,” 

“Paper Excellence continues to believe that Canada is a leader in the pulp and paper industry and remains committed to its long-term investments here—Catalyst Port Alberni, Catalyst Crofton, Howe Sound Pulp and Paper, and Skookumchuck Pulp,” said Kissack.

He added, “the company’s priority will be safeguarding the site and equipment, removal of all fibre and chemicals, and general cleanup of the facility to eliminate environmental risk. At the same time, Paper Excellence is engaged with our governments and potential partners investigating promising new opportunities that would take advantage of the facility’s unique access to deep water, natural gas, electricity, and water supplies, as well as its existing biomass boiler with power generating capacity, wastewater treatment and solid waste disposal infrastructure.”

Powell River Mayor David Formosa issued a press release saying, “Paper Excellence, the BC Government, and Renewable Hydrogen Canada have been in extensive discussions to transition the mill into a significant hydrogen and clean fuel production facility.”

While there are no guarantees this will come to fruition, the city promised to continue working with Premier Horgan’s office, MLA Nicholas Simons, and Paper Excellence to explore opportunities.

Kissack said,“We’ve already had a number of discussions relating to the site about potential approaches and things we could do in the short, medium and long term. We are certainly exploring those and we will continue to do that through December and January.”

Spence said “We hope something happens that is good for the community, but really, it’s impossible to say. People will deal with it.”

Union members will be cleaning the site up until they are laid off on January 31st, 2022.