Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Close to a dozen volunteers and two Park Rangers participated in the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) annual Broom Bash on Saturday, March 18.

They swept the spit at Mansons Lagoon in about 3 hours.

“We really appreciate all of the help from the volunteers here on Cortes. It's really amazing that the local community comes out and takes ownership of this place. We couldn't do it without the volunteers,” said Eli Simcoe Metcalfe, of BC Parks.

He and his partner, Thomas Porsborg, joined in the work and also brought some baked goods for break time.

Helen Hall, Executive Director of FOCI, explained “The fact there's very little broom left in the spit is all through community volunteers. Before we started doing this, the broom was 7-8 feet tall and we had to get out with chainsaws. Now, coming back each year, we've just cut the regrowth.”

CC: How many volunteer activities do you have happening at FOCI?

HH: “We've got a whole range of different volunteer activities. Things like this, which is practical conservation. We've also been doing a lot of work bees at the newly restored Dillon Creek Wetland at Linnaea Farm. We also have volunteers doing monitoring work for us. Over the winter months we've been doing forage fish surveys on the beach. In the summer we do foreshore monitoring with volunteers, looking at the different plant and animal communities at low tides on the beach. We've been doing that now for 25 years, so that data's really important. We also have volunteers going out once a month doing monitoring on the lake.”

“We're also just about to start what's called light trap monitoring, which is placing a light trap into Cortes Bay. We are currently looking for volunteers for that. It involves putting the light trap in the water each night. We’re looking for the larvae of two crabs. The Dungeness Crab, which is under threat and also the invasive Green Crab. We're looking for those two larvae to see if those crabs are here. Data is going back to the Hakai Institute, which has 20 light traps throughout the Salish Sea.”

CC: So we're talking about dozens of people?

HH: “Yes, lots of people, doing lots of different types of volunteer work.”

 

Leona Jensen has been volunteering since she arrived on Cortes Island 7 years ago. She thinks she might take part in about 30 FOCI events per year.

“Yesterday I went to a Streamkeepers meeting. Then there was the wetland project, I went to pretty well all of their volunteer days. I like to be outside, to be in nature. I like to help nature if I can,” she said.

“I'm here today because I'm concerned about the invasive broom plants everywhere, but especially here on Manson's Landing because it's such a vulnerable spot.”

Alex Bernier is one of the contractors FOCI uses to maintain Cortes Island parks, but he came in a different role Saturday.

“I'm just volunteering to try to mitigate the broom invasion down at Manson's Lagoon. It's a beautiful day and it's a good cause to try to promote the native species to take back this land,” he said.

CC: Do you come every year?

AB: “Yes, for probably the last five years now.”

HH: “A lot of people this morning are having good fun, having a chance to meet with their neighbors and do something really positive too. I think individual projects bring a lot to volunteers. They also learn a lot about the local environment as well as contributing to some really important monitoring work and some conservation work too.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Up until now, there have not been any reports of Western Screech Owls on Cortes Island since 2017. That just changed a few weeks ago in the island’s more remote northern forest.

Field biologist Sabina Leader Mense reports, “I was sitting in the skiff with my husband Dennis, under an unbelievably brilliant sky of stars. It was the last station of the night, pushing midnight, and in the 16th minute of that 17 minute call playback sequence, I heard something. I remember pivoting around in the boat. The sound was behind me and you do what owls do, you turn around. I think your ears and the muscles and your ears cup and you're just straining to hear something. Then I heard the call again. It was very distant, but I recognized it was an owl. I began analyzing the audio disks in my head going, ‘is it a Northern Pygmy Owl? Is it a Northern Saw-Whet Owl?’ As I was doing this, it called the third time and I recognized it was a Western Screech Owl.”

“The only word I can find to describe that feeling, upon recognizing it was a Western Screech Owl that had just called back to me, is gobsmacked.”

“If you look at the definition of gobsmacked, it means overwhelmed with wonder, overwhelmed with surprise, or shock. That was the feeling in that moment of having that Western Screech Owl call back, after all those times that we've tried.”

“Then that feeling of gobsmack moved into complete disbelief. I had to strain to listen again, but I had 12 very clear calls from the Western Screech Owl. There was no doubt what we had. So then the emotions moved from disbelief to absolute euphoria, which was like, ‘Oh my goodness, we have one! Maybe he has a mate and they're here on Cortes.’ That feeling then went from disbelief to euphoria, and then it moved into relief.”

“It was just this incredible relief to know they were still there and that relief moved very quickly into hope. It was such a powerful emotional response. It instantly galvanized me into doing everything I could to protect them. That's what this FOCI (Friends of Cortes Island) research project is about.

We will have more about that discovery later in this broadcast, but first Leader-Mense will give an overview of the search to find Western Screech Owls, the team that has assembled and what this means for Cortes and neighbouring islands.

Louis Belcourt/CKTZ News -A local karate and kinesiology specialist has been hosting a weekly self-defense class on Cortes Island and donating the proceeds back to the community.

Kaitlin Garratt runs "Fierce and Fluid," which she describes as an "empowered self defense class," blending cardio kickboxing, karate, and "foundational energy principles to help you embody your core power and learn to deliver it with grace to the world."

Garratt is a black belt in karate and was a Canadian national team fighter for eight years. She also completed her degree in kinesiology at UBC with specialty as an Exercise Physiologist and studied and taught yoga for 15 years.

Garratt stated in an interview with CKTZ that her clients at Mansons Hall are mostly women but the class is open to everyone.

"A lot of people, and especially women, throughout their lives have felt unsafe or had moments where they abandon themselves or were taken advantage of, and this can be really life-changing for someone. There's a beautiful value system that is steeped in the traditions in karate, and I weave that into the self-defense aspect to encourage individuals to feel like they can express their boundaries more honestly and more powerfully." Garratt said.

Garratt is donating the proceeds from her class to the Southern Cortes Community Association (SCCA) to help support the programming that they organize for the community.

Fierce and Fluid is at Mansons Hall from 7-8:30 p.m. every Monday with a $5 dollar drop in fee for SCCA members.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Cortes Island naturalist George Sirk knows a lot about frogs.

GS: “A lot of people know me because of my interest in birds, which is really an addiction, isn't it? I'm just hopeless when it comes to birds. I'm just totally into them. They're so fascinating. I came from Venezuela when I was 10. My parents immigrated to Vancouver and I couldn't speak English. I could speak Spanish and I knew a little Estonian and I could understand German because my parents argued in German.”

“So there I was in Vancouver, a little weird guy 10-years-old, and I met some other weird young people too, what we would call nerds.”

“They were into frogs. Jim Palmer was one, Lowell Orchid, that's another, Jim just passed away actually in December, but Lowell's still with us all here. We used to collect frogs very close to Kits Beach, the Lacarno beach area. It used to be a military base at one time. So there used to be a lot of empty properties, fields and it got very wet in the wintertime. The tree frogs would all go in there and have a great time.”

“We used to get the tree frog eggs, take them home, have our aquariums and feed them algae when they turned into tad poles and then they would turn into little frogs. If you could get the adult frogs, that would be an even better pet. They're very good eaters, you give them little flies and all kinds of things. We would raise the tadpoles and then release all the teeny, teeny tiny frogs, three eights of an inch long. Just barely the width of your small fingernail. That was great fun.”

“I’ve done it for our children and our grandchildren, as they grow up. You get a gallon jar, a few eggs, make sure there's algae in there and watch them grow. You're actually improving their chance of survival, because they don't have the predators in your gallon jar. There's nothing more fun than letting them go, especially with kids.”

“Kim, my wife, did that in the elementary school next to the University of Victoria. She raised the little tadpoles to a little tiny, tiny mature frogs. The kids could watch the frogs for two months in the classroom. We went across the street into the pond area tof the university, with the school kids and let them all go into the grass. So they were just beside themselves that these little frogs were all hopping away into nature.”

“We used to collect salamanders too. It became a great hobby, going to different places, catching salamanders and bringing them home. Don't ever keep newts by the way. They are the worst pet in the world. They will not eat. They will refuse to eat. They need a very specialized little mini-pond as an aquarium. Clouded salamanders or wandering salamanders, they're great eaters, but you always have to make sure that you're letting them go after you've had them for a little while.”

“I just felt totally in love with different frogs. Vancouver used to have ditches, so you'd had green frogs and bullfrogs. They were all introduced, so we would catch them and keep them as well.”

“So, bringing it to Cortes, we have two species of frog here. We've got the red-legged frog, the tree frog and one toad - bufo boreas, the northwestern toad, but I won't talk too much about the toad. That's another show. Something has happened to the toad population on Cortes as it's plummeted. They're virtually gone from Cortes, but not the tree frogs.”

“Now they've changed the name of the frog to Chorus Frog, and I just hate it when scientists start meddling with names that have been around for a long time. Somebody gets a PhD and once again, they change the name. I still call them tree frogs because they don't chorus all the time and they actually do climb trees.”

Photo Credit: George Sirk in Lancaster Sound, Nunavut, with Cruise North Expeditions - submitted photo

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Garden Share and Food Recovery Programs on Quadra Island

Quadra ICAN started up two food security initiatives last week.

The Garden Share program is designed to increase the amount of food grown on Quadra Island.

Marc Doll, a local farmer and one of the candidates during the last election, said Vancouver Island grew about half of its food prior to the Second World War. He believes this statistic is currently closer to 4% or 5%.

ICAN Coordinator Ramona Boyle explained that this is the Garden Share program’s second year.

“What it does is to create a list of people who have farms or properties that they would like to see growing food, but maybe don't have the ability to do that on their own. We match them with people who would like to grow food but don't have the space or the property to do that. Last year, I think we had about a dozen matches. We would like to double that, to increase food supply and food resiliency on the island,” she said.

This year they have a new coordinator. Rena Patrick, who many Cortes Radio listeners will remember as Hurricane Rena, former host of the Homegrown Show.

“We know that there are an increasing number of older property owners who are struggling to manage gardens that they have established over many years and are just finding it a little bit too much for themselves. So we expect that this is going to be a growing trend.”

ICAN’s food recovery program officially starts up on Monday, March 20, but they have already begun distribution.

RB: “I think the real root of the program is that we know that there are people who are struggling, who don't look like they're struggling because they have a roof over their head. They are functioning, but it's getting harder and harder for them.

According to the 2016 census 230 Quadra Island households, or roughly 20% of the population needed to use more than 30% of their income for rent or mortgage payments. This means there is often less money for other needs, like groceries.

RB: “Food will be distributed twice a week, in Heriot Bay and the Cove, at different times to try and reach more people. The food so far is being collected from both Tru Value Food stores and from Amped on Nutrition. On Monday we collected 116.2 kilos of food and we distributed it to individuals who told us that food would feed 50 people. We also distributed to agencies who estimated that the food would provide meals for 125 people. So that's in total 175 people who will receive at least one meal from the food that was distributed on Monday.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Strathcona Regional District (SRD) Board passed a resolution to write a letter instructing Sadhu Johnston, President of the Cortes Island Fire Fighting Association (CIFFA), that his communications with them should come through Chief Administration Officer David Leitch.

The SRD has not renewed the Cortes Fire Department’s 5 year contract, and instead has them on a month to month basis.

Johnston requested a meeting with Leitch last month but, as he explained to Cortes Currents earlier this week, still has not had the opportunity.

“We're not wedded to the way it is, but we don't really want decisions to be made behind closed doors without the community being able to know about them and have a say. If governance is going to be taken away from Cortes and the decision making for firefighting service is going to be taken away from Cortes, it would be really nice to know that and to be able to be a part of that dialogue,” he said.

Johnston recently appears to have reached out to the entire Board.

The ‘answer’ came at the Wednesday, Mar 15, SRD Board Meeting.

Mayor Kermit Dahl of Campbell River moved,”That a letter be written to the CIFFA President, Sadhu Johnston, instructing him that all communications between the CIFFA and the SRD in regard to operations, governance and contract renewal is done through the SRD CAO. I don't think that it's appropriate for staff - I'm not sure if this is considered staff — to be sending emails to 43 individuals and the entire board. I think that's the reason that we have staff and we have a CAO. That's the reason for this motion.”

This prompted Regional Director, Gerald Whalley to ask, “The public in general has the opportunity to address this Chair and Board anytime they want. Can we actually restrict someone from doing that?”

CAO David Leitch responded, “No, we can't restrict them, but we can send direction and a letter.”

SRD Chair Mark Baker added, “It's an important motion, professionalism has to come into play and respect for the process.”

The motion to send Johnston a letter of instruction passed with two Directors voting in opposition: Whalley and Fowler.

Sadhu Johnston was Vancouver’s Deputy Manager and then City Manager for 11 years. Prior to that, he was Chicago’s Chief Environmental Officer for 6 years.

The Vancouver SUN article reporting his resignation from Vancouver, more than two years ago, states that former politicians and public servants describe Johnston with adjectives like ‘collegial, capable and non-partisan.’ He has a reputation for fairness, and being a team player.

These are skills that he has not yet been able to exercise dealing with the Strathcona Regional District Board, in his new role as volunteer President of the Cortes Island Fire Fighting Association. He has not had the opportunity.

While nothing has been decided yet, the SRD is exploring the possibility of a centralized fire service with a Fire Chief based in Campbell River.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The new President of the Cortes Island Fire Fighter’s Association (CIFFA) is not opposed to having a shared fire fighting service in the SRD. When he was Deputy Manager of Vancouver, Sadhu Johnston led the charge in creating a shared water fire service for the Lower Mainland.

“We had very extensive consultations with other municipalities that needed services, that had structures along the shoreline. I personally went to those city halls, met with those fire chiefs and the city managers. We created a steering committee that got to shape the service and then we chose which boats to purchase based on that input. It was a multiple year effort and it was done really collaboratively. I think that's the really important part.”

In regard to the current SRD initiative, he said, “Perhaps what's missing right now is just being able to all be on the same page about what kind of shared services are needed.”

SJ: “ I really understand the benefit of shared services and sharing resources and the efficiencies that can be gained out of that. In the Lower Mainland, instead of 5 or 6 or 7 municipalities all having to own and operate their own fireboats and train all their staff to maintain those boats and operate the boats and have marine firefighting certifications and whatnot. It made sense to have a few people that were trained in that. I really understand the benefits that can be achieved through shared accounting, shared management of training, in terms of tracking who's been trained, and to what standards. There could really be considerable benefits from more sharing of resources and shared services regionally with our firefighting services.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - ‘Wayfinding: Stories of Maps & Place’ opens at the Cortes Island Museum, between 1 and 4 PM on Sunday, March 26.

“I think wayfinding really touches on so many aspects of our current life. We have a really fabulous series of maps and artifacts. It's an opportunity to share that with the public for the first time on many counts. I think everybody, on some level, has a personal story to do with wayfinding. This is a celebration, and a reminder that we all have stories to tell of place and an evolving relationship to the landscape,”explained Melanie Boyle, Managing Director of the museum.

“In this increasingly digital age, you get to come in and you get to come really close to an incredible hand drawn map, with pencil crayon and notations. That physical presence is really valuable to any age, but particularly the younger generation who are perhaps more removed from the actual map making or being able to read a map in that physical presence. So I think again, like any art gallery museum, that opportunity to come face-to-face with actual documents, whether it's an object or a printed matter, is really valuable as a personal experience.”

Bonnie MacDonald, who is one of the museum’s Directors and a member of the exhibition committee, added, “A lot of people contribute to the museum. They pay their dues, they pay when they come in. A lot of people have helped to build this museum. I think it's really important that people on the island get to see the benefits of doing that. They get to see why they've contributed to our situation. They get to see some of the things that are in the archives, how well they're preserved. I think its really important for people to see what we do and what we're all about.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The 2022/2023 semester is now over and the Cortes Island Academy is preparing for a Forest Ecology Semester in 2023/2024.

“We have now officially taken this program from pilot to an actual ongoing program All of this could only happen at this speed, where we went from idea to actually having a pilot program in a year because of our amazing partnership with School District 72, the leadership of Dr. Jeremy Morrow, the superintendent and our awesome partnership with the school teacher, Jeff Lontayao, who was there for the whole process last year,” said Manda Aufochs Gillespie.

MAG: “ This first semester or half a year of the Cortes Island Academy just blew us away. Both blew away our expectations and also presented way more challenges than people on the ground could even begin to imagine, because largely this has been started and came out of the hopes and dreams of Cortes Island, not necessarily professional educators who knew all the things that we were going to be facing.”

“It has been so touching to experience 20 students saying things like, 'I have been transformed by this educational experience.' Students across the board saying things like 'they have never had an educational experience that felt so relevant to their lives.' We see students who in many cases had not been in school before, or had dropped out of school, or who had been in school for a long time and had begun to think that school was not made for them. So that was really powerful.”

“The other thing that's been powerful, and it's been happening more recently, are young adults who've come to me and said, 'Hey, I have to tell you how amazing it is that this is happening because I grew up on the island and when I got to middle school or high school age, I felt like the world was telling me that I didn't belong on Cortes anymore, that I didn't belong in my home community, that I was wrong to want to be there, that it wasn't the place for me.' They felt sent away and it had repercussions that lasted into their adulthood. Feeling like they were sent away from their homes and had to find a way to come back, or be relevant, or get back into a community that had been so powerful to them."

“I really hope that people listening to this story will take a moment to go to the Cortes Island Academy.ca website because there's a couple of things there that are just incredible. If you go to the 2022/ 2023 program part of the website, which is under the ‘About’ section, you can experience the podcasts that the students did. All the students in the program participated in personal podcasts as well as journalistic podcasts as part of a series that the students named Ripple Effect. That's really incredible to listen to. They all participated in the making of three videos in partnership with Reel Youth, our locally based film project, and those videos are also amazing. It's both an opportunity to see the world through the perspective of young people today, but also to see in many cases another side of Cortes and the people who live there. Really powerful stuff. I hope everyone will take a moment to experience that.”

“The other place I would encourage people to go visit is the Change Makers part of the website, where you can start looking at the impact that our first year program had. So this program in our first year, we had a mix of local students that were coming from other rural and remote communities. The rural remote community part of who came is by far the largest number. Then we had some students who came from as far away as Germany and Indonesia, or just the more urbanized places such as Vancouver as well, but the vast majority were these rural and remote students.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -“I'm hoping that this summer at the Friday Market, we'll at least be able to have a prototype on a trailer. We’ll be able to pull an A-frame into the parking lot at Mansons, and people will be able to walk inside, sit in it and check it out. In terms of the refined prototype, that concept will be September.”

“We're working a little bit with Jason Andrews, who is so gracious with his time and expertise. He has really talked at length with us about the difference between really working on the prototyping versus jumping into trying to sell your product. There's such a high demand for an extra bedroom around.”

“I think we could be popping these out by June, but they would be rudimentary and so the goal at this point would be to have them for next summer (2024). So this is something that next spring, hopefully we will be able to be in a position where we have something that's been really tested, refined and repeatable.”

That was Jeramie Ellingsen talking about the next phase of Ellingsen Woods development.

Up until now, they have primarily been a manufacturer of boards. Her husband, Aaron Ellingsen, has ventured into kiln dried lumber, flooring and wood panels, but it has not yet provided him with the hoped for expansion into the value added market.

AE: “Jeramie has been really involved in developing the plan. We've worked on it together, but she has done a lot of the entering numbers into software and crunching things and then reaching out to talk to various people about whether it seems feasible and she doesn't technically work for the company at all. She's not compensated directly for any of the work that she does. Hopefully that will change.”

“When I think about creating or about moving my business in a direction that will be selling things off island, I am thinking very regionally. If I start here on Cortes and I could sell a few of these things on Cortes, then I'd very much like to be able to sell some things on Quadra Island. I would like to be able to sell some things to Campbell River and really, I don't think that in the next few years, trying to get any further than potentially maybe a little better reach into the Lower Mainland.”

“There are only 800 people on Cortes but if you can get onto Vancouver Island, then you're looking at a much, much larger market in a lot of communities. Many of them are places where tourism is a big deal.”

 “We were looking around at options for things to do given the equipment that I have. Jeramie came upon this guy in California who's basically started designing structures and creating plans for structures and selling those packages online. He's done things from a small woodshed to an outhouse. His business is selling the plans for these and then creating step by step instructions on how to build the products,”

“We talked with him about using his designs and he said that he was more than happy. He's been selling lots of designs and has a suspicion that many people buy his designs and then don't have time to build the projects. We could just pay him on a time by time basis for a kit of materials that we can put together. We'd include his blueprints or his designs. He did put together a 50 page instruction booklet that tells you step by step, almost like IKEA or something.”