What does it mean to be a neighbour on Cortes Island? This question is at the heart of the new Cortes Island Museum exhibition ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbour?’ curated by Melanie Boyle, Managing Director of the museum and Monica Hoffman. Opening Sunday May 4th the exhibit invites visitors on a visual and narrative journey through both the historical and contemporary communities that shaped life on the island.
“The idea of focusing on neighbourhoods came from the prior exhibition, ‘From the Ground Up,” explained Hoffman.
Boyle added, “We did touch on how people work together to build structures, in terms of collaboration. It was also about repurposing material and sharing of resources and, in a way, this is also what this new exhibition is about. Collective land arrangements are a way for people to live affordably on Cortes, to share the land, but also to share the material, resources and work collaboratively. So there’s a lot of overlap.”
Monica Hoffman: “This is about those very focused areas on the island, such as Tiber Bay, Blue Jay Lake, or Siskin Lane – that sort of community, and what it means to be a neighbour is all about.”
Cortes Currents: It is also about the definition of ‘community,’ in all its manifestations from the pioneer era to modern times, from ‘communal groupings’ to individual dwellings.
Monica Hoffman: “A focal point for this exhibition is this north facing wall where we have a map of Cortes Island. We focus on various communities and give a little bit of commentary and interviews with the shareholders and the landholders. Some of these we did look at briefly in the prior exhibition, but this allows there to be a bit more space and more opportunity to explore them more.”
Melanie Boyle: “Monica’s right, this wall is a little microcosm of the community itself. It’s a reference to all the voices that make this exhibition happen. This exhibition stemmed from an interview we did during the last exhibition with Amy Robertson, who is one of the co-founders of Treedom. Jill Milton and Bernice McGowan interviewed Paul Kirmmse, who is one of the co-founders of Redlands. We spoke with Ron Bazaar. Jim Murphy came into the museum and spoke about Tiber Bay. We also interviewed Ron Wolda, more to do with the mill itself. I know Ron from selling the spoons as a craftsperson and I didn’t know his ties to Vancouver, the business community and now Tiber Bay.”
Monica Hoffman: “I didn’t know where that Tiber Bay connection started.”
Melanie Boyle: “It was serendipity and people looking at that particular time for options to live on Cortes or just live on the coast. Land comes available and they organize a bunch of people to get together to purchase the land. Everwoods came out of discussions that were happening at Hollyhock at the time.”
“We respect the fact that these are the co-ops and collaborative living arrangements on Cortes, of people who are willing to actually share their story. We only can profile a small handful. There are people who choose to remain private and we respect that, of course, but these would be ones that are publicly known.”
Cortes Currents: There was also a picture of the Provincial Park at Smelt Bay.
Melanie Boyle: “People who visited us last time will recognize this photograph of the former Indigenous settlement at Smelt Bay. We thought we would keep it up and look a little bit at the use of that space historically as a gathering space, whether it’s for the First Nations or during the early part of the last century, through picnics and get-togethers. “
“That branches into another section of the exhibition that looks at social life. So not only in neighbourhoods, but how do people get together? Where do they get together? This is a little portrait of that location on the island. It’s a story without words, this little shelf that’s like a little recreation of the beach.”
Monica Hoffman: “And its importance as a Provincial Park, where gatherings can still take place and the importance of having those public places and spaces where communities can gather and spend time. It’s also, as Melanie said, a beautiful photograph and the visuals are compelling.”
Cortes Currents: Let’s go to the next thing.
Melanie Boyle: “This is the section that starts in the so-called kitchen, but you’ll notice two significant artifacts. These old telephones actually work. So we invite people to speak to one another, if you pick up the receiver.”
Cortes Currents: Hello? Hello? Hello?
Hoffman’s voice coming through the phone: “Hello Roy, can you hear me?”
Cortes Currents: Yep.
Monica Hoffman: “Awesome.”
Melanie Boyle: “These phones were from the Whaletown Women’s Institute. They had purchased six of them as emergency phones.”
Monica Hoffman: “We have a photograph of one of the phones in Mary Weiler’s Garden Gallery. Mary lived in Whaletown and in the summertime, in the sixties and seventies, she hosted an art gallery for her work and then also any other artists and crafts people on Cortes who wanted to feature and sell their work. It became a very popular stopping off point for boaters during that time to come and visit and purchase their art.”
“Whenever you go to someone’s house, you always wind up in the kitchen. So we thought that we might focus on that, and then also feature some of the cookbooks that are in the archival collection and some that were loaned from community members. A lot of these cookbooks were written and developed and produced as community fundraisers. So everyone’s sharing their family recipes, compiling them into these little booklets, and then selling them to raise money for the community. We thought that was a really great idea to focus on that in the kitchen, also to feature some of the artifacts from our collection. It very much ties in with the theme of neighbours and gathering around the kitchen table.”
Melanie Boyle: “You’re welcome to take any of those off the shelf, sit down at our nice big, historic dining room table and browse through some of the recipes. Perhaps even share some of your own. That may be something with which we’re going to be doing some interesting programming.”
Cortes Currents: So you’re going to have paper and pen out for people who have their own recipes?
Melanie Boyle: “We’ll work on that later, but for now, we will have a paper and pen option.”
“Our community collaboration wall right here behind the entry panel is going to be a space for people to share their thoughts about what makes a good neighbour? What makes a good neighbourhood? What do they love about their space? And they can write their comments on a piece of paper and hang it here on this back wall.”
“Community is actually a structure, but it’s also that sense of fellowship, or community, which happens often around the kitchen table. Eating and breaking bread with people is an essential part of getting to know one another.
The title is, ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbour?’ We do look at neighbourhoods, but more than that, we look at the level of socialization, the things that build community, the things that we look for in our neighbours and in our neighbourhoods.”
“Everyone will come to this exhibition with their own interpretations. We’re keeping it fairly open-ended. Your sense of community might be different than the next person over, but it’s an opportunity to share ideas and that’s what this wall is about too, for people to check out what other people’s thoughts are.”
Monica Hoffman: “Having this exhibition come from the prior one, there’s a few photographs and some information over here that may look familiar. It started with the logging float camps and then how those floating communities grew. Then with the advent of the Union Steamship, the steamships would deliver goods and materials and passengers not only to the float camps, but also to Cortes island. Boat days became very popular, everyone gathered at the docks. That became a way for neighbours to see each other and spend time together and get caught up.”
“Things such as libraries and general stores grew in certain geographical areas based on where the Union Steamships could land. Those neighbourhoods are the historic neighbourhoods of Cortes: Whaletown, Squirrel Cove, Mansons Landing, Seaford etc.”
“So we have some examples of these iconic buildings of the island in these neighbourhoods, which are also reflected in this lovely folk art collection of bird houses. They’re replicas of these buildings that so many of us are familiar with: the Whaletown General Store, St. John Baptist Church, the Louisa Tucker Library, the Whaletown Post Office, and the Old School House. These are all buildings that are anchored in Whaletown as a community, but also representations of when people get together, whether they were children in school or you’re picking up a parcel, mailing one, or retrieving a library book.”
Melanie Boyle: “They were made by Doreen Thompson, who was a big volunteer here at the museum. This is in the collection of Sabina Leader Mense and Dennis Mense.”
“A number of people on the island have many ornaments that Doreen also made as gifts. She would make these beautiful artworks really, and give them away. That’s again, the spirit of building friends, of community and becoming better neighbours.”
Monica Hoffman: “This is a fun collection.”
Melanie Boyle: “It’s the first time we’ve had a series of artworks like this on display.”
“The beautiful planks here are on loan from Henry Verschuur up at Blue Jay Lake Farms. It’s another example of people coming together and sharing the resources that they have, for when people are in need.”
Cortes Currents: We have not mentioned this wall.
Monica Hoffman: “These photographs here on the left are from our prior exhibition when we looked at structures and dwellings. This is where we were thinking rather than looking at the buildings themselves, what do the communities look like? We go from the float camps to the docks and Union Steamships coming to deliver goods and passengers.”
“Then we kind of segue over into what was the social life like at the time. Sometime ago, picnics and dances featured prominently in social life. So we have this photograph of kids swimming up at Plunger Pass. There were picnics, dances and the gatherings at the various community halls.”
“We touched upon how telephones, hydro and ferry service changed what the community looked like on the island, and were able to draw on some really wonderful photos from our archives to help illustrate that.”
“There’s a photo of the prior sign used at the recycling center because everybody knows that’s really where people get together. That is the social hub of the island.”
“One of the challenges of all this material in our very small space is how to include it. There’s so many fabulous stories and we only have limited wall space and limited attention span for visitors.”
“One way we thought to capture some of the stories is our AV (audio visual) corner. We have on display right now a video documentary, created in 2017 about the Refuge Cove Housing Co-op, an interview with Doris Hope, Norman Gibbons, Bonnie McDonald, Anne Ferguson, Denise Gibbons, Colin Robertson and Bobo Fraser talking about what it was like in the early days.”
Cortes Currents: Going back again to the beginning, what was the title of the exhibit again?
Melanie Boyle: “The title of this exhibition is ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbour?’”
Cortes Currents: “Could this be the subtitle: ‘How Do We Live Together, Ranging from historic models of settlement on Cortes Island to more alternative lifestyles?’”
Melanie Boyle: “A good subtitle, how do we live together? It’s a question. We each have our own answers and find solutions within what you’re comfortable with, how you’re living. Collective living is not for everyone. Some people value their privacy. They like living independently. Others feel very comfortable working together as a collective.”
“We are running a really interesting storytelling series called ‘Finding Home, the Cortes Island Experience’ hosted by Brian Scott. We’ve been running this every other month since the Fall, and the guest this month, May 11th, which is Mother’s Day, is Brig Weiler daughter of Mary Weiler, also an artist. Brig grew up in Whaletown. She’ll be speaking about what it was like to grow up in Whaletown. A lot of these buildings here will feature in her talk. So that’s a really lovely tie in for the month of May. We’re working with Folk U, the Cortes Island Foundation and the Cortes Housing Society.”
“We’re going to be doing some collaborative programming. The theme for May, with the Thematic Program partnership, will be neighbours, so stay tuned for Folk U Radio and some programming through the museum, as well as the Finding Home Series on May 11th.”
Monica Hoffman: “The museum opening for this exhibition is this Sunday, May 4th from 1:00 to 4:00 PM and we’ll have light refreshments . We welcome everyone to come, explore, read about the various communities and come spend time with your neighbours.”
Links of Interest:
- Lynne Jordan’s History Series
- Andy Ellingsen Remembers Cortes Island Past – Part One: 1940’s & 50’s
- Paul Kirmmse remembers Cortes Island in 1971
- Beginnings of the Co-op at Refuge Cove
- Articles about, or mentioning, Union Steamships
- Articles about, or mentioning, Cortes Island History
Top image credit: Floathouse village – courtesy CIMAS (RLH)
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