Tag Archives: Children

The Most Exciting Conservation Story on Cortes Island

Transcript of a radio broadcast by Sabina Leader Mense

Just last weekend several of us were at the Cortes Island Museum for the launch of Sheila Harrington’s new book ‘Voices For The Islands: 30 Years Of Nature Conservation In The Salish Sea.’ What Sheila does in this book is she celebrates this amazing community of conservationists that are living and working in the Salish Sea.  

In the foreword, Briony Penn wrote, “If you’ve picked up this book, chances are that you’ve fallen in love with the islands in the Salish Sea. You might have wondered how the heck they’ve retained their natural beauty against the hostile tsunami of contemporary clear-cuts, cookie cutter suburbs, and mindless malls that are encroaching elsewhere.” 

Briony talks about the collective efforts of thousands of people over generations that have actually been working to maintain the beauty of the islands. 

Sheila’s book documents the last 30 years of people (voices in the islands) who have been working at conservation. She includes a chapter on Cortes, so we’re in there with the best of them! I encourage everybody to pick her book up and have a read  to see what the island community of conservationists have been doing. 

The most exciting conservation story on Cortes today is definitely the Children’s Forest! This is the 624 acres of forest lands that stretch all the way from the Carrington Bay Road trailhead, east across Carrington Lagoon to Goat Mountain, just on the northern shore of Blue Jay Lake.  These are lands owned by Island Timberlands. It’s part of their privately managed forest land base on Cortes Island.

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Rachel Blaney appointed NDP Deputy Critic for Crown-Indigenous Relations

Our local Member of Parliament, Rachel Blaney, was appointed the NDP Deputy Critic for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Indigenous Services. 

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The View from a Guatemalan Children’s Village

I first started taking my children to Guatemala when they were just one and five. It was an idea born on Cortes where two of my friends announced they were going to spend three or four months with their adopted son, so he’d have a chance to get better acquainted with this part of his heritage. Two of the first friends I met after moving to Canada had themselves just moved there to start a Children’s Village and I was excited to visit them. So, suddenly, I was moving to Guatemala for fourth months without my husband and without knowing enough Spanish to do more than order “Uno taco por favor.”

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