Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - More than 130 people gathered in the Village Commons to celebrate the opening of the new Rainbow Ridge Trail System. As it was a hot summer’s day, most of them clung to shade beneath trees, awnings and the main tent. 

Rose and Brenda Hanson, from the Klahoose First Nation, opened the ceremony.

“This is a song you all are likely familiar with. It's very fittingly titled ‘The Welcome Song.’ It was composed multiple years ago with my mom Rose, her sister my Auntie Helen and her other sister Auntie Marge. Little did we know, at that time, that this song would travel so far. I'm so grateful and honoured that it has been used with such high purpose since its creation and I'm very happy and pleased to be here to share it with you today,” said Brenda.

She used the Salish names for the Klahoose Nation and their territory, adding their song is for ‘all the people that come from other places and other lands.’ 

“The song expresses, we are so very grateful in our hearts that you have come. Welcome, welcome to these lands.”

Sandra Wood, Executive Director of the Cortes Housing Society, cut the ribbon opening the trails.  

“We're very excited to share with the community the Rainbow Ridge connections to our neighbouring properties. That's going to make it possible for people to walk between the Seniors Village, the Health Centre and the school towards Manson's Hall via the Rainbow Ridge property and the Village Commons property. It's a new trail system that's connecting from east to west, a number of nonprofit properties in the Manson's corridor.  We've also made improvements on the north-south connection of Rainbow Ridge so that it better connects with the Siskin Forest Trail system. We've moved part of the trail to higher ground on Rainbow Ridge so that it will be a drier trail through the winter months,” she explained.

“These trails are part of a bigger vision of having active transportation and a network of trails where people can walk and bicycle. It's part of climate change adaptation to use your vehicle less. It's part of getting out and exercising and being in nature, and it's part of just being in community and bumping into your neighbour on the trails. We had a lot of reasons to develop this trail network on Rainbow Ridge. Someday there's going to be 24 families who live in the rental town homes that we plan to build on Rainbow Ridge, but these public trails are something that will be there for everyone in the community, as well as visitors to Cortes.”

“I think it's an important part of keeping the Rainbow Ridge property in community hands and enjoyed by the public. I also think it's part of another bigger strategy where there's a lot of key properties now owned by the Cortes Island Senior Society, the Southern Community Association which owns Manson's Hall, the Cortes Island Community Foundation and the Cortes Community Economic Development Association (CCEDA), who own the Village Commons, as well as the Housing Society that own the Rainbow Ridge property. We've got all this fantastic community land in community hands, and I think these trails are really helping us to connect all of those parcels together to make these corridors possible and connecting to the wider park system like the Siskin Trail network and even the School to Sea Trail system that will take people to Manson's dock and Manson's Lagoon. You'll be able to go all the way from that northernmost part of Manson's by trail as far south as Smelt Bay Provincial Park. It's a really important way to connect our community. I really wanted to make that a part of this project.”