Tag Archives: Cortes Bay

Communications

A New Internet Provider for Cortes: Raincoast Networks

As of September 30th, 2025, Raincoast Networks serves the 347 remaining customers in what was once the Twincomm service area on Cortes Island. Mascon by Telus acquired Twincomm in 2022. 

“I come from Savary Island. We provide internet to those who have decided to live off grid and in remote communities and cannot be served well by other telecom providers, majors and things from space, explained Oliver Linsley, owner of Raincoast Networks.

“We’ve been doing this for eight years and we service areas from Howe Sound all the way to Cortes. It has been a wonderful adventure, mainly because I get to meet some fantastic people in places I didn’t even know existed. We’ve helped communities up and down the coast, and that’s where we got our pride from. It’s not from a paycheck (laughs), I can tell you that, but it definitely is from the fact that I can go to someone’s house and they have baked cookies for me. They’re just super happy that we came in a boat and we’ve driven across a whole bunch of crazy oceans and we’re at their house and we’re going to fix it.”

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Environment

FOCI: Continuity & Change

The Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) has a new President, is getting prepared to launch out in new directions and is also trying to raise $30,000 by the end of the month. The first two of those announcements may be interrelated, the third definitely is not. It is a result of two large contracts coming to an end, more on that later. First, Mike Moore has been one of FOCI’s members for decades and is now taking on a more active leadership role.

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Arts

Deep Breath: How Andrea Padovani Sees Cortes Island

Andrea Padovani is a professional artist who has been living on Cortes for much of the last 17 years, but there is a sense in which his show ‘Deep Breath,’ which opens in the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery this Friday, is his introduction to the larger island community.

He explained, “I have a problem  expressing my real deep feelings  in a conversation, if you really want to know me, look at my paintings. That this really represents a hundred percent of what I am.” 

Cortes Currents: Do you find people get it? 

Andrea Padovani: “10 percent.”   

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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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Arts, Gardening

The 2024 Creative Spaces Garden and Studio Tour On Cortes Island

The Creative Spaces Garden and Studio Tour is Saturday June 22, from 10 am to 4 pm. This is an annual fundraiser for the Cortes Island Museum, as well as a showcase of some of the island’s hidden gems.  

“It’s a great opportunity to feature creative talents of people on the island, and it’s a self guided  tour of studios and gardens that takes you all the way around from Whaletown, down to Smelt Bay, and Cortes Bay. We’ve got painters, textile artists, weavers, spinners,  ceramicists .  We’ve got a number of potters and pottery studios that are participating. And then some beautiful spaces with gardens that range from low bluff to high bluff. You pick up a map, which includes a button, and you just go around the island visiting people with talents you may not have known about, or see spaces that you were curious about but never had an opportunity to actually walk into. Walk through the gates and see what people are growing there,” explained Melanie Boyle, Managing Director of the Cortes Island Museum.

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