Cortes Currents

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - On Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2025, host Manda Aufochs-Gillespie was joined by three beloved Cortes couples to chat about all things love. We heard their meeting stories, their advice, and we chatted about commitment, long-term love, challenges, and joyful moments. Tune in for a moving celebration of island romance and connection.

Folk U Radio is taking old school viral every Friday at 1 p.m. and Mondays at 6:30 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 - It is only two weeks until President Donald Trump decides whether to impose 25% tarrifs on Canada and Mexico. There is some question whether he will follow through. Trump was initially going to impose the tarrifs on February 4, but the previous day Wall Street's three main indices fell sharply over concerns about the global economy. The stock market recovered that afternoon after Trump announced he would postpone the tarrifs for a month. However Canadians are preparing for the worst and, on the local level, one of the topics discussed at yesterday’s Strathcona Gardens Commission meeting is impact Trump’s proposed tarrifs could have on Campbell River’s $130 million REC-reate Strathcona Gardens project.

Commissioner Cal Grunerud raised the question: “ What's happening with America.”

Commissioner Ron Kerr stressed,  “This is a tariff that is definitely going to raise our costs.”

Wolfgang Parada, Senior Engineering Manager with the Strathcona Regional District, assured the Comissioners that steps are already being taken to minimize any impact.

 “The first thing is looking at the contracts, what type of contract the general contractor has with the trades. It's under the duties and taxes, basically the trades are only responsible for those duties and taxes when they bid for the project. Anything extra will be billed to the general contractor. The general contractor will pass it to us.”

“We need to work carefully to minimize the impact to the project and the first thing that we have done is we asked the General Contractor to compile a list of materials and equipment coming from the States.”

“This is very preliminary right now because if the tariffs are implemented to Canada, that doesn't affect the project. It will only affect the project when Canada retaliates and put tariffs on the States, if those tariffs are related to some of the materials that are coming for this project. That list is being developed at this point. We need to understand what suppliers we have here in Canada, if there are alternatives. We need to look at the status of the solutions.”

“This is not an easy process. When we hire a trade, that trade needs to submit shop drawings. Those shop drawings are approved. They need to procure the equipment. Once they buy the equipment, they ship the equipment from the States. Once they cross the border, that's when they pay the tax.”

Parada explained they are trying to assess which materials can be brought into Canada before the tarrifs are implemented. They are also trying to identify Canadian alternatives for some products.

“I'm happy to provide an update as soon as I have more information, but we know it's critical. We're ahead of the game and we're hoping that the project budget and as well as the schedule doesn't get impacted by the tariffs.”

David Leitch, CAO of the SRD, added, “If there's going to be a negative impact, we're going to let our MP, MLA and the province know because they will be hurting us.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Frank Mottl’s latest novel, Cumberland Gold, takes us to the quaint village of Cumberland BC. This is the same setting as his first novel,  The Cumberland Tales, in which Mottl described the community he knew in the 1960s. Only now he is writing about the late 19th century, when Lord Dunsmuir (1825-89) was attempting to recruit Chinese immigrants to work in his coal mine.   

Mottle explained, “ I did some research at the Cumberland Museum, and there was an unsolved homicide in the 19th century in the old Cumberland Chinatown. Nobody knew much about it, other than it was unsolved. That really appealed to me, so I just ran with it. Of course I spent a year teaching in China, so it did have a lot of that Chinese influence inside of it.” 

Cortes Currents: I'm wondering about the divisions you mentioned in the Chinese community, with the secretive Buddhist and Taoist basement temples  and the Confucian temple and the Presbyterian church. You're tracing them back to the periodic persecutions of Chinese academia  during the early Qing dynasty. 

Frank Mottl: “Yes, there were a lot of revenge scenarios in ancient China, and I portray some of that in the book. What I did is I pulled those old revenges into the Cumberland Chinatown to give it a political edge, to make more sense of what was going on. So I  introduced the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and the Tang dynasty (618-907). Each dynasty had their loyalists and  there were betrayals. Especially between the Ming and the Qing dynasties. There's one passage in the book about a Ming dynasty general actually leaving the capital’s gate open so Qing forces could come in and start slaughtering people.” 

Cortes Currents: Was that kind of division actually occurring among the Chinese communities in British Columbia and San Francisco? 

Frank Mottl: “As far as I know, no - but can I say for sure? A lot of people hold on  to political beliefs, so it would not surprise me if the old Chinatown held on to these things.”

Cortes Currents: I like that scene where Dougal learned how to speak Cantonese. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that one? 

Frank Mottl: “That’s from a true scenario. My wife told it to me. One of her relatives did a speech in front of a group of people, I'm not sure if it was in his native Norwegian. He assumed that the people could understand him, then all of a sudden realized that nobody knew what the heck he was saying.”  

“As soon as I heard that story  I thought 'oh my god this is great' because of course in China,  a Mandarin speaker can't understand a Cantonese speaker. They are two different dialects. I thought that would be great because it was  a real nice little conflict where  the bad guy is embarrassed In front of this big union hall meeting with all of these Chinese gentlemen watching him and they don't understand what he's saying. His higher up, Lord Dunsmuir,  had no clue. He said, ‘Wow, wow, it's really going great.’” 

Cortes Currents:  I noticed that you brought one of the characters over from the Cumberland Tales, Sam Yick. Mind you, it could have been his grandfather. Do you want to tell us a little about this? 

Frank Mottl: “The character intrigues me and I wanted to get some poetry in there. I knew that I would, I wanted to have two characters that were poets. There's an old Japanese technique from the 14th century where they would make the characters poets. So  I stuck with Sam Yick  and then I came up with this other character's name called Crowheart.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -According to some estimates, BC would have to double its electrical output if everyone switched to electric vehicles by 2035. Others talk about blackouts and rolling brownouts if we don’t back renewables up with LNG or nuclear power. Clean Energy Canada has just released a report that claims this is not true, the province’s electricity grid can handle the increased demand from EVs, heat pumps and extreme weather events, while electricity trading keeps energy bills low.

“Over the last year or two, we've been seeing quite a bit of incorrect information on BC's electricity system.  It's being circulated and reiterated in the media. The purpose of this report was to do some myth busting and do some deep dives into the actual data to figure out what trends are actually happening,” explained Mark Zacharias, Executive Director of Clean Energy Canada. 

 “We went into three areas. The first one is looking at EVs and heat pumps. What they would do to the grid due to future demand and whether there is a need to go back and revisit government climate policies around EV sales mandates. The second one is there has been lots of commentary on how much power BC is importing from the US over the last year.  We wanted to  explore the balance between imports and exports and what's the value of the trading? The third one that we looked at was there are lots of commentators that talk about wind and solar as not being affordable and not being able to integrate into our grid because they're intermittent."

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - After years of anticipation,  construction has finally begun on the Rainbow Ridge affordable housing project in downtown Mansons Landing.

“We had an open house a couple of weeks ago, and we had a lot of back and forth with the seniors village next door. We made some considerable changes to our plans based on their input. Then Monday, we started clearing the land in preparation for phase 1 of our project,” explained Sadhu Johnston, Executive Director of the Cortes Housing Society.

“Phase 1 is to clear the land and build the infrastructure that we need, which is the water and the sewer and get electric in and build a community building. That will be our first structure on the land, and then we hope to build seven townhomes later this year. We're going to be needing to raise the money for the townhomes, but we've got the first chunk of money set aside for getting all the infrastructure ready to go.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The energy team of Ecotrust Canada will be visiting Quadra and Cortes Islands next week. They are part of a registered charity which works primarily works in rural and remote areas and helps guide people through the process of doing energy retrofits, installing heat pumps, new windows and solar panels. They will be giving free workshops at 2:00 and 6:30 in the Quadra Community Centre on Monday, February 17 and at the same times in Mansons Hall on Tuesday, February 18, 2025.

 “The upcoming workshops are to introduce residents to our Home Energy Savings Program. We're offering a one on one support service, often called a concierge service. So once you register for our program, you'll get an email from me asking very basic information about your home, like the age of your home, the heating system you have etc. After that, you will receive a phone call from me and we'll go through more questions about your home. You explain what your desires are, what challenges you're experiencing around your energy bill, and then I can help guide you toward the right rebates and the right renovations, or retrofits, so that you can achieve that goal,” explained Michael Anthony Lutfy, the program manager for our area.

“We support households from the beginning of the process all the way to the very end when it comes to selecting contractors, following through with the rebates, ensuring that they received what was expected from the contractor and we do financial planning, reminders, everything and anything a household needs to complete the process.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - If there were an election today, the polls show that Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party would probably form the next government. This isn’t what is necessarily going to happen. I like to think of polls as ‘point in time’ snapshots which may be 100% accurate right now, but the situation can be very different tomorrow. 

One of the trends I have noticed on 338Canada, which gleans data from many polls, is that support for the Liberals has been tacking upwards since Trudeau resigned (6 points), while support for the Conservatives and NDP has gone down (4 points each). If the Liberals pick a popular leader, we can expect their popularity to rise even higher in the polls - all of which is just to say that the as yet undeclared election is too far away to be certain.  

Anyway Max Thaysen, one of our thought leaders here on Cortes, has been watching what Donald Trump, a Conservative leader in the United States, is doing and getting anxious about what this latest rendition of the Conservative Party might be like if it comes to power.   

Max Thaysen: “Watching Donald Trump do his Donald Trump thing in America is pretty scary. There's a breakdown of the rule of law happening, but also just some really nasty meanness. It's such a tragedy that America was taken over by these goons, In part because 40% of people didn't vote. It's easy and tempting to be cynical.”

“Yes, the result of checking out the whole political game is that sometimes the bad guys win, and sometimes when the bad guys win, they win for a long time. We actually go very far backwards.” 

“Defunding science and making life dangerous for activists, or including journalists such as yourself in the pool of people considered to be activists by the government. Those are all really dangerous things that are hard to recover from.”  

Cortes Currents: This is all about Donald Trump, a Republican leader who many Republicans are now finding alarming.  What do you see in our Conservative Party that's alarming? 

Max Thaysen: “Like most Canadians, I read mostly American news.” (Laughter)  

“Yeah, you're supposed to be quiet while I'm talking! I don't think anybody knows that much about Pierre Poilievre's policies because he hasn't said very much about Pierre Poilievre's policies. But that's true of Donald Trump as well, which is one of the reasons why it's useful to look at what Donald Trump is doing.”

“His policies are being implemented now, whereas before we had some hints, maybe some loud hints from the kinds of people he was planning to work with and what they were saying and stuff like that.  Now the rubber is hitting the road.”

“I think that's true of Pierre Poilievre too. He just seems to say one liners over and over again and indicate his cruelty, but not really delivering that much. I think we can just assume the worst because he's demonstrated a similar style and approach and intention in many issues similar to Donald Trump. That's what I'm most worried about. What he has said, the nastiness towards journalists who are trying to ask honest questions, tells me that he's the enemy of most of us in his intentions and whatever policy comes from that. It's unlikely to be fair, or kind, or honest - based on what I've seen so far.  Those are very dangerous anti-values that he's got.”

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - On February 7, 2025, host Manda Aufochs-Gillespie was joined by Elizabeth Burr to chat about concussions, brain health, and nervous system regulation. This discussion shed light on the hidden impacts of brain injuries, healing resources, and the path to recovery.

Folk U Radio is taking old school viral every Friday at 1 p.m. and Mondays at 6:30 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 - The Strathcona Regional District (SRD) may have a nasty surprise for property owners in Campbell River and Area D. They may soon be asked to approve an additional $54 million debt to finance the second phase of the new REC-REATE Strathcona Gardens project. When they originally consented through an Alternative Approval Process (which automatically passes unless 10% of the electorate object), taxpayers were informed the cost was almost half of what is now being put forward

“The April 2023 staff report indicated that both phases of the REC-CREATE project were going to be included. They had a Class A estimate they were using for the swimming pool and Wellness Center and they had a  2019 Class D estimate for the ice arena. They also said that the Class D estimate for the ice arena had been escalated. So you would assume by reading that the April  2023 staff report was costed up to be based on current construction costs and inflation.  In addition to that, what I found in the staff report was that they said that the $73 million would include both phases and that staff would strive to deliver the project within the $73 million budget.  That staff report, since it was in April 2023, was less than two years ago,” explained Deborah Rasnick, a professional accountant who worked in senior budget positions of BC public sector organizations for 15 years.

“ The new business case that was presented in December of 2024, and approved tentatively by the Strathcona Gardens Commission now, has an estimated cost for phase two only of $58 million. That's on top of The previous approval. So the total cost now of the entire REC-REATE project could increase to around $130 million, and that's an 80% increase from the prior amount.” 

“Same thing goes with debt. The original approval allowed for the SRD to borrow Up to $64.67 million and that was approved through AAP. Now this new REC-REATE project phase two, as they're calling it,  wants to allow for an additional $54 million, creating a total debt of up to $118 million, providing they get authority to do that from the participants in the Strathcona Gardens service area.  That increase to total debt reflects an over 80% increase from the prior balance as well.”

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - On January 30th, Kate Maddigan, Rose Fitcyk, and Sadhu Aufochs Johnston joined host Manda Aufochs-Gillespie, to talk about the state of Cortes Island, the recent Vital Signs survey, CHS’ Rainbow Ridge housing project, and the stories and data of “now”. This is an important community update!

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