Cortes Currents

Loni Taylor/ CKTZ News - As the popularity of pickleball grows nationally, the sport has become a regular pastime on Cortes Island with the resurgence of team sports this winter.

The school gym is booked four nights a week for adult sports, with pickleball offered twice weekly. If the weather is nice, pickleball moves to the outdoor courts at the Cortes Island School as well.

Alex Hornby is a regular pickleballer at the courts and shared his early impressions of the game with CKTZ.

“My first thing I heard about it was [that it was] a sport that old people at nudist clubs play.”

Hornby was encouraged to play pickleball on Cortes Island and now he loves the sport. Hornby described it the way many other players do: “addictive.” His partner, Darshan Stevens, said one of the reasons it's so easy to get into is that people improve quickly.

“It's a sport that is very rewarding when you first start playing it...you can do fairly well at it fairly quickly. And people just get hooked and then they wanna play more,” Stevens said.

Aside from being fun, Stevens highlights the health benefits of the sport.

“Pickleball has led me down a whole road of getting really into fitness in general. So it's been like a gateway drug for me …and really good for my mental health to get into fitness. So yeah, pickleball has been really good for me and my family.”

Drop-in pickleball is offered for free Tuesday and Wednesday from 4-6 p.m. at the Cortes Island school gym.

Loni Taylor/ CKTZ News - Editor's Note: CKTZ FM is the Cortes Community Radio Society.

The Strathcona Regional District (SRD) approved $18,000 in funding for a number of non-profits on Cortes Island last week.

The Grant-in-aid (GIA) program awards funding to local, non-profit organizations, for the benefit of the community, through the SRD. This is an year-by-year program, where applicants are recommended by the regional director. At a board meeting on Jan. 25, five Cortes Island Grants-In-Aid recommendations were requested and approved:

$3,000 to the Cortes Community Radio Society to assist with capacity building in their Emergency Communications Team;

$3,000 to the Cortes Island Seniors Society to assist with the Better at Home program;

$3,000 to the Cortes Island Museum and Archives Society to assist with website redesign;

$3,000 to the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery Society to assist with Art Education programming; and

$6,000 to the Cortes Community Health Association to assist with the Teen Szene and Family Support programs.

The meeting also included a discussion about liveaboards and derelict boats in the region. Ultimately, there was a request for a staff report on best practices involving derelict boats on Cortes Island. Mark Vonesch, Electoral Area B representative for Cortes Island, asked for an amendment to the request to include, "how other communities have best handled the social and environmental challenges associated with growing numbers of live-a-board and derelict boats."

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - An expert panel discussion featuring Suzanne Simard, Tzepoarh Berman and Paul Stamets was one of the highlights of the Children’s Forest AGM on January 28. The topics ranged from finding an effective way to communicate with industry to a proposed research collaboration on Cortes Island.The podcast below is an abridged version of that segment, starting with the introduction Forest Berman-Hatch gave for his mother.

Anastasia Avvakumova/ CKTZ News - Content warning: This story discusses colonial history and its negative impacts on Indigenous people of Canada.

In upcoming Powell River City Council strategic planning meetings, Coun. Cindy Elliott looks forward to making decisions on recommendations from the Joint Working Group she participated in last year.

The group was set up following an official name change request to the municipality in May 2021 by the Tla'amin Nation Executive Council. Powell River currently carries the name of Dr. Israel Wood Powell, who was the first BC Superintendent of Indian Affairs and instrumental in the implementation of colonial practices and structures such as residential schools.

In spring 2022, the city staged a diverse community engagement campaign that included public education on regional colonial history and way for community members to express their opinion, ranging from open mic forums to letters and surveys. The Joint Working Group summarized the process and outcomes in a report, which was submitted to city council in July 2022. However, with upcoming municipal elections that fall, further work on the possible name change issue was deferred to early 2023.

The group's report gives 11 recommendations, which fall into the categories of community engagement, relationships and reconciliation, racism, and city name change. Elliott hopes that by early summer 2023, the city council will have clarified an action plan comprised of tasks and budgets to move the process forward.

Loni Taylor/ CKTZ News - Put on your dancing shoes, Islanders: there's a new dance collective in town.

Last summer, Connie Quayle and Val Lange began seeking opportunities on Cortes Island to start a dance temple collective.

They hosted a dance temple in August and have managed to double their efforts with Mary Lloyd and Dancing Wolf joining in. This weekend, Lloyd and Wolf are hosting the first Dance Temple Cortes event of 2023. Dance temple is a form of ecstatic dance, also known as "movement medicine," the organizers say.

Lloyd is a Victoria-based silent disco DJ that started offering events and rentals on Cortes in 2022 and is calling on the community to dance this Saturday.

“Just bring your bodies, bring yourselves, whatever is moving in you and your life at this time. It's a pretty amazing space. It can be really healing and transformative and also just really playful and fun.”

The organizers also encourage enthusiastic locals to join the collective and help host future events more regularly: the team of four dancers are hoping with more involvement, they can possibly offer a monthly event on Cortes.

“We're really calling in other people that wanna come and help and make it a true collective and collaborative,” Lloyd said.

At the the Jan. 28 event, doors open at 6:30 p.m. at Mansons Hall. If locals want to volunteer for the event, they can contact Lloyd at [email protected]. To learn more about the collective, Dance Temple Cortes, contact Connie Quayle at mooncatmagicals.com.

Greg Osoba/CKTZ News - Since its inception in 2019, the Cortes Island Women's Resource Centre has struggled to find funds to ensure delivery of its basic services, but Director Tanya Henck says 2023 will see stable funding thanks to a number of grants from regional and national organizations. The organization received $42,000 through the Victoria Foundation ($5,000), Cortes Island Community Foundation ($17,000), and the Canadian Women's Foundation ($20,000).

The non-profit helps with finding safe spaces for women in crisis, along with helping clients with internet access, long distance phone calls and food security. They also offer skill building programs and opportunities for women to connect and share their experiences in a non-judgemental supportive environment.

An initiative that began more than a year ago to create a local non-violent crisis intervention team is moving forward, the director said. On a remote rural island with roughly 1,000 year round residents, quick response in critical situations is required, just as it is in urban settings, Henck adds.

The centre allocated $2,000 over the past year to help people cope with cold winter weather and Henck emphasizes that Cortes Island continues to experience a crisis when it comes to accessing affordable housing.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents: On Saturday, 14 volunteers turned out to plant the first batch of hazel-nut trees for the Quadra ICAN Nut Tree Project.

The organizer, Jennifer Banks-Doll, explained, “For a few years now on Quadra, we've been working towards increasing food security. There's been lots of different ideas about how to do that. From perhaps the more obvious, perhaps not more obvious ideas about gardening workshops and learning how to preserve food — different types of gardening, things like that.”

“Then we thought, one of the gaps here is really plant protein and oils. How do we address that gap? You can't really produce a lot of oils in this climate or on a small island because they require expensive equipment. Actually it was my husband, Mark Doll, who came up with the idea of planting nut trees.”

“There are some nut trees that grow quite well in our climate on Quadra. So we applied for a grant and we weren't initially successful, but eventually we were. So we were given some money to plant 100 nut trees in publicly accessible areas on Quadra.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - On February 25th, Rick Bockner will be returning to the stage at Masons Hall, as MC of the CKTZ Lip Sync.

Rick Bockner: “We are having a Lip Sync after taking two years off because of COVID. We're all very excited about it because it's been a while, but it's been a great tradition for the radio station and a great fundraiser and a community event that we all need these days.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - “ What Hollyhock is bringing to the world in 2023 is personal growth for social transformation. I'm really excited to see the world opening up, but with a recognition that things need to change. Cortes offers a really unique perspective on that because it's an island. It's a small community of people who know each other and there is the opportunity to live a more sustainable lifestyle here. When I think of Hollyhock at its best, it's a leadership or a learning lab for what could be and I think that Cortes is a huge part of that,” said Peter Wrinch, the CEO of Hollyhock. 

Prior to the pandemic, Hollyhock was one of the island’s principal businesses. The road back has been rocky at times, but from what Wrinch says the Cortes Island educational centre may be heading towards one of its best years ever.

Guest speaker/Cortes Currents - Dr Suzanne Simard was the feature speaker at the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society AGM on Saturday. During the course of her brief talk, Dr Simard discussed some of the innovations she values on Cortes Island and also the Mother Tree Network’s plans here. This is an edited transcriptof her talk, starting with the introduction by Forrest Berman Hatch

Forrest Berman-Hatch: It’s my honor to introduce Dr. Suzanne Simard, who I'm sure many of you are familiar with. Simard has been courageous in her outspoken, defence of old growth forests. She was on the front lines at Fairy Creek and she's inspired many in our generation. For generations, environmentalists have been trying to speak on behalf of the wild places, and now Dr. Simard is showing the world that these places speak for themselves and perhaps quite literally.

Her research shows us how to listen. I believe, I speak for many of the Children's Forest alumni when I say we are both lucky and honored that she has joined us today to help further a project that is really close to a lot of our hearts. So thank you for being with us here.