Cortes Currents

This is the unedited audio from the September 8, 2025 Public Meeting about Cortes Island’s zoning bylaw chaired by Regional Director Mark Vonesch.

Annie Girdler, from the SRD’s panning department gave an overiew of the proposed bylaw changes

Cortes Island residents commented about:

regulations preventing people from doing what they want on their property

we need regulations to protect the community

we need more Advisory Planing Committee meetings (There recently was one for zoning)

people should get jobs and buy houses with their own money, not get hand-outs

regulations & penalties pertaining to liveaboards

support for the proposed zoning bylaws

the need for more housing

the need for more houses on large lots

how the proposed bylaws do not help Cortes Island’s climate resilience

the need to protect landlords from abusive tenants

Can Cortes Island’s aquifers support more housing

Cortes Island’s Aquifer study (which was published last week)

the water pollution problem in Hague Lake & how it was resolved by the Dillon Creek Restoration Project

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -Cortes Island’s aquifer health study has been released and in this morning’s interviews we are speaking with Sylvia Barroso, of GW Solutions, the Senior Hydrologist who participated in this project, Sadhu Johnston, Executive Director of the Cortes Island Housing Society and Mark Vonesch, Regional Director of Cortes Island. 

First, there are two key questions at the top of many people’s minds. Is there enough water in Cortes Island’s aquifers to support further development? And why were some of the island’s shallow wells not recharging during the recent drought? 

Barroso’s answers to both questions were complex. Aside from her reference to climate change and the fact conditions are going to get worse, you’ll have to wait for her full answer to the question about our shallow wells. However one of her statements about the state of Cortes Island’s aquifers is very illuminating:

 “Our study showed that in general Cortes has abundant water sources and that at the current usage levels, we have not found that there's overuse. When we look at it from a water management approach, we did not find that any of the water management areas had greater than 5% of the available water being used. That suggests that there is room for growth, and it gives us an opportunity to strategically develop water sources and develop those in protected areas.” 

Cortes Currents: The issue is much more complex and there are steps we should take to ensure the health of Cortes Island’s water supply, but for that you have to listen to the long version.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -Cortes Island will have a public meeting on its proposed Bylaw changes on Monday, Sept 8th, 5pm at Manson’s Hall.

 “This is a chance for folks to weigh in on the proposed draft. We're really looking at a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision on this zoning bylaw. There's almost two years of community consultation and input, and this is what staff have produced and the best, happy medium for what folks are asking for,” explained Mark Vonesch, Regional Director for Cortes Island.

“The public hearing will be a chance for people to express their opinions and their thoughts. Those will get recorded and added to the public record. It’s important that folks show up whether you’re opposed to or in support of this new zoning bylaw. People who show up make the decisions, and this is an opportunity to have your voice heard. If you can’t make the meeting, you can email [email protected] and that will also be included in the public record.”

Sadhu Johnston, Executive Director of the Cortes Housing Society, added,  “The Housing Society took a number of positions that we were advocating for with the Regional District.”

“The first thing we were advocating for is larger cottages and additional dwelling units on existing properties. There are lots of people on Cortes have a second or third cabin on their land, and they’re out of compliance with the current zoning. That makes people uncertain in their living environments. If you’re renting a cabin from somebody and that cabin is technically illegal, that creates insecurity. Many people on Cortes rely on that type of housing.

“The Housing Society was encouraging what used to be called cottages in the zoning bylaw. They were only 60 square meters — about 500 square feet and really too small for a family to live in - as a second house on a property. We were encouraging for that to be bigger and the SRD has made that change. Now that secondary unit, the accessory dwelling unit (ADU), can be 110 square meters.”

“The new density rules allow for multiple dwelling units on a single lot. Depending on the zoning type, more than one ADU is now permitted. That can provide passive income for island property owners, and also create additional rental units. These can’t be subdivided or sold, so by nature they provide important rental housing. This proposed bylaw really addressed our concern about larger cottages and additional dwelling units on existing land.

“I think the best opportunity for us to get more housing on Cortes is not to build up in the northern part if the island or to develop new sites, but to use properties that already have houses, driveways, electricity, septic, and wells — and enable them to add one or more additional homes.

“The previous bylaw had a maximum of three dwellings per lot in the RR1 (Rural Residential 1) and R1 (Residential 1) zones, and they’ve removed that maximum. There’s a new tiered system that allows up to five dwellings in R1 and RR1, and up to six dwellings in RU1 (Residential Urban 1), depending on lot size. Basically, this allows one or two additional houses on existing lots.

“They didn’t go as far as the Housing Society was thinking would be helpful, but they did go quite far in allowing additional houses on existing lots.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - From August 29 to September 14, the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery will host ‘How Do You Like the Underworld?—Kristen Scofield-Sweet’s final large-scale exhibition.

 “This is my retirement party swan song on the wall,” she began. “This is a body of work that’s complete. One of the remarkable things about that is the artist doesn’t usually get to see their work all hung together, obviously, unless they have a show. You’re used to seeing a piece over the couch with the pillows or the throw at the back. To actually see them having a conversation with each other is really special.”

“Every picture tells a story, so you can get all tangled up with how it got painted and why, how I work and yada, yada. In an exhibition like this, the work gets to speak for itself, and that’s really profound.”

Cortes Currents: How did you come up with the title?

Kristen Scofield-Sweet: “It’s just an image from walking down the road in my neighborhood, looking for something significant, clicking along, taking pictures. When I got back home and looked at them, it was like, ‘whoa!’ The notion ‘How do you like the underworld?’ just popped into my head, and so there it is.”

Cortes Currents: I have to ask, how do you like the Underworld?

Kristen Scofield-Sweet: “I think we live there.”

Cortes Currents: What is the Underworld?

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The Cortes Island Food Bank was one of the nation’s first food banks to receive Standards of Excellence accreditation from Food Banks Canada.

The Associations President Beatrix Baxter, explained, “Filipe Figueira, our Executive represented us at the Food Banks Canada Conference in Montreal. During the event, Food Banks Canada honoured food banks across the country that have met their rigorous Standards of Excellence. We are proud to share that Filipe was among a handful of leaders recognized. Achieving this standard takes a tremendous amount of work—especially since so many food banks, like ours, are largely volunteer-run. Few organizations have the capacity to dedicate the hundreds of hours required, which makes this recognition even more meaningful.”

Over the years, Food Banks Canada has found that food banks have been pretty uneven in the types of services they offer, and their values.

Baxter stressed the fact that the number of Canadians struggling with hunger is increasing.

“ It's a bad situation for many Canadians who are struggling to make the decision of whether they are going to afford rent, or food? Are they going to be able to offer their children one meal a day, or no meals?”

There is no government program to address this.

The Standard of Excellence Program has three main goals:

Raising everyone’s service quality, so food banks across Canada have the same ethics, transparency and level of financial accountability.

Improving transportation systems so that, for example, locally grown food can be shipped from the east, where it is plentiful, to areas like BC, which is really behind the rest of the nation agriculturally. ( “We are producing a shockingly low amount of food for the amount of farmland that's been cleared.”)

Submitting all of the data into one system, so that Food Banks, Canada can go to government officials every month and say, ‘look, our numbers are going up. We don't have enough food. We don't have enough money. We need the support. We are offering frontline emergency support to Canadians. You need to deal with this.’

Operations Manager Angelica Raaen said that in October, Food Banks Canada will be sending two inspectors to inspect the Cortes Island facility, ensuring they continue to meet and maintain these high standards.

“ Locally we've seen donations have been going down so much, while need has been rising,” said Baxter. “We don't understand why this is happening because there's such wealth in this community. It is heartbreaking, honestly, to see this happening. We really want to understand why people are feeling less generous. Ultimately we're really hoping that if we prove ourselves to be of a high ethical standard, providing a high client care service, people will entrust us with their donations and their support”

Manda Aufochs Gillespie /Folk U - Psychologist and scientist, Wendy D’Andrea does research that looks at the impacts of acute trauma (such as a car crash) versus chronic trauma (such as abuse) and what happens with each in the brain and body. D’Andrea is a Professor at the New School and Chief Science Officer at the Trauma Research Foundation 

This episode isn’t always easy to listen to as topics such as abuse, rape, etc., are mentioned but this is a fascinating and empowering look at the new frontier of trauma research and practice. 

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.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U -On August 25, 2025, host Manda Aufochs-Gillespie was joined by Esther Shalev-Gerz, a renowned artist who has exhibited all around the world. Tune in for insights from her work, reflections on art, Cortes living, and what it’s like to be a well-known artist in the world today.

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.

Manda AUfochs Gillespie/ Folk U -Thanks for joining us on August 22, 2025 for another week of the Village Commons Music Series, a simultaneously live and live-broadcast show, happening on Fridays from 1 - 2:30pm on the new Pavilion stage.

Guest host Immanuel McKenty was joined by Johnny Hanuse, Josie Simpson, and Mary Beth Cysewski, 3 local musicians who sat together on stage for an in-the-round style performance, swapping songs, stories, and jokes.

The Village Commons Music Series is produced by Jemma Hicken, Aaron Ellingsen, and Sean Coyote. It is made possible by the Cortes Island Community Foundation, Cortes Community Radio, and the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

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 - A hundred people turned out for Cortes Island’s Sandcastle Day on Saturday, August 23rd, 2025.

“It was a blast because all the families are so involved and all the kids are so involved. The day is absolutely beautiful. What's amazing is to see all the cooperation that the children have with each other and the creativity and the enjoyment that comes from this,” explained Nancy Silver, one of the judges.

“It is an another community building activity and what could be better and healthier then families creating together or children alone doing it and feeling so empowered.”

“Every person received some kind of award and that makes the little ones feel so great about themselves. They go on with their day, but something has changed in their lives and that is the beauty of this event.”

Cortes Currents also interviewed two of the participants and a spectator.

Monk and three of his friends were among the contestants:

“It was a very fun experience and we did our own thing on each part of the castle. We based it off of a book called ‘Percy Jackson.’ It's the Percy Jackson Palace, or Palace of Percy Jackson. We just rolled from there and built this really awesome different themed castle. We didn't really have a specific part that everybody worked on. We just did whatever we wanted.”

Zyla Schmidt was in a team that included her mother, grandmother, a lady named Heather and two other kids:

“It was really fun, It's kind of about the Children's Forest, like Enchanted Dragon Children's Forest, and I chose to do that because the Children's Forest is trying to get bought. I love it so much that I thought I'd make something based on that. I did a dragon. I didn't do wings, so it looked more like a dinosaur. There was going to be a city, then I turned it into a volcano because there wasn't enough time. We made paths and then raked out the rest. So you could go inside but not wreck the sculpture.”

Bruce Hayden brought a professional architect's eye to the event.

“One of the ones that I don't know who made it that is very beautiful is the two mountain, one of which looks like a volcano and village on the edge of the sea. The thing that I really like about it is that it's a beautiful integration of landscape and a sense of village. So it's humans meeting landscape in a really beautiful way. We had a good debate about whether it was a fortified village or not. My friend Heidi thought passionately it was a fortified village. I said, well, maybe it's a welcome spot that this is the place where you richly cleanse before you enter the sacred city on the edge of the ocean.”

Cortes Currents: Are there any highlights you can think of?

Nancy Silver: “For me it was with one group of kids who were so excited about what they did. They kept wanting to go deeper into the details, to take me through it and each part of it was like going into wonderland with them.”

“I felt like the children were really in their fantasy world and no one was putting any boundaries on it. When children can go into that experience so fully and grab the adult and try to share with them that world, that to me, was the best experience.”

A quick perusal of the Cortes Island Museum website showed there's been sandcastle days at Smelt Bay as far back as the summer of 1991, possibly earlier.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -The Cortes Food Bank is trying to raise the $35,000 needed to relocate their base of operations to two sea-cans in the Village Commons at Manson's Landing.

Operations Manager, Angelica Raan, explained, “We have raised $14,000 so far, and we have a generous donor who's offered to match donations up to $10,000. So we're hoping that by the end of this month we can get $10,000 in community donations to match the $10,000 this donor has offered.”

Cortes Currents: Why is it necessary for the food bank to expand?

Beatrix Baxter, president of the food bank, replied, “We really scaled up our operations after realizing that there was a community need not being met. In 2022, we started offering regular pickup days. We joined Food Banks BC so we could access more regional resources, including food from partners. We also received grants, which allowed us to provide more food at regular intervals. But because of the extreme need, we were just doing way too much work for the system we had.”

“We have to go to our warehouse, pack all the boxes, bring them to the pickup location. It's a lot of driving for staff and volunteers. At this point, we either need our own delivery vehicle or a headquarters. On top of that, our current storage won’t be available much longer.”

“Our clients have also asked for a more shopping-style model, which many food banks use. Instead of volunteers pre-packing boxes, people come in and choose their own food. That provides more choice, more flexibility, and overall a better system for everyone.”

“We partnered with the Community Foundation to use their sea cans at the Village Commons. One will be storage, the other will be set up as a shopping space where people can pick up food. Angelica will also be able to work out of that space.”