Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - SRD staff will be meet with the Cortes Island Fire Fighting Association Board (CIFFA) and Regional Director Noba Anderson to discuss plans for a Superior Tanker Shuttle Service on Cortes Island.

If this program goes forward, a series of water tanks will be deployed across the island to be used in the same manner as fire hydrants in urban areas.

Firefighters in neighbouring communities like Salt Spring Island (2011), Powell River (2017) and Hornby Island (2018), found the Superior Tanker Shuttle Service enables them to deliver water suppression at the exact same standard as urban fire departments.

SRD staff has prepared a detailed report for Cortes which, according to Anderson, has a lot of useful information but also proposes things the Cortes Fire department is already doing.

At their September 8th meeting, the Electoral Areas Services Committee passed an unanimous recommendation that SRD staff meet with Anderson and the fire department.

However staff were not supportive when Anderson raised this topic at the October 6th meeting of the full board.

According to Tom Yates, corporate services manager at the SRD, staff has been meeting with the Cortes Fire Department since the beginning.

Chief Administrative officer David Leitch added that he did not understand what Anderson expected to get out of such a meeting.

“At this point, I can’t take further action on this report because so much of it is already either being implemented, or is planned to be implemented, or is not appealing to CIFFA,” said Anderson. “It seems much more effective to have all those parties at the table to discuss who might do what? And who is already doing what?”

Anderson would like to have this resolved before submitting Cortes Island figures to the next annual budget.

The SRD Board passed a resolution that the staff “report be referred to the Cortes Island Fire Fighting Association Board for a joint discussion between them, SRD staff and the Director for the area.”

Figure 4.2 Water Storage Tank at Cortes Island School - courtesy Superior Tanker Shutter Service Feasibility study (SRD)

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The outlook for rural ambulance services within the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) has greatly improved several directors agreed. Others require more information.

BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) had intended to introduce a pay scale whereby BC’s rural paramedics would receive $2 an hour unless they were responding to an emergency. This would have led to a mass loss of personal, as paramedics sought other jobs to support their families.

In response to the outcry, on August 6th BCEHS introduced a staffing model designed to ensure that communities like Cortes Island, Sayward, Tahsis and Zeballos have four scheduled on-call (SOC) paramedics. They work 8 hour shifts, then are on stand-by for the next 16 hours, in 3 day rotations.

The topic came up when Cortes Island’s Regional Director Noba Anderson gave a verbal report regarding the SRD’s recent meeting with MLA Michele Babchuk, representatives from Island Health (VIHA), BCEHS and the Ministry of Health at the Wed October 6th SRD Board meeting.

All of the SRD directors were invited, but only Anderson and SRD Chair Brad Unger attended.

Consequently, the meeting focused on Cortes Island.

The ambulance attendants Anderson spoke with were concerned with the overall culture of BCEHS and did not feel free to speak about these issues in pubic. Some were almost moved to tears when their Regional Director listened to them. Anderson said the newstaffing model is “way better.”

She told the other Directors, “I’m satisfied for the time being, but I’m aware that some of you weren’t involved.”

Mayors Julie Colborne of Zeballos and Martin Davis of Tahsis said the new plan was working in their communities too.

If there was a follow-up meeting, Colborne would tell BCEHS, ”Communication could have been done much more effectively and probably would have cost much less money for them and us, in the long run, if there had been consultation.”

Mayor Mark Baker of Sayward said he did not believe he had been invited to the meeting and he wanted to be included in the next one.

Regional Directors Jim Abram and Gerald Whalley also claimed to have not been informed of the meeting.

While wanted to attend the next meeting, Abram said he would not have anything to say until Quadra Island’s paramedics spoke with him.

These comments prompted SRD Chair Brad Unger to point out that out that the invitation had been sent out to every Director and it was part of their job to check their emails.

Top photo credit: Looking out at the ambulance by Shawn via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Current - As November 1st, a new Water Taxi & Cargo Deliveries service will be connecting Lund to the government wharf at Cortes Bay, on Mondays and Fridays.

“It will be a 25 minute boat ride across to Cortes Bay and we’re going to and from Cortes Bay twice a day. We’re offering 12 spots on a water taxi, with the option to bring cargo as well,” explained Kelli Turner, who owns the Finn Bay Group (soon to be renamed Access Point Marine Transportation). “That rate will include 85 pounds of cargo per each person.”

Should you wish to transport more cargo, the rate is $0.30 a pound.

09:15 Finn Bay to Cortes Bay 

09:45 Cortes Bay to Finn Bay 

 

4:15 Finn Bay to Cortes Bay 

4:45 Cortes Bay to Finn Bay

Tickets are $35 for adults; $30 for children and seniors.

“We’re going to be giving a soft start to get it rolling throughout the winter on Mondays and Fridays and then go into six return trips a day starting in June,” said Turner.

The Finn Bay Group also plans to operate tours of Desolation Sound, in their new 40 person water taxi, during the summer of 2022.

Turner launched his company as “U Call We Haul Marine Services,” in North Vancouver, during in 2010.

He relocated to Finn Bay, just outside Lund, two years ago. Since then, the Finn Bay Group has been serving an area that stretches from Cortes Island south to Powell River and up Desolation Sound. Turner also mentioned trips to Campbell River.

The trips to Cortes Island were charter runs, in which the water taxi was rented out for $300 per hour. Some of his regular customers were from the Klahoose First Nation in Squirrel Cove. The water taxi services contractors working on Hernando Island. There has been a lot of passengers, contractors and supplies coming out of Gorge Harbour. During the past three months, the water taxi made 52 runs between Cortes Island and Lund. It carried anywhere from 2 to 12 passengers on a trip.

“We’ve also had the opportunity to get into Cortes Bay to drop off a lot of day trippers, as well as people looking to do biking programs throughout Quadra, Cortes and of course Campbell River,” said Turner. “We’ve had a lot of interest from customers and businesses on Cortes to open up that hub to the Sunshine Coast.”

The Finn Bay Group’s decision to offer regular passenger service to Cortes arose out of their success with a similar service to and from Savary Island.

On Fridays, Turner also offers a shopping service in Powell River.

“Everyone calls in and preorders in the stores and then we bring it out and deliver,” he explained. “A big hub for us is all the online shopping. We have everything from furniture to golf carts, ladders and equipment coming here with customers names on it.”

They have a large walk-in-fridge and almost as large walk-in-freezer, at Finn Bay, which holds food destined for restaurants, resorts and other customers within their service area.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - UBC marine ecologist Dr. Chris Harley initially told the media that more than a billion mussels, clams, sea stars and other invertebrates may have cooked to death in the area between Campbell River and Washington state. That was a ‘back of the envelope’ estimate, based on his observations among the Lower Mainland’s mussel population and some preliminary reports. Harley has done a great deal more research since then. He now guesstimates that, conservatively speaking, the number of marine fatalities during last June’s heat wave is closer to 10 billion.

In the attached podcast, he describes the new temperature records being set throughout British Columbia.

“Unfortunately for marine life, those really hot days coincided with very low tides. So things that aren’t normally out of the water for very long, were left high and dry during extreme hot weather,” explained Harley. “That combination resulted in dead sea stars, and dead clams, and dead mussels, and dead barnacles - the list just goes on and on.”

While it is easy to spot dead mussels because their shells open, this isn’t as easy with some other species. Harley says that for the first few weeks, there is very little to distinguish between live and dead barnacles.

As the geographic extent of the disaster, numbers of species involved, and numbers of individual animals became clear - Harley gave up on the attempt to make an exact count.

In the Campbell River -Discovery Islands area

While there is not much information about the marine impacts, Harley said “the north end of the Straight of Georgia is one of the places that got the hottest for coastal communities.”

Visiting the area south of Comox, on Vancouver Island, Harley said, “There were certainly still a lot of dead barnacles in evidence as of a few weeks ago.”

There were die-offs on Quadra and Calvert Island, as well as Desolation Sound.

A number of reports came from Cortes Island, and on July 10th Cortes Currents emailed Harley a series of photos of dead mussels at Smelt Bay. There appeared to be thousands.

Snails were attached to some of the shells.

Harley responded, “Yes, you do have some snails in your photo. Those guys are apparently pretty tough - I've seen them on other beaches where other species didn't make it through the heat wave. One of them in the upper-middle part of the second photo has glued itself on edge to a mussel shell with a little blob of mucus. They do that so that as little as possible touches a hot surface, which keeps them cooler.”

He suggested returning to the site to do a series of plots and put a metre stick in the images to indicate the scale.

Most of the dead mussels had washed away by the time Cortes Currents returned to take 10 ‘plots’ on July 14th, but there were also what appeared to be thousands of dead sand dollars.

‘Wow!’ emailed Harley, looking through the subsequent images from 20 sand dollar plots.

Local biologist Deb Cowper reported that some sand dollars survived in the more sheltered waters of Mansons Lagoon, but Smelt Bay is more exposed. There do not appear to be any survivors in the images taken by Cortes Currents.

Most of the sand dollars were white, which Harley suggested meant they are ‘recently dead.” There were also some, ‘greenish ones have been dead long enough to acquire some algal growth.’

Image credit: Dr. Chris Harley at Kits Beach, with downtown Vancouver in the background. Photo by Chris Harley

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - On October 1st Howie Roman celebrated his 50th anniversary of coming to Cortes Island. This led to an unexpected interview on Folk U, in which Howie talks about: the New York he remembers; why he wasn't a draft dodger; coming to Cortes in 1971; when the power lines were only on the main road; growing your own food; the stores; how the floorboards bounced at a dance at Gorge Hall; the importance of radio in the 1970s-90s.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - On October 4th, the Land Conservancy of British Columbia (TLC) announced a 16.5-acre conservation covenant linking Hank’s Beach Forest Conservation Park to Poison Cove.

“If we don’t protect our intact forests and the mother trees and the interconnectivity of our natural systems, we’re actually existentialist threats. Two years ago scientists were telling me there was 10 years to make a big change, so maybe there is eight years, but it’s dire, it’s important and there are a lot of people with holdings who care deeply about protecting ecosystems, wildlife fauna and flora,” explained Cathy Armstrong, Executive Director of the TLC.

She believes this may be the 10th family that made such covenant on Cortes Island.

(In the podcast Armstrong also mentions properties adjoining Whaletown Commons.)

Most of these covenants came into being through the assistance of local biologist Sabina Leader-Mense.

“She really works hard to identify properties where the ecological values, the ecosystem protection, and wildlife corridors exist. Over the years, we have been slowly adding those properties. She has meetings with landowners, explains what the process is and then we’ll come in and walk the property with the landowners,” said Armstrong.

In the associated TLC press release, the landowners said, “The reality is that many ecologically important areas like ours would be lost to future development were it not for the existence of The Land Conservancy of B.C.”

This property, within the traditional lands of the Klahoose and Tla’amin First Nations, is a multi-aged forest, a significant wildlife corridor and home to seventeen species or ecological communities at risk.

Blue-listed Band-tailed Pigeon, Barn Swallow, Great Blue Heron, Northern Red-legged Frog, and Wallace’s Selaginella/Reindeer Lichens are on the property. Columbian Black-tailed Deer, Gray Wolf, and Cougar pass through here.

Armstrong explained that TLC is a provincial land trust, with 245 covenants through-out British Columbia.

“We’re a registered charity supported by by members and donors. We are not a government body, so no tax dollars come to us,” she said.

When the situation warrants, TLC sometimes purchases the properties it seeks to protect.

“We encourage private landowners to think about conservation covenants because they are less expensive, protect the land and do not transfer the title,” said Armstrong.

She added that conservation covenants delineate both buildable areas, where the owners can make any changes they desire (like a new house), and protected areas where the intact ecosystem is preserved.

Photo credit: Screenshot of Cathy Armstrong taken during the interview

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - As the world prepares for the 26th conference of the parties (COP) to open in Glasgow, on October 31st, it is also absorbing the news that no matter what we do global temperatures will continue to rise until 2050.

It has been two months since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the report it calls “a code red for humanity.

In the UN News for that day, Katy Dartford, reported that the 234 scientists working on the report concluded “climate change is widespread, rapid and intensifying.” Some negative impacts, like sea level rise, “are already irreversible for centuries to millennia ahead.” The planet will reach the 1.5 C threshold in the next twenty years.

“But the IPCC experts say there is still time to limit climate change,” she said.

In another UN News report, IPCC spokesperson Jonathan Lynn said, “It is indisputable that human activities are causing climate change and human influence is causing extreme climate events, including heat waves, heavy rainfall and droughts, more frequent and severe. Unless we take immediate, rapid and large scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, then indeed limiting warming to 1.5 degrees - which is what governments have agreed they want to do - that will be beyond reach.”

“Time is running out. Irreversible climate tipping points lie alarmingly close,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “We now have five times the number of recorded weather disasters than we had in 1970 and they are seven times more costly. Even the most developed countries have become vulnerable.”

He stressed the fact that important steps must be taken, to fulfill the promises of the Paris agreement.

An IPCC news release laid out the four steps to be adopted at COP 26

1. The world must achieve net zero emissions by mid-century to keep the goal of 1.5 degrees within reach. This means there must be ambitious emissions reductions by 2030. To do this, the world must:

accelerate the phase-out of coal

curtail deforestation

speed up the switch to electric vehicles

encourage investment in renewables.

2. The climate is already changing and it will continue to change even as we reduce emissions, with devastating effects. At COP26 we need to work together to enable and encourage countries affected by climate change to:

protect and restore ecosystems

build defences, warning systems and resilient infrastructure and agriculture to avoid loss of homes, livelihoods and even lives

3. To deliver on those first two goals, developed countries must make good on their promise to mobilize at least $100 billion in climate finance per year by 2020. International financial institutions must unleash trillions of dollars in private and public sector financing in order to secure global net zero.

4. The nations must work together, at COP 26, to finalize the detailed rules that make the Paris Agreement operational.

There is less than a month to go before COP 26 opens in Glasgow. Guterres calls it “the most important climate conference since Paris.”

He said our planet can only meet the goal of reducing climate rise to 1.5 degrees if all G20 countries. quote “which are responsible for 80% of our global emissions, take decisive actions. Our planet is currently on course for a 2.7C rise in global temperatures.”

Image: mussel shells being washed off the rocks at Smelt Bay, Cortes Island, after the June 2021 wiped out more than a billion marine creatures throughout the West Coast - Photo by Roy L Hales

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The first incarnation of ICAN (Island Climate Action Network) was behind the Quadra retail sector’s decision to ban plastic bags, an anti-idling campaign, and the Quadra community garden. That was a decade ago, team leader Leona Skovgaard traces the relaunch of what is now called Quadra ICAN to a conversation that she and Jan Gladish had over tea.

“You know we should look for some of those people who were active on Quadra, there has to be some of them still around,” said Skovgaard.

So Gladish contacted Mary McIntosh, who reached out to Jan Zwicky. An invitation was sent out to the original ICAN steering committee, and Jude McCormick joined them.

Quadra ICAN had a six member steering committee when it held a public meeting at the Quadra Community Centre on March 12, 2020. The Bird’s Eye subsequently reported that around 85 people attended.

That was when the COVID 19 pandemic reached the Greater Campbell River Health Area.

“We were relegated to ZOOM, because we went into lockdown,” explained Skovgaard.

She added, “We’re not short of ideas. We have some very specific projects underway and a whole raft of them that are kind of in the works, waiting for energy to get them moving.”

Eight key areas were identified during that first public meeting: food security, water security, energy self-sufficiency, do-it-yourself support,

a free store, local recycling, transportation, and fund-raising.

“Since those eight action teams were established, we’ve picked up a group that wants to work on housing security, we’ve started a collaboration with the garden club and just last night, at a general meeting, there is a group that identified itself to work on a community forest project,” added Skovgaard.

In the podcast above, she mentions a few project highlights:

- the water security team has been selling a lot of 250 gallon water storage tanks throughout Quadra Island and is also researching the aquifer(s) in the south end of the island.

- the energy self-sufficiency team partnered with the Quadra Island Foundation and School District 72 to raise the funds and hire a contractor to put solar panels on the roof of the Quadra Island School. Work is about to begin.

- the local recycling team (renamed ‘Live Lightly’) is working with Regional Director Jim Abram to open a recycle BC Depot on Quadra Island. (Public meetings are scheduled for Nov 2 and Nov 8, 2021.) They are also planning a Live Lightly Fair in 2022.

Photo courtesy Quada ICAN

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Extreme marine high temperature events, such as the one that killed more than a billion shellfish off the West Coast last June, will devastate global fisheries over the decades to come, a new UBC study suggests.

There have been 13 to 14 extreme weather events, lasting for days or months, since 1981 and the frequency has doubled.

“The aim of this study is to look at extreme temperature events and how they affect fish, including shellfish and invertebrates, fisheries and the people who are dependent on them,” said Dr. William Cheung, director of UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and lead author of the paper published in Science Advances on October 1st.

The institute used computer simulations to model climate change and what will probably happen to fisheries if humanity continues to neglect addressing its emissions.

Millions of fishermen may lose their livelihood in countries like Peru, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

British Columbia's annual sockeye salmon harvest could decrease more than 50% if a high temperature event occurs in the 2050s.

Cheung said it is coming, but they cannot be certain when or where these heat domes will occur.

Dr Christopher Harley initially estimated that there were a billion die-offs along the West Coast during the heat dome at the end of June. That estimate was based on a calculation of the fatalities among mussels. Harley subsequently emailed Cortes Currents that his figure was too low.

It also does not include remote areas like Cortes Island, where there were high numbers of shellfish fatalities. There were losses among the clams and oysters grown on beaches. Cortes Currents found a large number of dead mussels on the rocks at Smelt Bay.

Local biologist Deb Cowper suggested up to 85% of the sand dollars in Mansons Lagoon may have perished.

That number may be higher amidst the more exposed waters at Smelt Bay. There do not appear to be any survivors in a series of 20 photos taken by Cortes Currents.

(Harley suggested that a metre stick be placed in each photo, to indicate the scale. He also pointed out that the greenish sand dollars probably died sometime prior to the heat wave, as they had been dead long enough to acquire some algal growth.)

Cheung’s study focused on edible fish stocks.

He stressed the need to start taking actions now.

While changes could take place relatively quickly in the atmosphere, they would be slow to reach the depths of the ocean.

Cheung added, “For the surface part of the oceans, where lots of the marine life people are depending on are found, the changes can be very quick. In a decade, it would be fairly responsive to climate actions.”

He said that there was not that much difference in the high and low emissions models within a decade, they grow more noticeable after that.

The potential impacts to salmon, for example, could be 15-20% less severe by 2050 in a low emissions scenario.

Cheung compared addressing humanity’s emissions to stopping a train. You do not wait to reach the station before putting on the brakes.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The direct action to protect what some call the last intact old growth ecosystem in southern Vancouver Island, at Fairy Creek, began 420 days ago. Now the RCMP have left and a couple of Truth and Reconciliation Day messages have been sent from Fairy Creek:

- Gillian Ashley-Martz’s essay “Red Dresses and Clear Cuts”which will be broadcast on CKTZ’s "End of the Road Show" at 3 PM today.

- Pacheedat Elder Bill Jones talks about the Indian Act within the context of truth and reconciliation.

The most recent RCMP press release, from the Lake Cowichan detachment, was posted on Monday September 27th. It starts out by saying, “Police enforcement of the BC Supreme Court injunction order in the Fairy Creek Watershed area continued ….” and mentions 1,101 arrests.

It has been three days since Justice Douglas Thompson denied Teal Jones request to extend the injunction at Fairy Creek , stating, ”It goes without saying that unlawful measures imposed by those given authority to enforce the Court’s order does no credit to the rule of law or the Court’s reputation, especially when those measures trench on civil liberties in a substantial way.”

One of the new images on the Fairy Creek Blockade Facebook page shows three RCMP officers dismantling their camp, while a group of land defenders watch from behind a barrier.

Most of the pictures are jubilant. People are embracing. They pose for a group photo. Some carry a large red banner that says, “RCMP the world is watching you.” There is also a sign proclaiming “Tree Protection Area Keep Out.”

Photo credit: A defender stands at the site of Red Dress, a memorial that honours Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Children- Photo courtesy Fairy Creek Blockade Facebook page