Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - t has been about seven months since operations at Klahoose Gorge Harbour were scaled back due to a need for extensive renovations. While much of it is not visible to the public, QXMC, the Klahoose First Nations development corporation, has been very busy since then. 

On Wednesday Ron Buchhorn, Chairman of the Board of QXMC, and Marco Bedetti, who has been Resort Manager since April, gave Cortes Currents an overview of what they are doing. 


Buchhorn explained, “We want this to be a resort that people are amazed at in terms of the service, the ambiance, and yet we want to keep it quaint in the sense that we want the islanders to feel welcome here and enjoy the facilities here.”


“So it'll be an interesting path to walk, where we'll have boaters come in and half million dollar boats who have certain expectations and then people from the island who will want to enjoy the Gorge who have a set of expectations. I'm sure that Marco, having lived here and understanding the culture here, will thread that needle perfectly.”

Recorded by Bill Weaver - Erin Robinsong's reading at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Marnie's Book

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - By 1979, Norm Gibbons wanted a change. He had been one of the partners in the Refuge Cove Store for the past eight years.  He had not yet decided to move to Cortes Island, when he started looking into the oyster sector.


“Oysters weren't cultured at that point in time. There were just oysters out there. Anybody involved in the industry picked oysters, shucked them, and sold the shuck to Vancouver.”


“Then I found out about this operation down in Lasqueti Island that had its own packing plant. This place was the vanguard of the transition that was starting to happen in British Columbia, the transition into culture from wild harvesting.” 


“The reason for that was that oysters go through somewhere between a 7 and a 10 year cycle, where there's what's called a general spat fall. Oysters spat, they attach to all the intertidal walls in the whole southern gulf here, to all the rocks, to all the shells and so on. You end up with this huge volume of oysters.” 

“That's how this wild fishery reproduced itself all by itself, but the whole thing came apart about the time that I got into the business.  The oysters just weren't doing their thing. That  brought in a whole new group of oyster growers.” 


“We actually got ourselves a grant to go to Japan, and spent six weeks in Japan touring their entire seafood industry. We spent a lot of time looking at how they grew mussels, how they grew oysters and clams and so on.  When we came back to Canada, we knew a hell of a lot more than we did when we left.” 


“I was still living at Refuge Cove. The B. C. government was very supportive of what we were doing and we got grants to do all kinds of things. We ended up doing what's called raft culture.” 


“You can hang the oysters from a raft. The column of water that has plankton in it, that the oysters can eat, goes down around 20 feet. So, there's a 20 foot column that the oysters can feed in. They can be strung. You can have an oyster shell, with oysters that have spatted onto it and then that shell grows out into a big cluster.  You can put those shells on a string.  Every foot, you can have 15 or so shells on one string and a lot of strings on a raft. Oysters don't sleep, they just eat. That's all they do. So they grow really fast that way.” 


“It took about ten years, from 1980 to maybe 1990, to really get some of this new technology, not necessarily perfected, but at least  at a level that you could commercialize it.” 


“I started my first oyster lease  at Refuge Cove: on the other side of Centre Island, that's in the middle of Refuge Cove. Then I applied for leases all around Redonda and up Lewis Channel.”

“Our business was doing very well. We had a premier customer in New York City, the Grand Central Station Oyster Bar. I think it's the biggest oyster bar in the world. We patented the name Golden Mantle. The Golden Mantle oyster is sold in restaurants all around North America, it's sold all around the world.” 


By 1985. Norm's business had outgrown Refuge Cove. There is more in the podcast

Submission by Nancy Beach - The opinions that follow are those of the person expressing them and not necessarily shared by Cortes Currents, or Cortes Radio.

The following submission was made by Nancy Beach.

After dealing with BC assessment for 17 years or more, in regard to my small farm on Salt Spring Island, I have come to the conclusion that:

Farm assessments should be administered by the Ministry of Agriculture, not the Ministry of Housing.

The system for assessing farm status needs to be overhauled. It should not be lumped in with assessing the values of residential properties.

Farmers should be given adequate time to present and debate their cases.

More people who care about farms should sit on the board of the Property Assessment Appeal Board (PAAB), and the panel of the Property Assessment Review Panel, (PARP).’

PARP plan panel members making decisions concerning farms should be well educated about the farm regulations number. Pabst should not charge for their services.

BC Farmers need an organization to represent them, represent themselves and help defend their interests before the B. C. Assessment when necessary.

While my farm is on Salt Spring, I am a resident of Cortes Island and believe these matters are concerns of small farmers and all farmers throughout British Columbia.

I also want to publish a transcript of my latest hearing before the property assessment review panel PARP on March 15th, 2023 which actually went partly in my favor. I was asking for them to provide farm status for the entire property. They decided to only provide farm status for a small part of the land.

Audio of the hearing is in a separate podcacst

Audio from meeting recorded and submitted by Nancy Beach

Recorded by Bill Weaver - Shaena Lambert's reading at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Marnie's Book

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - years. He started coming after a family sailboat trip through Desolation Sound.


“The last two days of that trip were spent at Manson's Landing and Gorge Harbour. And we just said, ‘holy cow, we got to check this island out!’ So the next summer we rented Cedar Moon for the first of many years and came up for one or two weeks, pretty much every summer since.”


Antle is also the lead vocalist in a band that plays traditional Hawaiian music and this Thursday, August 31 at 6:30, he will be performing at the Cortes Island Museum.

Recorded by Bill Weaver - Shaena Lambert's reading at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Marnie's Book

Recording by Bill Weaver - Rex Weyler's reading at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Marnie's Book

Recording by Bill Weaver - Norm Gibbons reading at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Marnie's Book