When Quadra ICAN held a community consultation last September, the central question was ‘what are the challenges the island will face as global temperatures warm up.’There were different questions when ICAN held another community meeting at the Quadra Community Centre on Sunday, February 11, 2024. 

“We’re moving to solutions and planning. So today, the questions we’re going to be working on are: ‘What can we do as a community to become more resilient and self-sufficient in the face of ecological challenges? And then what is important for us to be working on right now?’” said Jennifer Banks-Doll, facilitator of the event. 

Why they came

“What we’re working on today is getting the information that ICAN needs to create a strategic plan to move forward,” added Lorraine Holden, one of the members of the ICAN Board of Directors.

More than 60 Quadra Island residents turned out for the event.

Nancy Belliveau: “I came here to see what kinds of wonderful ideas everyone has came up with for helping out the environment, locally and globally.”

Mich Hirano: “I’m a director of Quadra Island Foundation.  I came here just to get a sense of the issues or the needs that have been identified through the ICAN community brainstorming process.”

Ruth: “I’m a bit disappointed at the numbers. I would love to see more people here, because I think this is just such an amazing think tank for the island and great education if you’re a new person to see what has gone on before, what is going present, and also to listen to people’s ideas and energy for the love for this island. We also identified that there are a lot of retired people. That doesn’t mean that retirees don’t have energy and bodies that need to move and can be doing the work, but that is a challenge I think.” 

CC: I thought most of the people in volunteer groups are retired? 

Ruth: “I know, but there’s a bit of a mentality that, ‘well, I’m retiring’ but you still have a good body. You need to move, and you need to be with people.  ICAN is about being with people and volunteering. It’s good for longevity.”

Serene Aston: “As a young person, I’m really glad to have  younger people represented a little bit more. The main issue I came here today was  transportation and bike infrastructure because  I commute to work with a bike a lot of the time.”  

Ron Lion: “There’s a lot of really no brainers. I think it’s a shame the island doesn’t have a free store.* We all came here in a car, one or two people in each car. There’s no buses on the island. There’s a lot of just really simple things that are far from being fixed.  So I’m pretty cynical, we’re not getting to the root of our insanity.” 

Michael Mascall:*  “Forbes Business Magazine named Quadra Island as one of the top ten places outside the United States for people to live, and I could see that as a curse. This happened two years ago and so there’s a lot of pressure from wealthier people coming to live here.”

There were also off-islanders like Maureen Williams from Cortes, who said, “I’m here to learn about how they engage their community, because that’s something that we really hope to do well on Cortes as part of our Resiliency group. I also want to learn how we can connect with other islands because that’s going to be increasingly important over the next few decades.” 

The principal components of the meeting consisted of breaking into working groups and brainstorming ideas on specific topics, prioritizing the ideas using an Impact/Effort grid, and then presenting their ideas to the assembly at large.. The following clips consist of gleanings from the presentations, which are occasionally augmented by interviews.  

DIY

Jan Gladish and Rhonda Orobko were the presenters for the Education and Skill Sharing/DIY group (DIY) group.  

DIY Group: “Something that would be easy to do that would have some kind of impact would be to have a trades or career fair for youth.  That is something that would  help with succession planning for when all our skilled trades people  decide to retire and then we don’t have anybody.” 

“It would be interesting to  get all the trades people to come and collaborate together and see what trades are going to be needed, what are already needed, what we’re doing in the future and then continue with the great skill sharing workshops that are already happening through ICAN and the other groups.” 

“I did want to make an announcement about the tool library. It’s going to be in the cube van on Ramona Boyle’s property, which is just across from the Heriot Bay Tru Value. We don’t have the sign yet, but it’s open, so check out our website. The list is there for the things that you can borrow, and she’s going to be the one running it.”

“The other thing was the Free Store. We’ve been  counting on being able to put the free store on the same site as the new recycling depot and as you all know, we’ve been waiting for the new Recycling Depot now for three years!”  

Regional Director Robyn Mawhinney announced, “On Thursday, I learned that the Recycling Depot Land Contract has been signed.”

The audience responded with comments like, “Whoa! That was a big deal! That’s huge!”

Director Mawhinney: “Hopefully the next pieces of the project will roll out a lot smoother than that one.”

DIY group: “The next one is some kind of craft collective or co-op. There’s apparently one that’s very successful on Cortes that has been running for quite some time. We have many skilled  artisans and crafters on this island, but we don’t really have a space for them to exhibit  and sell their work.”

Forestry

Cortes Currents happened to interview both of the presenters from the Forests and Lands group. 

Michael Mascall: “We would like to get rid of Mosaic and Timber West. We have the highest concentrations of wood lots anywhere in BC.  Those logs need to stay in BC as much as possible.”

Colleen MacLean-Marlow: “I’m a woodlot licensee here on Quadra Island with my husband (John Marlow). They want community values to be represented in forest management here. Some people are very concerned about the level of utilization or harvesting on the island.  There’s a lack of knowledge about what we really do as a profession in forestry.  That’s why I’m at the table.”

CC: How many woodlots are there? 

Colleen MacLean-Marlow: “Eleven.”  

CC: Do you have any idea about what your market share would be for Quadra? 

Colleen MacLean-Marlow: “The annual allowable cut  for all of the woodlots combined is a little bit shy of what the TFL is.”

Michael Mascall: “Woodlot’s sizes are between 400 and 800 hectares and they support a family.  It’s something that we really pushed with  forest committee in the 1990s and  ended up getting the highest concentration of woodlots in British Columbia.” 

Colleen MacLean-Marlow: “We’re always willing to sell to locals.” 

Woodloters, like the rest of Quadra Island’s population, are aging and there will come a time when some woodlots will be for sale.

Colleen MacLean-Marlow: “As an industry, we’re  really shy on machine operators and fallers.  My husband (John) is the second youngest faller on Quadra Island, and he’s 58 years old. Jerry retired last year at 70, I think.”

The speakers from the forestry workshop reminded everyone that the We Wai Kai first nation is in the midst of negotiations with Mosaic to take over operations on a third of Quadra Island. 

Colleen MacLean-Marlow: “First Nations are the future of forestry in BC, in case you didn’t know that.”  

Michael Mascall: “If we could talk with the First Nations about sharing the work and the responsibility of a community forest, we might be able to take over the northern half of Quadra Island and, hopefully in a sustainable way. Cortes does that, and it would be really excellent if we could learn from them on how to set this up properly. I think the time is right.”

Colleen MacLean-Marlow: “On the low effort/high impact side, there was a request about creating inventory of all the old growth trees on Quadra for a hundred percent protection. A Victoria company has the contract to do a LIDAR inventory* of Quadra Island starting this summer.” 

She read out, “More local Quadra Island sawmills. That was a suggestion from somebody in the group. There’s three existing. There’s the Whittington’s (Quadra Island Forest Products Ltd), which is the largest, Billy Dubois and there’s a couple of band sawmills.” 

“Food forests, rather than clearing land for gardening, grow amongst the trees. I don’t know anything about that, but our resident expert is here.” 

Water

The members from the Water Group made a presentation:

“A main  theme that came up in our relatively high impact/low effort was all around water education. The one suggestion that we really loved was a water challenge. It could be paired with a water tour where people could actually go and see water catchment systems in place or water conservation approaches in people’s homes.  That way you don’t just read about it, you actually see it, ask questions, get information, and that is going to build community too, because you’re going around and talking.”  

“We thought that with the new school buildings, we could actually put in a system like the solar system, an education system around using water catchment.”

“Then we have things that are more time consuming,  like working with the SRD and Island Health to come up with solutions that can work for both groups. Let’s see,  working with the road workers and figuring out how we cannot use our ditches to drain off all of our waters. Working in systems of riparian use and our wetlands so that we can  build those systems back up so they retain water.” 

“We need to be learning from each other on other islands. Quadra is not the only island thinking of these things, so we do need to share our knowledge, but also have advocacy outside the island, and advocacy at many levels of government.”

There is the ICAN water security team, which we are members of and there are actions occurring now to figure out what our situation is, how the aquifer is recharging, et cetera. We’re going to have a meeting on March 9th, here.

Energy

The speaker for the speaker for energy self-sufficiency was a freshly retired, renewable energy consultant.

“My name’s John Ebell. I’ve been on Quadra for two days now. I own a company based out of Nanaimo called Barkley Project Group and we project managed clean energy projects small and large. This includes hydropower, solar panels, deep earth geothermal, (as in drilling 2, 500 meters deep into the earth), ocean renewables, and we did a lot of projects with companies that were displacing diesels for small communities but we also built projects to sell power to grid.”

CC: Do you have any ideas for Quadra Island?

John Ebell: “Yes, my idea is to retire.”

CC: I thought you said you were interested in renewable energy?

John Ebell: “I am. I’m just dying to get my place tweaked right up and very self sufficient but I’m also very happy to help the community, too.”

He later advised the assembly that, “The very best investment in renewable energy is often in conservation, and so then there’s a broad array at the bottom of conservation ideas.”

“We talked about a bulk buy of solar and one of the limiting costs of getting people to do installs, etc. We had a good discussion around the idea of, somebody local to do installs and maybe somebody from We Wai Kai who could get training and I know that they can get funded to get that training.”

“We discussed car charging opportunities within the community and we talked about the green building audits and the green building fund that is running out of money, as everybody’s hearing on the news. However, the chance of that fund being renewed is probably fairly high, but it may be a real low hanging fruit tag sheet. Send a letter to them to saying, ‘we really support that this fund gets renewed to n our can and federal government.'”

“We talked about various types of appliances that could be exchanged, different types of fridges and freezers and, and heat pumps that that can be used to increase efficiencies in homes.”

“Then hold some workshops around things like micro-hydro opportunities, solar installation, or heat pump opportunities. We talked about how ICAN could add to their tool library:

• DC coolers
• solar analytical machines that go on the roof to, to assess your solar opportunities,
• infrared cameras for assessing heat loss and opportunities for improving home quality.
• The unique tool that’s needed to install a heat pump is a vacuum pump. They’re not that expensive, but there could be one in the library, and then we could do a lot more install ourselves, it’s not hard to do.

“Solar Hot Water has been talked about in the past, it sounds like a workshop opportunity there.”

“The idea of tidal power at Maurelle Island has apparently been shelved, but I would imagine it is a fairly good opportunity.”

Some other ideas:

• Ground source heat pumps, or geothermal energy as people call them,
• Permitting some areas or some community with electric utility or vehicle access so that they can run on roads like this, such as a golf cart, etc.
• an EV charging station that may be for bicycles at some of the hiking spots.
• Electricity generation while on exercise bikes came up.

Beaches

There were a number of topics that don’t currently fit into ICAN.

The first of their presentations came from Beaches and Oceans:

“I spoke to Leona Skovgaard (Chair of the ICAN Board of Directors) and she connected me with Shane Pollard, who heads up the We Wai Kai Guardian program. He’s all anxious to team up and work on cleaning the beach together, because they recognize the problem of the shorelines and the massive amounts of garbage that get washed up on quadrashores because we’re at the receiving end of 200 miles of fetch coming, southeasterly, and it all comes up. We get the driftwood, but we get the garbage too. So it’s a really big problem.”

“An ideal event to target families: It’s so easy to say, ‘hey kids, we’re going to go down  and  we’re going to take an hour and a half, and we’re going to clean up Rebecca Spit or Quadra Loop or one of the other beaches.’ Just walk one way for 45 minutes and walk back the other way and you would be amazed when you come back in your big Ikea bag.  Targeting kids  and training them to walk beaches  and marine trails. I understand there’s a marine trails group represented here too. What a great partnership between marine trails and beaches and, and training kids to be part of that stewardship.”

“Should this be an action team for ICAN? Can we come alongside and support them  in ways that they can’t support themselves.”

“I would guess that everybody in the room has heard about what’s happening in Gowlland Harbour with the sinking barges. We don’t want to be involved in trying to take responsibility for that kind of a cleanup, but can we be part of putting pressure on the authorities  to get them to actually do something? Maybe there’s an advocacy team idea that needs to be nurtured.” 

Community

Marc Doll, the presenter for Community Communications, told Cortes Currents:

“When you look at human history and humanity, communities that are well organized and have a strong sense of community are those that deal with  difficulties better than others. So what I am most interested in is the creation of  whatever vehicle that is going to allow the community to come together to both create connections, and also to create a safe place for communities to speak about their issues and develop a community voice for the outside world.”

When he suggested this to the assembly, Doll stated the first step in bringing this about was probably to hire a coordinator. 

“Having a paid person that works in between all the different existing organizations, writes the grants, is able to communicate what each group is doing with other groups.”

He also said, “We had a lot of one off ideas along the line of public space for the community to come together whether in this building, but also in other buildings. We’ve talked about the benches at the store having been removed.  The concern around those benches was public intoxication, which I think was the reason for having them removed, but they brought a community good as well.”

“We have the idea of building community through public events,  public spaces,  and with different ideas for different ages. We had  the concept of a ‘sticky community,’ a community that people feel at home in. We need something that targets our youth, that makes Quadra their home, so that those activities aren’t always in Campbell River.” 

“The problem that we have is that a lot of these things we know fall outside of what ICAN can ideally do, but ‘community’ itself is probably the strongest, most important thing we’re going to need in order to  be able to face the challenges that the climate is bringing down for us.” 

Housing

The Housing Group: “Housing is not covered under the ICAN group, but there is an affordable housing group on Quadra Island that started up. So we thought we’d get the ideas together and present it to them.  There’s a few things that ICAN possibly covers as well. Some of the things we came up with were under the high effort/likely low impact category are: 

• A float house park, 
• Co-housing projects (options for seniors and younger people) 
• A mobile home area,  that’s more affordable.  
• Tiny homes, 
• Upcycling construction,  
• Waste redirection. 
• Small apartment blocks in the Cove and Heriot Bay possibly run as a co-op or through the community.” 

“The thing that really worked for us in the low effort and high impact would be salvaging construction materials for building things. There’s a lot of construction going on on the island, and possibly there’s a lot of things that could be salvaged and used to make housing cheaper: mill offcuts, flooring, windows, construction, that kind of thing.”

“When it comes to building anything, you have to deal with water and sewer. Those are the two big, costly things, and the big hang ups that take years to come to fruition.  We were thinking if we could get somebody, who can sign off  on things with the government  to deal with the grey water and composting toilets and septic solutions. There are alternative solutions, we just would need somebody who could deal with the government and there are people on the island who, possibly could do that.”

ESS

The last presentation was by Eileen Mackay from Quadra Island’s Emergency Support Services (ESS). 

Eileen Mackay: “We are different from the rest of you and ICAN, as we come under the SRD.  All our funding comes from the SRD.  At the moment,  we are the Emergency Support Services.  We work closely with the fire department. Just to run through what we do.  Most of you have never had to be evacuated or go to an evacuation center.  If there was something large in Quadra  where it had to be evacuated,  most likely you’d come here. We would register you and registration means you get some significant benefits from the provincial government, depending on whether you have clothes on your back or not.  If you are forced out and you have literally nothing,  you will get three days’ accommodation.” 

“You will get meals either from a restaurant or to buy food. It’s up to you which you choose. You will get $200 to replace clothing per person,  and you will also get incidentals covered, things like dog food, cat food, medication, etc. It really is a very good service.  Jeff here has experienced it when he was burned out.” 

“Besides that, we have the ESS responder, which means that if there is a fire on your property,  whether you are on the South Island in the fire protection area or on the North Island, you will have a team of two of us turning up  and we will, from that point, take care of your needs and help you find accommodation.” 

“Accommodation is worth thinking about, people, because in this summer, if you are evacuated, I can almost guarantee there will be no accommodation available on Quadra or Campbell River.  If you can find somebody who would ‘village you,’  family, friend, or whatever, you need to make that contact with them now. So if you have to evacuate, you know where you’re going. We do provide food vouchers, some other stuff if you’re billeting, plus an honorarium to the person that’s looking after you.” 

Jen Banks-Doll: “In terms of priorities, moving forward, do you need help?”

Eileen Mackay: “At the moment there’s a couple of things people need to do here: alertable. Are you all signed on?”   

Jen Banks-Doll: “Alertable is on your phone?” 

Eileen Mackay: “It’s an app on the SRD website, you sign on and if there’s anything like the notices that went out for the forest fires, you’ll also get a phone call if it’s really urgent.”

“The second thing which is not widely known, is we do and always have had an evacuation protocol on Quadra, but it’s being updated by somebody in the next nine weeks.  You are all being asked to go online to the SRD and look for a survey. They really want to get local knowledge for evacuation. So go online  and fill in that survey.”

“What concerns where you are living on Quadra?  The South Island will be very different from the North Island. So that is something you can do for yourself. They’re also  looking at docks, etc., in case we have to evacuate by water.  We have done evacuations in all sorts of ways from this island, including Coast Guard in the past years.”

“Now what we were looking at was basially some stuff where we could improve. This  is a document that’s being provided for Quadra Island Emergency Preparedness Plan. The island is divided up into various areas and I can see two or three people here who are involved with this.  But basically, the one I usually talk about is Schooner Road.  Schooner Road was one of the very first groups to sign on to this.” 

“Basically, a community is learning to take care of itself.  There are leaders for the community, maybe two or three people who take this on.  You get to know about your neighbours. You get to know what they can do. You get to know how many chainsaws they’ve got, generators, whatever.  You know their strengths.”

“Do they know how a building stands? Could they, in an earthquake, go look at a house and say, ‘don’t go there.’  In your neighborhood, do you know the house that’s most likely to stand in an earthquake?  Probably the newest built one. As far as emergencies go, the island is really well prepared and if your neighborhood doesn’t have somebody who heads up this plan,  come and see me because we have a few neighborhoods not covered.  If your neighborhood is covered and you don’t know who your rep is  I also have that.” 

Final Thoughts

There isn’t enough time in this half hour to air any of these presentations in their entirety, but here are some final thoughts.

Jen Banks-Doll: “Lots of new ideas were generated and I think most importantly, we need to come together and work together because there’s a lot of groups here doing great things, but we need to work together more. So that’s  the biggest takeaway for me.” 

Ruth: “I think one big thing that stands out often is that with so much change you do need money and funding. And so it’s the priority, of course, who’s going to get what. It’s going to be a real challenge to see how they prioritize all these wonderful ideas, who makes it to the top of the pile and who will be the energy that comes in and does it all.”

Director Mawhinney: “I’m really happy to see how many Islanders are passionate and engaged about climate resilience and the variety of topics that was covered is great. I’m really hoping now that they’ve been working on this prioritization, we can work together as a community with levels of government, and that (as the Regional Director) I can hopefully support building a climate resilient island for the future.” 

Links of Interest

• New look and recently updated – ICAN website
• Quadra ICAN Library Of Things
• Quadra ICAN Virtual Free Store
• Quadra Island Emergency Program

Footnotes

• Quadra Island has a virtual Free Store and, as mentioned in the article, there soon may be a physcial one as well. 
• *Michael Mascall is a Director and past Chair of the Quadra Island Foundation, but appears to have been speaking as an individual so this is not mentioned in the article.

Top image credit: Barb Mindell and Kate Solsby presenting the conclusions from the Housing group at ICAN’s Feb 23 Community Meeting – Roy L Hales photo

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