Tag Archives: Blue Jay Lake Watershed

Housing

Mid August 2025 Housing Update from Rainbow Ridge

Mark Lombard from the Cortes Housing Society recently gave an update on progress at the Rainbow Ridge Affordable Housing Project.

“At this point we’re well along the way of building a community building with an office for the housing society. It’ll have: 

  • a utility space that has controls for the water systems and filtration to send water to all the homes. 
  • the controls for the battery and solar system that will provide backup power for the water and sewer for the buildings.
  • a laundry room that’ll serve the women’s shelter and other people on the south end who need it. 
  • a guest bedroom that people who live in the seniors village or at Rainbow Ridge will be able to rent for a modest price per night. 
  • a lounge area with a kitchenette that people can have a little birthday dinner or a card game, or if the Housing Society board wants to meet, there’ll be a big table that can be used for that.”

“We’re putting the siding on right now, and working on the interior finishing.”

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Education, History

Schools of Squirrel Cove

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Originally published January 22, 2024. This is the first audio recording of the article below, and may have sufficient additional details to be called the most recent version. The text was originally published in the booklet Squirrel Cove (Cortes Island Museum & Archives Society)

At the beginning of the 1900s, Squirrel Cove on the east side of Cortes Island was a hub of activity for homesteaders, loggers, fishermen, miners and trappers. They came from all the surrounding islands for supplies, groceries, mail, repairs, radios and dances in the hall. There were two stores, a post office, church, hall, two machine shops, a boatworks, a marine ways, and a big dock where the Union Steamships stopped regularly. Jim Spilsbury also stopped frequently to install or repair his radios in boats and homes.

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Arts, Community

At The Museum: ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbour’ Exhibit Explores Community Life In Cortes Island

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.” 

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Animals

Cortes Island’s Biggest Christmas Bird Count Ever

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The Audobin Society has been holding Christmas Bird Counts across North America for the past 125 years.

On Cortes Island it is co-sponsored by the Cortes Island Museum and Birds Canada. Thirty-nine walkers, cyclists, boaters, and people in cars participated in the Cortes Island 2024 Christmas Bird Count. This was the third time that more than 4,000 birds have been counted since the islands first Christmas Bird Count in 2001. A new record was set: 4,545 Birds were listed.

Donna Collins explained, “We had more birders out, more areas covered and lots of birds counted.”

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Arts

Coming July 5: Iris Steigemann, Adrift Above The Arctic Circle

Iris Steigemann was an artist before she came to Cortes island in 1980, but for the last five or six years her work has taken on a new focus. 

“I’ve been painting icebergs. What fascinates me is the underneath of the iceberg. You usually see  a quarter to a third of an iceberg above the water.  Under the water, it’s kind of a dream landscape.  I  like to play around with that,” she explained.

“There is also the environmental aspect of it. The ice cap there is  melting way faster than  what was expected.  The thickest part of the ice cap in Greenland is about three kilometers deep. They’re doing ice cores of this and they can actually see what kind of weather there was, what was happening on earth at those times. Now  this is all melting.  They break off and a lot of them from Ilulissat Icefjord actually float around to the Canadian side.  They drift down the east coast and then they melt.” 

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