Cortes Currents

Unedited audio of Daniela Carmona & Pablo Cardenas' Cuban Soul Explosion

UNedited audio of Owyn Pengelly, Denise Wolda & Basil Aerie Thomas, unnamed song

Unedited audio of the Awakeneers singing Clicking

UNedited audio of Rick & Amy Bockner and friends singing Love one Another

Unedited audio of Denise Wolda singing 'Feel the Island' at Lovefest 2026

Unedited audio of Greg Osoba reciting the Well

Unedited audio of Daniel Lapp, Adam Dovray and Adrian Dolan's performance at Lovefest 2026

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - I believe I've covered every Love Fest to date, but I invariably bake out between four and five o'clock, which means I've never been there for the big-name acts. So this year, I decided to do things a little differently. I was there at the opening as usual, but left early and returned at five o'clock. In terms of interviews, Benji Coey, Amy Robertson, and Andrea Block provided some insight into the Cortes Island Love Fests, past and present. Speaking of someone who spends a great deal of time in front of a computer, I wanted to hear the story behind The Awakener's song, "Clicking," and I simply had to interview Daniel Lapp.

Jemma Hicken/ Folk U Radio - Thanks for joining us on July 31st, 2026 for the 5th week of our Village Commons Music Series, a simultaneously live and live-broadcast show, happening on Fridays from 1 - 2:30pm on the new Pavilion stage.

Stand-in host Jemma Hicken was joined by Rue McDonald, Heather Wolf, and Elizabeth Hodgins, who played an in-the-round show and swapped songs and stories. Listen in for 3 beautiful voices, a dulcimer, a looper pedal, and conversations about the Scottish Gaelic language, starting to play music as an adult, and tour/adventure stories.

The Village Commons Music Series is produced by Jemma Hicken, Sean Coyote, and Bryan McKinnon. It is made possible by the Cortes Island Community Foundation, Cortes Community Radio, and FolkU.

Folk U Radio is taking old school viral every Friday at 1 p.m. and Mondays at 3 p.m./Wednesday at 6

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - There’s a new gallery in Mansons Landing every weekend this summer.

Lee Gass and his wife, Lucretia “Lu” Schanfarber, are Quadra Island residents who are well known on Cortes. They have owned the house where the Lee Gass Gallery is located for decades.

The sculptures inside are made of bronze, stone, and wood, but they also tell the story of Gass’s life. A series of five female busts enshrines his feelings for Lu.

A Love Story

Lee Gass: “They are all called Listening to the Wind. That harks back to a day in the Shulaps Range, high up, with glaciers and crags above us and steep slopes below us. Lu and I were sitting under a whitebark pine, listening to the wind.

“It was just a wonderful, magical afternoon that changed my life in a lot of ways. We named the sculpture Listening to the Wind to remind us of that day and what it meant to us.”

Cortes Currents: “Why is the sculpture's face so pushed in and her shoulders are so pronounced.”

Lee: “I don’t have any explanation for this other than she’s got way more brain than will fit in one skull.

“I needed this concavity for design purposes. It started out as a flat, slightly convex face, and it was boring. So I just pushed it in. It gives shadows and accentuates the three-dimensionality of it.

“The shoulders: Lu is strong. She helped me unload that 600-pound red marble piece there, the one you can see through the rhododendrons, this morning. I’d rather have her work with me than most men I’ve worked with.”

Cortes Currents: His wife Lu added another layer to the story.

Lu: “For almost the last 25 years, it’s been a love letter. Lee has created something specifically for me, and as part of our history and our future, it’s very grounding. I listen to that voice that says, ‘You’re loved.’”

Lee: “You make me cry, Babe.”

Lu: “That’s not hard to do, as I recall.”

Cortes Currents: “How did the two of you meet?”

Lu: “I happened to move in across the street from him in Vancouver in 1993. I would see him out my bedroom window while I was working in my office. He was carving rocks in his garden, and Listening to the Wind was the piece he was working on that I noticed the most. So I got to watch that piece unfold before I ever even met him.”

Cortes Currents: “He said he made this for you.”

Lu: “He didn’t know that until he met me.”

Lee: “I was fully employed, so it took years for me to make one sculpture. The feelings associated with it developed, and the relationship we were beginning developed at the same time.”

Lu: “We actually started to hang out together in 1996. Then it took six years for us to decide to put our lives together. The same year we got married was when we bought our place on Quadra."

“Two years later, we also discovered we loved Cortes. I came to visit my son Justice and his partner Kirsten. They were stewards at Linnaea, and they had just had a baby, Emmett, who’s 26 now."

“I thought, ‘Oh, I’d actually like to have a closer relationship with my family, and especially my grandson.’”

How Lee Gass Became a Sculptor

A bar of soap and the soap shavings beside it are reminders of how Gass became a sculptor.

Lee: “When I was five, my mom and I would sit on the back porch with a newspaper between us. This was 1947, and what Mom was doing was making soap flakes for the washing machine and entertaining this little kid who needed something to do.

“She could make giraffes and snakes and all kinds of stuff. She said, ‘Just shave the soap like this, Lee,’ and a big curl would come off.

“I’d try to cut a bear. I’d slip and cut myself. She’d say, ‘Oh, I see you cut your finger again today, Lee. Are you going to use a Band-Aid, or do you just want to suck on it like you did yesterday?’

“And I said, ‘Mm, tastes pretty good. I think I’ll just suck on it.’

“That’s how I started.