Cortes Currents

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - On November 15, 2024, host Manda Aufoch’s Gillespie was joined by AI researcher and community organizer Daniel Lindenberger, to lead a conversation about artificial intelligence. Along with the students of the Cortes Island Academy and some community members, we explored the potential of AI in various tasks, including data structuring, summarizing, and generating business ideas, while acknowledging its limitations and potential risks. The conversation ended with discussions on the environmental impact of AI, the potential of AI for positive change, and the importance of considering the economic consequences of AI for artists.

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.

Carries Saxifrage/ Cortes Currents & FOCI Climate Action Committee - In early July of 2024, a small group of Cortes Islanders, supported by Friends Of Cortes Island (FOCI), screened the film “How to Boil a Frog” for the community. You can watch the film here. The film is about the five-pronged problem life on Earth is currently facing — overpopulation, a war on nature, wealth disparity, peak oil (hee hee), and climate change—and offers five actions that can help—boycott Exxon, change your “life bulb” (reduce consumption), a change of heart, one kid per couple, and kick some ass.

This article is the second in a series focused on each of these five solutions. You can read Maureen Williams great first article on a change of heart here. This second article is about changing your “life bulb.” The term refers to the end of Al Gore’s 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth in which minor suggestions, including a switch to LED bulbs, float across the screen. The disconnect between the size of the problem and the size of the suggested solutions was so very obvious. It still is. Whether or not you change your “life bulb,” it is still important to “Kick Some Ass.” That will be the next article in the series.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -The final count for Cortes Island’s 2024 Chum run is not yet in, but according to local streamkeeper Christine Robinson, “We have never seen a return like this during the 34 years we've lived on Cortes, but the phenomenon is up the coast as far as Alaska. It's not specific to Cortes and the Discovery Islands.”  

“It’s down into Washington state as well,” added her husband and fellow streamkeeper, Cec Robinson. 

On Monday, November 18th, five Cortes stream keepers and a semi-retired DFO employee from Campbell River gathered in the Klahoose Hatchery to count this year's first egg take from Basil Creek.  

Christine Robinson: “Males and females were taken from the creek.  The milk and the eggs were taken out and they were  fertilized by hand. It happened twice this year because there were enough that came in.”

Cec Robinson: “So ten pairs and then another fifteen pairs.”

Cortes Currents: All of the eggs counted Monday were from those first 10 pairs. There were 24,949 eggs. 829 were dead, which leaves more than 24,000 live eggs. Assuming that there is a similar harvest from the remaining 15 females, the streamkeepers could have about 60,000 Chum eggs. 

Cec Robinson: “Today was  shocking the eggs that we have in the Klahoose hatchery. Shocking, picking out the dead ones and counting  what we've got. The shocking is a simple process of physically shocking the egg to break a little membrane inside any of the non viable eggs. This little membrane will fracture and when the water gets in, it turns the egg white. So you know which ones are not viable and you pick them out. So it’s a case of counting or weighing the number of live and the number of dead.  We want to know the percentage of the survival, how many eggs we've taken and  the level of fecundity of the females. That's of all super interest to DFO.”

“In this case it was terrific. The usual expectation is around 2,000 eggs per female.  We took 2,500. These fish were extra big and extra healthy. The eggs actually are extra large. It all bodes well for the survival of these little guys. Now we know how successful we've been so far and what our potential is for stocking the creeks.”

Cortes Currents: Do you usually have a number of eggs that die?  

Cec Robinson: “There’s always some, I think 5% mortality is excellent and at this point we're under four (3.32%). There will be a few more over the next few days and we'll just keep picking out the ones that have turned white.  It'll still be under 5%.”

Cortes Currents: Do you have any idea how many salmon came up this year?  

Cec Robinson: “Our best guess would be easily 2,500 and there could be close to 3,000 - in Basil Creek alone.” 

Christine Robinson: "Not collectively on the island, I'm still totalling up." 

Cortes Currents: Given that this year’s run seems to be shaping up to be two to three times larger than anything seen in recent memory, why bother taking eggs? 

Cec Robinson: “That’s a darn good question. I'm sure nature does the job way better than we can, but it's happened twice in recent years that Basil Creek has had a massive flooding that essentially blasted most of the eggs out of the creek or buried them. If the fish are unfortunate enough to have that happen again, this year we've got a bit of a reserve. The other thing we can do is use some of these eggs in the less productive streams. So, in Whaletown Creek, James Creek or Carrington Creek. Some of them will go there, and those streams are the ones that could definitely do with a larger run.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Around 40 people turned out to the Cortes Island Museum on November 10 for the launch of a series of community speakers. The host, Brian Scott traced the idea for ‘Finding Home: The Cortes Island Experience’  to a conversation he had with Sherman Barker. 

“Sherman and I have known each other for a few years, it's long other story, but he was up on Easter Bluff one day when Jane and I went up for a hike.  We're chatting, and he started telling us his arrival story. It actually goes even further back to when he came as a kid.  He said, there's lots of stories on the island here and if we don't somehow capture them, we're going to lose them.” 

“I thought it would be an interesting thing for the museum to do because the museum has artifacts that it's saving and preserving and sharing with the public. Stories are artifacts as well. How do we capture those? Then it occurred to me, well, why don't we do a speaker series? I approached Sherman and said, ‘Hey, what do you think? You want to be the first?’ And he's like, 'yep, It's awesome.'”  

“So essentially it's: how did you discover the island? What made you decide this is going to be my home? And what keeps you here?” 

Sherman described his interest in the project:

“In my mind, I pictured a book with a leather cover, front and back, maybe made from one of the goats you tanned. It has parchment pages, like you may have discovered it in a hobbit library. It could be in our library. When people come here in the summer, or people who have been here a long time, they can write down why they came to Cortes and the things that happened when they came here. Everybody's got funny stories, sad stories, like what was your first ferry ride like? What was the reason you came to Cortes? It could be really cool book just to keep the past, present, and future all intertwined."

"The first time that I  came here I just finished grade 6 in a little town up in the north Shuswap called Celista, which I think is pretty much burnt to the ground right now.  My dad was a teacher  and he had an elementary school that he was transforming into an outdoor educational school without the school board knowing about it.  I'm going back into the seventies, and public school.  He wanted to come to Strathcona Lodge, to take an edible plant and wilderness survival course so he could go back and teach his kids at the school. We packed up our old truck in the Shuswap and to the coast we came. We camped in the truck at Stanley Park. We ended up on Cortes because he was friends with the writer here, Gilean Douglas, and he wanted me to meet Gilean Douglas. We came to Cortes from Quadra. We camped at Rebecca Spit, because you could camp at the Spit at that time. I caught my first salmon there. We came across, and camped at the Gorge. And at that time, I think the Gorge would have been in the hands of  Tammy Allwork's parents. It was just a big field. No hot tub, you could go outside, dig a hole, and have a fire. It's summer. I remember picking up some apples, they’re kind of started but not fully ripe, and walking out to an apple tree.  A black tailed deer looked at me and I looked at the deer and it walked up and ate the apple out of my hand. That's a pretty impressionable thing at 12 because where I grew up, white tailed deer do not walk up to you and eat apples out of your hands for a good reason, right?  That was my first sort of emphatic whoa!”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Jane Newman will be leading a series of creative workshops at the Cortes Island Museum this season.  

“The museum was in contact with me about running some programming this fall,” she explained. "After thinking about it I was like, 'yeah,  I'm really interested, but I only want to run creative programming. I want to do things that are hands-on.  It's my thing, I love doing it, I love sharing it with people. I love hanging out with people when they're making things. The things that come out of it are so precious!' So I designed three programs. One of them is collage card making, another  is making some garlands and ornaments at 'Vintage Christmas' at the Museum and the third one is making homemade snow globes."

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The Nature Trust of British Columbia wants to purchase 35.7 acres in the Mansons Bay Forest for a land conservancy. They have already raised about half of the necessary funding and have until December 31 to rise the remaining $408,000. 

“One of the landowners has come forward, and they're interested in selling the land for conservation. They've never developed the land, and they'd like to see it stay in the intact condition that it is right now. We are working with them to purchase the land so that we can prevent the conversion of habitat to residential use and maintain the habitat values for the species at risk that live on Cortes Island,” explained Dr Jasper Lament, CEO of the Nature Trust of Canada.

“The Mansons Bay Forest lands are located near Mansons Bay and quite close to Mansons Landing Provincial Park. It has some forest on it that's over a century old and then scattered veteran trees that are over 200 years old. There's habitat for species at risk including Barn Swallows, Band-tailed Pigeons, and Common Nighthawks.”

The associated press kit also mentions “Evening Grosbeaks, Purple Martins, Olive-sided Flycatchers, and Northern Red-legged Frogs, all of which are of SARA Special Concern.”

“Marbled Murrelets are one example of a species-at-risk that has been observed in the ocean waters surrounding Cortes Island. These small seabirds can travel over a hundred kilometres a day between their inland nest sites located in large areas of old forest and marine foraging areas, where they hunt for small fish to feed their chicks. Murrelets are unusual among seabirds because of their solitary and secretive nesting requirements. They avoid predators by flying silently at high speeds (greater than 80 km/h) during dark twilight to visit their secluded forest nests.”  

Jasper Lament: “These are just examples of over a dozen at risk species that have been observed within one kilometer of this important forested parcel.”

Cortes Currents: What about animal species? I would imagine you have wolves going through there at least.

Jasper Lament: "We don't have wildlife cameras up on this particular parcel but if we did, we might detect wolves, black tailed deer, cougar, mink, etc. There's definitely the potential for those species."
   

Cortes Currents: Tell me about  your organization.  

Jasper Lament: "The Nature Trust of British Columbia is a land conservation organization that was founded back in 1971, and since then the Nature Trust of BC has conserved over 180,000 acres of land across British Columbia."

"Cortes Island is one of the landscapes where the Nature Trust has worked. The first project  was back in the early 1980s, when the Nature Trust acquired Hague Lake Island."

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The faint stench of rotting salmon greets visitor’s nostrils just beyond the Squirrel Cove Store. Further down the rocky beach, at the mouth of Basil Creek, clouds of seagulls feasted upon the corpses. A few of the dead Chum Salmon were reduced to skeletons, but most have been left to rot. The only body part missing is their eyes, a delicacy among sea gulls.

Nothing has been feasting on their brains, which is a delicacy among black bears. There were reports of bears raiding human properties during the last big Chum run, in 2020. The Whaletown Bear needed to be put down. His Squirrel Cove counterpart was also slated for execution, but may have escaped.

There have been a couple of bear sightings in Whaletown this fall, but so far they have not been a problem. The island taxodermist, Laurel Bohart, says she has not seen any scat or other indications of bears in Squirrel Cove.

The question remains: Have Cortes residents learned to Bear Smart their properties? Or will yet another forest creature be lured to his death sentence by human attractants?

As a result of the rains, water is now raging through Basil Creek. While their numbers appear to be slacking, there are still dozens of salmon fighting their way upstream.

Bohart has been living in Squirrel Cove for 22 years, but insisted, “I have never seen so many salmon.”

She listed four species of gulls feasting on their corpses: Glaucous gulls, Mew gulls, Ring-billed gulls and Bonaparte’s gulls.

Another Squirrel Cove resident saw the gulls scatter as a bald eagle flew by. They returned to the harvest once it passed.

Two squadrons of black duck-like birds were cruising offshore. Bohart confrimed they were most likely Surf scoters, but added there have also been Mergansers.

Sea Lions can be heard barking most nights. Harbour seals are quieter.

The anonymous Squirrel Cove resident reported seeing five gulls zero in on the Chum disturbed by a hungry seal.

Bohart remarked, “Everything is feasting on the salmon.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Current - There were a number of next steps connected to last summer’s Cortes/Quadra Transportation survey.

Kate Maddigan, Economic Development Officer of The Cortes Community Economic Development Association (CCEDA) explained, “I haven’t publicly said the final report is complete because I really wanted to put some attention into just making it shorter, like a briefing on that final report, rather than having people read the whole thing. Having said that, the recommendations, which is what I always skip to if I have to read a final report, are pretty straightforward. If I was to summarize the whole thing, I would just say these are the next steps and this is what those people who participated said they wanted.” 

“I'm just in the middle of completing a funding application to the Rural Transportation Solutions Fund, which is due at the end of this month.”  

“We basically wanted to do a pilot project of old and new approaches to passenger transportation. A shuttle on Quadra, which should come to no surprise to anyone who lives here. They wanted a bus that does a loop across the island. A lot of people could use that bus. There's also some new ride hailing, and ride sharing technology that other places are using, so let's get it working for our rural area.”

“You can get an app for things like ride hailing, which is Uber or Lyft. There's apps that have been developed out there to make it much easier for people to carpool. There is an option with these carpooling apps that allows people to make a donation towards gas or whatever other expenses a driver might have.”

One problem with bringing an Uber type passenger transportation service to our islands is you have to have a car that's no more than 10 years old. That's going to disqualify a lot of people." 

"Some people were suggesting we should assist matching someone who has a car that's less than 10 years old with people who want to drive. You can lend your car out to people who have the appropriate license. The response from Quadra was very good.” 

“One of the streams was for the SRD’s recent Grant in Aid intake is for the environment. Getting people out of their cars and using alternative passenger transportation options is definitely good for the environment. So we applied for that to just help us be able to explore ride hailing, ride sharing apps and also recruit drivers.” 

Cortes Currents: Hollyhock expressed some interest in using their shuttle bus to transport people to and from the ferry.

Kate Maddigan: “They were interested in that pilot project, and they were willing to provide a shuttle  twice a day, first ferry, last ferry.  We got a quote from them and we're factoring that into the budget for the pilot project, which we hope to roll out in the spring/summer 2025.” 

There has also been some talk about utilizing the Klahoose bus. 

We will undoubtedly hear more about all of these ideas in the months to come.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - According to the United Nations, global diversity loss is one of the world’s most pressing emergencies. “Intense human activities, such as land-use change, overexploitation, climate change, pollution and the introduction of invasive species, is causing an extinction acceleration that is at least tens to hundreds of times faster than the natural process of extinctions.” More than 400 vertebrate species have been lost over the past 100 years. The populations of close to half the species listed by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals ‘are showing population declines’ and 97% of the fish species are ‘threatened with extinction.’

Canada made an international commitment to protect species at risk, but a new report from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada found we are not providing the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) with anywhere near the the support it needs.

More than 5,000 of the approximately 80,000 species in Canada are potentially at risk, but COSEWIC only has the resources to complete 60 assessments or reassessments a year.

Mike Moore, President of the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) added, “It’s one thing just to enumerate that species are going into decline, but if that’s not also coupled with money that goes to changing policy to protect habitat, or to reduce the risk of climate change, then counting species is really just gathering data to write a really nice epitaph for the gravestones of species that go extinct.”

According to the Auditor General’s report, “The department limited its support to 60 assessments and reassessments in 2023/24—without a formal analysis to demonstrate why the target was chosen—and it still did not provide the support necessary to complete the 60 as targeted. With a target of 60 assessments and reassessments per year, it would take almost 30 years for the committee to assess the species currently prioritized and over a century to assess those that are potentially at risk.”

CKTZ/Cortes Currents - Two live theatre productions are coming to Mansons Hall this weekend

Cortes Radio sent over five audio tracks. A lot of Cortes residents are going to recognize the voices of the two people who conducted the interviews that follow but as they chose to not introduce themselves, they are labelled CKTZ in the written version of this story. This is their show and it starts with the PSA for Moonrise the Rock Opera, which opens on Friday November 8, 2024:

Moonrise, the mythic rock opera, retelling an old Celtic myth about returning power to the earth and the goddess. Starring in the Starseed Theatre production is Denman based artists Thomas Aerie, Jenna Bird, Bee Balm, Lea Tess, and Cortes’ own Rue McDonald and Christopher Fleck.

Theatre Undertow presents The Elephant Song, a play by Nicholas Bion. Two performances. Saturday and Sunday, November 9th and 10th, 7 p. m. at Manson's Hall. Tickets available at the Co op, Cortez Market, and Manson's Hall office. PG 13 mature content. See Tideline for childcare options. The Elephant Song. Two performances, Saturday and Sunday, November 9th and 10th, 7pm at Manson's Hall.