Tag Archives: Carol Tidler

Three Decades of Stewardship: FOCI’s Ongoing Legacy in Cortes Island Parks

For over 30 years, Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) has played a vital role in preserving and maintaining the natural beauty of Cortes Island’s parks. From humble beginnings to an established organization with year-round maintenance operations, FOCI’s legacy is woven into the very trails, beaches, and forests it cares for.

“There is just a wonderful collection of fantastic places that we’ve protected on this island, and I think we should celebrate that,” exclaimed Helen Hall, Executive Director of FOCI. “The parks are there for people to enjoy and learn about nature. They’re very popular on Cortes.”

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30 Years of Foreshore Monitoring on Cortes Island

Originally published, as part 3 of the Cortes Island Resonance series by the Cortes Community Radio Society.

In 1995, standing on a Cortes Island shoreline with fellow environmental advocate Delores Broten, Sabina Leader Mense agreed to launch something that had never been done before on the island: a long-term monitoring project for its rocky intertidal zones. “Delores said, ‘We really need to get onto monitoring the marine environment.’ And I said, ‘Okay,’” Mense recalls.

That conversation marked the beginning of FOCI’s very first marine stewardship initiative, The Cortes Island Foreshore Monitoring Program (CIFMP) and today, nearly three decades later, it remains one of the longest-running environmental monitoring programs in the Strait of Georgia.

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Carol Tidler: When FOCI moved into Mansons

Carol Tidler served on the Friends of Cortes Island Board (FOCI) during some of the society’s formative years. She was not one of the founding members, but joined FOCI when it was still meeting in people’s homes and hauling its records around in boxes.

“Then Hubert Havelaar built an office space and it was moved to downtown Manson’s Landing where it put us right there in the public eye. People began to really want to see what we were up to,” she explained. 

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