Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -The Quadra, Cortes, and Surge Narrows communities, as well as the Klahoose and We Wai Kai First Nations, have sent the BC Ministry of Health an application for funding to set up a Discovery Island Community Health Centre. 

“It offers stability for practitioners. It offers leadership stability through a joint board and a hired executive director. It offers some economies of scale in terms of practitioners being shared and supplies being shared. It offers a shared medical record between the communities. Potentially, one of the things is using video conferencing as opposed to an in-person visit, if that's appropriate. It's community driven, it doesn't involve Victoria telling remote communities what works for them, because that generally doesn't work for them,” explained Bernice McGowan, a member of the planning committee for the proposed Health Centre.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/Folk U - On this Folk U, the students of the Cortes Island Academy took over the radio waves to answer this question: If you were to send a message in a bottle that drifts through time and space to another “time being”: another person, species, or world, what would it sound like?

These short 3 minute podcasts were the result of a week-long intensive with guest artist Ruby Singh and each captures reflections on time, place, and more-than-human life. Working with field recordings, biosonification tools, and their own creative voices, these short audio message that carries meaning beyond words.

Learn more and listen to these and other podcasts at CortesIslandAcademy.ca

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -The Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society has raised just over 70% of the $7.5 million it needs to purchase 261 acres of forest along Carrington Lagoon from Mosaic Forest Management.

Society Chair Chris Dragseth says this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the community:

“We’re protecting some valuable properties from an ecological point of view and from a societal point of view. The youth of the community, both residents and from afar, have benefited immensely from the protection this land has had to date. It’s got huge opportunities in the future from a continued educational perspective with the youth, but also from a research perspective.”

So far, most of the campaign has taken place behind the scenes. Dragseth says they’ll soon be reaching out to the wider Cortes community:

“We have a little more than 70% of the target campaign number. There are a few balls in the air, but we’re confident that we will be able to close this deal.”

The society still needs to raise about $2 million in the next few weeks.

“We have a deadline of November the 19th for the funding conditions to be removed, and then the final closing date is December the 19th.”

If the full $7.5 million isn’t raised by then, Dragseth says there may be some flexibility. Part of the total is meant to build an endowment, which could be finalized after purchase. Discussions with Mosaic would be needed if the purchade price is not raised.

In the meantime, supporters can follow updates and make pledges online at corteschildrensforesttrust.org.

De Clarke/ Cortes Currents -On Tuesday, October 14th the Cortes Island Foundation invited island nonprofit and public service organisations to attend a Social Profit Forum hosted at Hollyhock. This all-day event was well attended and featured presentations by two representatives from “local economy” projects with successful track records: Tara Janzen from the Shorefast Institute for Place-Based Economics and Andrew Greer from Purppl, a consulting group that advises clients who wish to establish “regenerative enterprises.”

Ms Janzen gave a slide presentation describing the successful economic re-invigoration of a small Newfoundland island called Fogo. Mr Greer offered some tools for turning social profit goals into specific business plans and strategies, using examples from the Okanagan area.

Attendees were invited to come up with ideas and concepts for place-specific economic development on Cortes Island, with the goal of providing living-wage jobs that would allow — among other things — local kids to grow up and remain in their home community instead of having to leave in search of gainful employment. The theme of the day was how to create a local economy that provides employment, investment, and income to benefit the community, rather than importing labour and goods and benefiting distant shareholders.

The full event title was From Edge to Opportunity: Collective Pathways for Social Impact. It attracted representatives from almost all the islands’s non profit societies and projects, including CCEDA, the Fire Department, FOCI, the Housing Society, the Cortes Food Coop, the Women’s Centre, the Food Bank, and more. The crowd filled most of Olatunji Hall, one of Hollyhock’s larger venues.

Roy L Hales / Cortes Currents -The long-awaited Rainbow Ridge housing development has passed a milestone. The foundations of the first two homes are in place. Sadhu Johnston, Executive Director of the Cortes Housing Society, gave Cortes Currents a tour of the site and spoke about the vision, challenges, and progress to date.

Rainbow Ridge is rising in Mansons Landing, the most settled community on Cortes Island.

The audio version of this story meanders more than usual. It begins inside the community building and ends at the freshly poured foundation of the first duplex. Along the way, the track is filled with construction noises: hammering, lumber being stacked, the warning beep of a backing vehicle, and occasional voices in the background. At times our own voices echo through the empty community building, while outside the steady crunch of footsteps on earth runs through segments. The recording also includes a series of questions and answers that are not repeated in this summary

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -The Cortes Forestry General Partnership held its public meeting on October 9th, 2025. In today's interview, Operations Manager Mark Lombard talks about leadership transitions, plans for selective logging, the Forest Stewardship Plan review, and other topics from the meeting. He also shares his personal opinion about how climate change is affecting our forest.

“We try to have a public meeting every year and we cover whatever topics are relevant at that point. There's always the year in review, so what have we done in the last year since the last public meeting and what are we planning in the coming year,” explained Lombard.

“In this case, we had the Forest Stewardship Plan Review, which the Forest and Range Practices Act states must be updated every five years. We had a draft to present to the public and there was a 60 day public comment period, and we wanted to have the public meeting during that time. While the document is really thorough and detailed, and it wasn't something that you could just put up in a PowerPoint slide, we had our registered professional Forester, Kate Roth there to answer questions and discuss the objectives and how it relates to how we operate in the community forest. That was the first and foremost part of the meeting.”

Cortes Currents: What were the most significant events this past year? 

Mark Lombard: “There’s been some change in the leadership of the Community Forest Partnership.”

“The Klahoose have had chief council elections and they came out of a period of uncertainty with the change in chiefs midterm. Kevin Peacey, who has been the chief in the past, is now on the board of the Community Forest again.”

“We did an interview with Kevin. Bill Weaver is doing a mini documentary about the community forest for us.”

“There were some changes on the co-op side. David Shipway has stepped in to replace Aaron Ellingson.”

Cortes Currents: The United States slapped a new 10% tariff on top of the existing duties, which brings the combined total to 45%.

Mark Lombard: “So the outlook isn't great for log markets. That's probably one of the bigger challenges as it relates to the upcoming year.”

“We would like to do some logging. Our partners would really like to see some logging, and generate some opportunity for economic reconciliation and doing what we set out to do.”

“We have to set up the log dump. A storm had broken maybe one or two of the anchor chains, so there will need to be some divers that go and set new anchor chains and bring in some boom sticks, set up a dumping ground and then bring a machine in to push logs off the truck.”

“So there's a pretty big upfront overall cost that needs to be amortized over a reasonable amount of volume. We've never had to pay to set up the log boom fully. It isn’t viable at today’s below-average prices, though it might work once prices return to normal. We probably can't make it work for under 4,000-4,500 meters, and the goal is to log around 6,000 meters.

It's going to be challenging to do that if prices don't come up.”

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U -Tune in on October 10th for a special episode of FolkU radio, where we listen to an episode of another talk show, Chatter That Matters, by Tony Chapman. This episode features a conversation with Zita Cobb about the story arch of her home in Newfoundland, Fogo Island. This is a discussion about tourism, circular economies, community, and rurality. Introduction by Manda Aufochs-Gillespie.

Folk U Radio is taking old school viral every Friday at 1 p.m. and Mondays at 3 p.m./Wednesday at 6 a.m. @CKTZ89.5FM or livestreamed at cortesradio.ca. Find repeats anytime at www.folku.ca/podcasts.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -Shane Berg, BC’s Chief Forester, has a message he is taking to trading partners around the world. On Thursday, October 2, 2025, he made a presentation to the Strathcona Regional District’s Natural Resources Committee.

In today’s broadcast there are select clips from that presentation, including reactions from the committee. Also Bruce Ellingsen, one of the founding directors of the Cortes Community Forest Cooperative and a local thought leader on forestry matters, gave his opinion about the presentation and what he believes it lacks.

Berg claims that the amount of old growth forests is increasing. According to Ellingsen what is not clear is that he is talking about the 80% of relatively small old growth trees growing in less productive areas, not the ‘big tree old growth’ that the environmental community is concerned about.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U -On October 3 2025, host Manda Aufochs-Gillespie was joined by Kate Maddigan, Bruen Black, Amy Robertson, and Genevieve Cruz, for a special group discussion on revenue diversification for rural non-profits. Tune in for talk of circular economies, transportation, a brainstorm on creative revenue solutions, and updates from the Cortes Natural Food Co-op, CCEDA, and the Cortes Housing Society.

Folk U Radio is taking old school viral every Friday at 1 p.m. and Mondays at 3 p.m./Wednesday at 6 a.m. @CKTZ89.5FM or livestreamed at cortesradio.ca. Find repeats anytime at www.folku.ca/podcasts.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Campbell River wants to take control of the Strathcona Regional District’s Electoral Areas Planning Service away from rural directors. They are thinking of joining the service, which would cost Campbell River tax payers close to $500,000 a year for their resulting share of the assessments, and have asked other municipalities to do the same. This morning’s story consists of interviews with the Regional Directors of Areas A, Cortes Island and C, who issued a joint press release against this on Wednesday, October 1.

Mark Vonesch, Regional Director of Cortes Island, began,  “For folks that are learning about this, for the first time, I'll give some background information. The four electoral areas at the Strathcona Regional District. That's Cortes Island, that's Quadra and the Discovery Islands, the Seaward Valley area, which is area A and then area D south of Campbell River. We currently have a planning service that we all pay into. That's where all our land use decisions happen and currently the four of us are the votes on those decisions. Campbell River has the right to be able to join this planning service, but it means they have to pay for it.”

“So right now, Campbell River is considering joining the electoral area planning service that would cost them $500,000 a year. That's $5 million over the next 10 years to be able to control land use planning decisions in the rural areas of the Strathcona Regional District.” 

Gerald Whalley, Regional Director for Area A explained, “My concern is based on the fact that if Campbell River joined the electoral area planning service, they would have total control over all land use issues within the rural areas, within the electoral areas. That is because Campbell River has five votes, the other electoral areas only have four votes, so they could potentially outvote us on every issue.”

Robyn Mawhinney, Regional director for Area C added, “This could mean that an application which has not received community support could be pushed through despite community feedback. It could potentially mean a building service could be implemented, costing residents not only increase tech, do tax dollars annually, but more and more fees for every stage of construction. It could really mean that the wishes of rural residents are not considered in land use planning decisions, and to me, that's unacceptable and why I am really so concerned with this proposal.”