The Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) was talked about in the past tense, when Delores Broten and Don Malcom moved to Cortes in 1987. In the first of a series of posts about the origins of FOCI, Broten talks about the 1990 logging blockade that inspired FOCI’s rebirth, and led to the award-winning environmental magazine ‘the Watershed Sentinel.’

Broten and her husband had been homesteading in the Hazelton area, but left after the potatoes froze for the second time on June 30.

“It was a little discouraging,”said Broten.

So the pair found a piece of land on Cortes that ‘they could almost afford,’ and settled down.

There had been a FOCI prior to this, but it was dead at that point. 

Then the loggers came to Cortes. 

“I think it was the day before Earth Day. Macmillan Bloedel announced they were going to start cutting. Well, we hadn’t done anything on the island for Earth Day that year, so that was a really good day to announce that you were going to start clearcutting! These guys had no PR sense,” said Broten. “It was going to be a big clear-cut over by Squirrel Cove and the Klahoose was not in favour of having a huge clear-cut right above their village.” 

At one point Broten calculated that 70% of the island’s population came out to the blockade.

The ‘Watershed Sentinel’ originated as a newsletter designed to keep everyone abreast of developments.

After MacMillan Bloedel left, Shivon Robinsong, Sedley Sweeney, Lizzy (last name forgotten), and Broten decided to start a new FOCI. 

“We felt we needed a nonprofit because forestry was very active,” she explained. “We called in all the forestry groups from all the little islands in Georgia Strait and had a great conference.”

She remembers the meeting when Robinsong told the board they needed to become a registered charity and give people tax receipts so they could deduct their donations from their taxes. Hubert Havelaar and Nori Fletcher (Hollyhock’s gardener) were on the board by then.

“Everybody looked at her like ‘tax receipts? taxes?’ The whole board didn’t make enough money to pay taxes! It was so funny, but we did it anyway and it was quite successful,” said Broten.

There was a slight hiccup when they confused ‘non-profit’ with ‘charitable status’ and started issuing tax receipts. 

The solution: ‘We got a lawyer.’

Were people upset?

“No, it wasn’t that kind of thing.  The money was going straight to the forestry fight in lots of different ways. We had to hire foresters. We brought in Merv Wilkinson and Harold Macy (the small woodlot owner from the Comox valley).  We brought in a bunch of traveling foresters. We gave talks, we gave lectures, we did forest tours with foresters – and all of that takes money. So the money was going directly where it was supposed to go. No problem,” explained Broten.

“Then, when we could give tax receipts, it was even easier. We started hiring Herb Hammond, and Herb designed a whole ecological logging plan for the island. FOCI money basically paid for that.” 

They branched out into other venues.  

In response to dioxin contamination from chlorine-bleaching pulp mills, Broten founded the ‘Reach for Unbleached’ campaign as a FOCI project in 1991.

Somebody paid for Broten and her husband to take a trip down the West Coast. 

“How sweet could that be? We took our van. The idea was to spread the issue about the pulp mill bleeding because we had to swing the market to recycle, or chlorine free paper. The pulp mills were creating dioxin that was going to close down our shellfish industry. So that  was self-defence really,” she explained. 

“We went down the coast from eco-centre to eco-centre to eco-center all the way down the coast to Northern California. The publishers were doing a thing called ‘the Catalyst’ newspaper, which was a free tabloid that they did every couple of months  and they had published an issue on ‘Reach for Unbleached.’  Everywhere we went down the coast, people said, ‘yes, we know about this because we have this tabloid.”

If they didn’t have a copy, Broten and her husband gave them one. 

‘Reach for Unbleached’ went on to become a separate entity. 

Meanwhile FOCI went on to publish a booklet on the history of Cortes, and another on sustainable living in the Gulf islands (‘about solar panels and that kind of stuff’). 

Broten remembers some of the steps leading to the FOCI that most Cortes Islanders recognize today.

She trained Kathy Smail, the society’s first Executive Director. 

Havelaar and ‘Roland’ built FOCI’s headquarters on the Sweeney’s property and it was later moved behind Mansons Hall.

Sabina Leader Mense started the island’s foreshore monitoring program in 1995. 

“And then there was the contracts for looking after the parks.  None of this is big money, but  it was different people doing different things  all coming together under FOCI for funding contracts, because we had a legal structure for tax receipts,” said Broten.

The one thing they were not involved in, was the logging protests on Cortes Island.

“FOCI was a registered charity and there are things registered charities can’t do,” she said.

This restriction did not apply to Broten personally. 

 “I was the communications person for the forest committee and I was doing a regular newsletter which was distributed free in all the mailboxes on Cortes. Which wasn’t always that well-received, I mean, a lot of people said, gee, Dolores, thanks for the fire starter,” she said. 

“Some of the old timers would write us letters saying you guys don’t know what the hell you’re doing, you’re crazy – and we’d publish them because it was ethical. Although some people didn’t understand why I insisted on doing that, but we did.  Then eventually when you put your head above water or in those days, anyway, when you put your head above water as an enviro or a forestry person or anything like that, you got all this information coming in from off island.”

Malcolm came up with the name ‘Watershed Sentinel,’ which was initially a FOCI publication. 

When someone from Revenue Canada informed them that publishing the news is not a charitable activity, Broten bought the magazine from FOCI for a dollar.

“We photocopied it wherever we could get a photocopier. I burnt out about three  copy machines doing it. At the time the doctor’s office was in Manson’s hall. So after it was closed, we’d go in and put all the stacks of papers on the examining table and  collate them there. Trude (Allbright-Sweeney) was a really big help with that and Gloria Jorg.” 

Eventually they started getting subscriptions from off island.

Delores Broten and Don Malcom were forced to move to Courtenay in 2007, for medical reasons.

She attended a couple of FOCI meetings and remembers a particularly embarrassing one when someone read from the society’s earlier minutes, ‘the backup files are in Delores’ outhouse.’

“They were in a tin can because of fire, right,“ She laughed. “There was no internet cloud. There was no internet.” 

To this day, every FOCI member receives a free subscription to the Watershed Sentinel. 

Top image credit: Looking up in a forest on Cortes – Photo by Roy L Hales

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