Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Grand Opening of the Outdoor Friday Market was a warm summer day and hundreds of people may have passed through before it ended. There were 14 stalls clustered beneath the cedar trees and around the edges of the parking lot. I did not go inside the hall, which is always packed with tables.

Interviews with vendors and customers

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - According to local musician Jemma Hicken, when the Gorge Harbour Marina partially shut down for renovations this summer, they also closed one of the most popular music venues on Cortes Island. 


“Me and a lot of my musician friends have been playing at the Gorge and have been paid to play at the Gorge - which is amazing on Cortes. You don't often find paying gigs here. Then the Gorge shut down most of its operations this year, and I think a lot of the community felt like there was a big hole left by the lack of live music. There’s been a couple of attempts at organizing live music around the island. I know that there's live music happening at the Co-op on Saturday nights, which is awesome. We're going to have live music for the Friday Markets as well.”


Sean and Catriona provided the first of a series of concerts that Hicken and co-host Louis Belcourt are organizing.


Radio Sean: “We had a fair number of people show up. More than we expected on the first day of the series. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out.“


I would call the audience smallish, but intimate. There were no more than a dozen people at its largest extent during the second set, and probably no more than 20 in total. As the Commons is set back, there were also no disruptive conversations spilling over from the Market. Everyone at the concert was there to listen.


Belcourt explained, “We are attempting to put on live music every Friday from 1 to 3 PM during the Friday Markets. We've been working with Manda Aufochs Gillespie from the Cortes Foundation and in support, with the radio as well, to try to get some live music for the community. It'll be a lovely revolving door of local musicians who want to play.” 


“We're just filling the schedule in right now. Please reach out if you like to play, if you have upwards of an hour and a half of material and reach out to us. Just show up to the Friday Market at any time between one and three and talk to Louis or Jemma.”

Jemma Hicken: “Especially if you want to play July 7th, or July 14th.”

  

Hicken said they have Rick Bockner booked for July 21. 


Jemma Hicken: “Maybe Amy is going to play with him as well. My partner and I are going to be playing at some point. We haven't booked our date yet, but I'll let you know when it happens.”


Radio Sean: “There’s a whole lineup of amazing musicians from Cortes, Quadra and beyond that are going to be here. So come on out.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - It has been more than three years since I interviewed Willow about the release of their EP ‘The Southend.’

Maureen Fox explained, “it was right before COVID when we spoke. We've had a bit of an adventure and then about a year later, Noel Maffin had to move to Gold River to be with her family. So we were asked the beautiful Kelly Beamish to join us. Kelly brings this fabulous voice into the mix that has been really fun because her voice blends so well with ours.”

Kelly Beamish: “Hi.”

CC: When did you join Willow?

Kelly: “2021 I think. Yeah, like March.”


They have only recorded one song.

Andrea Blaseckie explained, “I have a clip of ‘Joyful,’ which is the latest song that was recorded here on Quadra Island and it has all four of us in it.”


 (’Joyful’ is inserted in the podcast.)


Andrea later emailed, “It's a song I wrote after I found a bag full of little notes that people had written to me for my 21st birthday. When I turned 21, I was travelling with an international performing group where I was mainly a backup singer. That morning we were enroute to Leipzig, Germany. The rest of the cast surprised me with this little bag full of birthday wishes and kind words and insights on how they saw me.” 


“I hadn't seen that little bag of notes for over 25 years and I happened upon them at exactly the right time that I needed to find parts of myself that I had forgotten. It was a great reminder of the innocence and blind faith of my 21 year old experience, the hope that I saw within the world, the difference I believed we all could make, my growing sense of self confidence and self worth, my shyness and yet there I was travelling the world singing songs and performing to audiences anywhere from 25 to 30,000 people. Joyful was a song I wrote to my 21 year old self. To all of our 21 year old selves. To remind us all of who we may have been then and the threads of that version of ourselves that is still within us now.” 


Maureen Fox explained, “It is on our agenda to get some really good recordings coming up. So you'll hopefully be hearing from us in that way not too long from now.” 


To which Trinity Gogolin added, “We have a lot of new songs, at least 10.”

Several of the group promptly responded: “More than that”; “She's saying this year”; “last couple of months”; “in last year that we've started practicing.”

There are three opportunities to hear these new songs coming up.

Aug 5 - at the Southend Farm Winery Concert Series on Quadra Island

Aug 12 - at Lovefest on Cortes Island.

Aug 26 - at the Comox Valley Market Exhibition Grounds, Courtenay, BC

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - SRD staff is preparing an open Burning Bylaw for Cortes Island.

This is in response to Coastal Fire Centre’s decision to allow campfires, on June 20: ‘due to cooler conditions and rainfall, which has reduced the fire danger rating in these areas.’ However appropriate this may have been in other areas under the Centre’s control, it was not on Cortes Island. As Nancy Kendel wrote in the Tideline, “We have had basically NO RAIN since beginning of May, and our forests are tinder dry!”

The Coastal Fire Centre’s decision also applied to:

Marina Island

Maurelle Island

Raza Island

Read Island

Stuart Island

The Redonda Islands

The Rendevous Islands

The Coastal Fire Centre has once again announced a fire ban as of noon today, but Cortes Island is stll subject to regulations being drawn up in area that receives more rainfall.

Cortes Island Director Mark Vonesch brought the matter before the SRD Board at its June 28 meeting:

“I got a lot of alarming emails and phone calls regarding the lift. I contacted the province and they said that they can't change that decision, because it's based on boundaries, unless we have a bylaw in place. So this is just a bylaw that will give us power to go against it. If a lift happens and we don't think it's appropriate, then we can decide for ourselves,” he said.

There was no opposition to the motion that staff prepare a bylaw for Cortes Island, which has passed.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - North Island College is offering a free 20-day course for people who are unemployed, partially employed or precariously employed and wish to become deckhands, operate tourism related vessels or take the first step towards obtaining certification as tugboat operators.

“You have to be at least 16 years old, a resident of BC and have a social insurance number - so be a permanent resident of Canada. You must be ready to train. If you are unemployed,  if you're a high school student, if you're in grade 11 or 12 and you're 16 years of age, you can do this course. If you are only employed part-time because you can't find full-time in what you want to do. If you are only employed seasonally or casually or precariously, you can apply to be part of this program,” explained Mary Ruth Snyder,  Executive Director of the Campbell River & District Chamber of Commerce , which has partnered with the college on this project. 

MRS: “This project is funded by the Government of Canada through the Canada BC Workforce Development Agreement, and we have 12 spots available.  It's a fully funded training program, full-time Monday to Friday for 20 business days. They can start training July 13th.”


“If they do this 20 day program they would be able to right away find work as deckhands. They can operate crew boats up to I think 12 or 16 seats, tourism related vessels, or aquaculture.”

“This sets them up to do the next course,  a short course being offered in the Fall. That would get them right on to working on tugboats. right now there are a number of tugboat operators that  want to  retire, but they can't because there is nobody to take their place.”


CC: Exactly what will the people who take this program receive?  


“They will have: 


Marine Basic First Aid*

SVOP — Small Vessel Operator Proficiency

WHMIS — Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System

Job Ready — Research potential employment, Resume prep & distribution

ROC-MC* — Restricted Operator Certificate-Maritime Commercial

DVS* — Domestic Vessel Safety

FoodSafe”


“The three courses that are starred (*) in our news release are ‘the Marine Basic First Aid,’  Registered Operator Certificate for Marine, commercial’ and ‘Domestic Vessel Safety.’ These three courses can be applied toward the next level, which is the Master Limited, less than 60 tons, for tugboat operators,  being offered in the Fall.”


“There are about a million jobs available right now across Canada and here on the West Coast, a number of them are in the marine industry. As was demonstrated, I believe yesterday or the day before when BC Ferries had to cancel two sailings on the main run between Schwartz Bay and Tsawassan. It's a huge issue, not just for BC Ferries, but for tugboat operators for the Aqua Marine companies,  there are not enough trained individuals to work on boats. And we live on the coast and there is a lot of work to be done on the coast in boats.”


“Upon completion of this 20 day fully funded program, individuals will be able to immediately get work as deck hands, operating crew boats, tourism related vessels or aquaculture. It would also be a first step into BC Ferries.”


CC: Do you happen to know how long the training period is for BC ferries? 


MRS:  “I do not, but call them and they will be able to tell you.”


“We've spoken to Marine Link Transportation, aquaculture companies and BC Ferries, every single one of them who have anything to do with marine on the coast is desperate for individuals with at least this type of training.”

Image credit: Rubber crew boat Photo by USFWS on Pixnio

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The McKenty family’s first public performance was in the outdoor section of the Mansons Farmer’s Market in 2006. After leaving their rental home at Smelt Bay in 2018, they have lived in Vancouver, at Hollyhock and for the last year and a half in Willow Point.

“We can see Cortes across the water,” explained Immanuel.

To which his father, Robert added, “We're looking straight across at a place where we lived for 10 years. When we go for a swim, are gardening, or anytime we look out of the window: we're looking at Cortes. So we're not actually gone, in our own perspective, we're still displaced Cortesians.”

They were part of the circle that gathered around an H4n recorder, in the Mckenty’s basement studio. Musical instruments hung from the walls surrounding them.

Robert McKenty and his sons Immanuel, Francis and Isa are in the Awakeneers.

Two other members of the band were in that circle. Erica and Rose Giannone are sisters, who have been living with the McKentys since 2020. They are US citizens and have work permits.

Immanuel described his mother Elizabeth McKenty, who sat on the stairs overlooking her family throughout our interview, as ‘a great supporter and behind-the-scenes member of the band. ‘She doesn't usually perform onstage with us. She has done some wonderful watercolour paintings which we've used for our album artwork.’

Robert and Elizabeth have three more children. Adam is in Germany. Ieva and Eli live on Cortes. While they are no longer members of the band, they all contributed to the Awakeneers new album.

Erica: “Though we're not currently living on the island, it is really nice to be able to look across the water. I know you guys are all over there, and I see the lovely island.”

Immanuel: “I’m still frequently checking the ’property for sale’ listings on the island (this prompts some chuckles) with a hopeful raise of the eyebrow.”

Robert: “We moved to Willow Point around Christmas in 2021. We scored a large rental house that was scheduled for demolition. It was originally only a three month rental when we moved in, but the demolition has been rescheduled, so we are still living here, happily.”

CC: Ouch.

Immanuel: “The good part of that was that since it was scheduled to be demolished, we had free reign to install many instrument hangers all over the walls of the basement. So we took full opportunity to do that.”

More in podcast

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Lovefest will be returning to Cortes Island on August 12. 

“Lovefest just has its own momentum. It exists because the community wants it. There's nothing political about it. We get to enjoy some good music, have fun together and just be with each other as a community,” explained Rex Weyler, one of the key organizers. 

Today’s program consists of an interview with Rex, interspersed with songs from three of the acts coming to this year’s Lovefest. 


We’ll start the music off with Adonis Peuentes, the first band that Rex mentioned in our interview.


RW: “We have five years of experience, so we're getting a little better at it. We've got a great team. Soma Feldmar, Amy Robertson, Rick Bockner, myself and others are involved every year in putting it on. We have 50 volunteers, so all of that collected experience. Lonnie Taylor's been helping from day one and Dancing Wolf does the decoration. He's great at that.” 


“We have the Community Action Bus, which we had last year for the first time ever and the Community Action Bus comes from Victoria.  It'll circle Cortes all day long, picking people up, bringing them and taking them home from the event. That really cuts down on the necessity for cars.”   


“That's what I love about Lovefest. It's evolving in a really nice direction because people are having a good time and want to contribute. I think we do a better job every year.” 

“What's really special to me about this year is that we just have some great bands that have not been to Cortes yet.The Adonis Puentes Cuban band is going to be a killer.  A not new band that's not been here before is also the Unfaithful Servants from Victoria.” 

“Pierre Schreyer and Adam Dobray were here last year and they were just such a hit fiddle player and guitar player. They're just so good  and played great fiddle dance music. People loved them, wanted them back, so they're coming back.” 


RW: Our friends from Quadra Island, Willow, are a wonderful singing group. They were here in 2019. I love them, they're just fantastic. 


Then a lot of our local favourites: Josephine Simpson grew up here; Michael Keith; Jemma Hicken,  Wiley Ferguson will bring his band. Wiley, by the way, had one of his compositions accepted by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.  Wiley's a great musician, great guitar player; Brenda Hanson is going to play. A new singer songwriter we've never had before. Marianne Grittani will be here. Many of the people on Cortes know Jesse Roy; Heather Wolfe and her band.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Today’s program is going to be a little different. The Awakeners will be coming home to Cortes at the end of July. They are playing at Gorge Hall on Friday July 28, and Mansons Hall the following day.

“We are excited that we'll have a brand new album with us, for both of those,” said Immanuel McKenty.

“Which was mostly recorded on Cortez Island and the majority of the songs were also written while we were on Cortes. The album will also be for sale at the Cortes Natural Food Co-op, as well as at our concerts,” added his brother Francis McKenty.

This is the beginning of a two part series about that ‘nomadic tribe of multi-instrumentalist songwriters (most of whom are siblings)’ called the Awakeners. We talk a great deal about their album and where most of the songs were written, and play three songs.

As they agreed to let Cortes Currents broadcast some of the songs, I asked what was their favourite. This prompted a long discussion, as most of them said do not have a favourite

Immanuel said, “Starting To Become’ is one of my favorites on the album. It's one that Francis wrote while we were staying at Hollyhock and recorded there while we were living there.”

His father, Robert McKenty, agreed, “If we had a, lead song for the album, it'd be called that.”

(‘Starting to Become’ inserted in the podcast.)

Robert McKenty: “There's 19 songs and a couple of them are instrumentals, one of which is fiddle and the other is very classical sounding piano. There's folk songs, there's ones that sound like a big crowd singing along. There's funny ones like ‘Teen Freak’ or ‘Think,’ and then there's sobering ones like ‘What A Man Can Be.’

Immanuel McKenty: “A lot of the songs on the album are a result of what we did instead of touring when Covid happened. We were living at Hollyhock at the time and redirected our energies towards recording. For a long time, we were sending a brand new song out to our email newsletter once a week as our musical challenge and way to say, inspired and connected with our audience while we were confined to one small area of land and house.”

Erica Giannone explained, “It was pretty neat to have something going out every week. I think it gathered some nice momentum and people had something to look forward to in their inbox. A lot of the people on our newsletter are people all around the world that we've connected with over years and years of travel. So it was always pretty special to have the responses coming in and connecting with people again, even though we weren't able to get out on the road.”

Immanuel McKenty: “It was quite a fun challenge too, because we weren't necessarily planning to keep doing it when we started, but it picked up momentum until we were doing it every week and taking it fairly seriously. We would have pretty intense couple of days leading up to the Friday. When we would always send out the our song usually on Friday night. So we would be in our recording room for hours and hours on usually Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, getting all the tracks in and mixing it in. Then we were doing artwork for each song.”

“The songs were all written by different people, and we tried to rotate around, so we were sending out some of everyone's songs, and often the songwriter would write some text about what the song was related to that would go out in the newsletter and also come up with some sort of artwork idea that they or somebody else would design and put together to go out with it.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Seven antique cars pulled into Mansons Landing shortly after 12:30 on Wednesday, June 21.

There was a lot of anticipation prior to to their arrival

Melanie Boyle, Managing Director/Curator of the Cortes Museum, explained, “So far as I know, we've never had 15 vintage cars arrive here on the island. We as a museum celebrate histories of various sorts and histories of the island, old technologies and looking back at a day when people travel differently, slower forms of transportation and different speed in the world.”

“This is really celebration of that and, I'm sure it takes a special sort of person who has a devotion to restoring older things and a value of not trashing things and not always looking for the newest, but respecting something of the past and with it heritage and stories that go along with it.”

The Antique Chapter, of the Vintage Car Club of Canada is in Campbell River this week. They have been making day trips out into the surrounding countryside. They were in the Comox Valley yesterday and today they are coming to Cortes Island.

Photo credit: Julie from Julie's Cafe delivering their lunches

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Quadra Island’s Community Plan was drawn up in 2007 and some of the Outer Discovery have land use plans dating back to the 1990s, but Area C needed an overall comprehensive vision. The Strathcona Regional District (SRD) started the consultation process leading to an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan in 2019. Then COVID arrived and everything was put on hold. Last year the SRD recruited a community focus group, hired a facilitator and proceeded to finish the job. On Friday, June 16, The SRD Board announced the approval of the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan for Electoral Area C (The Discovery Islands & Mainland Inlets).


“Anytime we do any sort of comprehensive planning process, one of the biggest challenges that we have is finding common ground amongst all  the disparate ideas, visions, goals and challenges of people living in different areas - and with being diverse people themselves.  In this case because it is a vision for the entire region, it was much more important that we were able to come together, find that common ground and that shared vision.  That required a lot of intense discussion and a lot of work together,” explained Meredith Starkey. SRD Manager of parks and planning.  


“The success story is that we were able to come together and craft this plan that may not be perfect as far as how each individual person  would have written it, but everyone  is happy with, and that we can all carry this forward into the next phase of the planning process into official community plans and zoning bylaws and  really implement it because it is something that is largely accepted, agreed upon and shared.” 


“We structured this plan around five community systems, recognizing that they all  build on each other and they're interconnected and they're interdependent. So a change or an influence in one area has impacts on all of the others and vice versa.” 


 “The five structures are: 

climate change and natural environment, 

Developed areas, housing and infrastructure, 

community wellbeing and health, 

the economy and employment 

and governance and reconciliation.”