Tag Archives: Cortes Health Centre

Housing

First Responses: 2026 Cortes Island Housing Survey

The 2026 Cortes Island Housing Survey was launched on Wednesday, February 11. This is a joint endeavour between Regional Director Mark Vonesch and the Cortes Housing Society, who recently provided a look at the first responses.

70 people had filled out the survey when Cortes Currents interviewed Sadhu Johnston, a day after the release.

Sadhu Johnston: “The first Cortes Island Housing Survey was really, really helpful for us in guiding the work of the Cortes Housing Society. We wanted to do another housing survey to gauge where people are at and how they’re feeling about the housing challenges on Cortes. Also, for us, as we’re building out Rainbow Ridge, it helps to get clarity on what people are looking for in terms of their housing needs. We want to make sure we’re building the right size units, the right number of bedrooms, and things of that nature,” he explained.

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Health

Proposed Discovery Island Community Health Centre.

 The Quadra, Cortes, and Surge Narrows communities, as well as the Klahoose and We Wai Kai First Nations, have sent the BC Ministry of Health an application for funding to set up a Discovery Island Community Health Centre. 

“It offers stability for practitioners. It offers leadership stability through a joint board and a hired executive director. It offers some economies of scale in terms of practitioners being shared and supplies being shared. It offers a shared medical record between the communities. Potentially, one of the things is using video conferencing as opposed to an in-person visit, if that’s appropriate. It’s community driven, it doesn’t involve Victoria telling remote communities what works for them, because that generally doesn’t work for them,” explained Bernice McGowan, President of the Cortes Community Health Association (CCHA) and a member of the planning committee for the proposed Health Centre. 

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Health

Changes Coming To The Cortes Medical Clinic

British Columbia’s health care crisis has reached Cortes Island. A number of complex factors led to the resignation of all three doctors working out of the Cortes Island Medical Clinic. Their contract ends on Sunday, March 31, 2024. 

“The  physicians that we’ve had in our physicians group are moving on to do things in their own lives. They’re starting practices elsewhere and it no longer fits for them to come here,” explained Bernice McGowan, on behalf of the Cortes Community Health Association (CCHA) board.

“We will not be shutting the doors of the clinic on April 1st.  That’s not in the foreseeable future. If our physicians leave, the worst case scenario is that we have a whole bunch of locums coming and we’ve been in this position before, where the only people that we had covering the practice were locums.” 

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Community

Summer fundraiser launch to improve walking and bicycling trails

CKTZ News, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Cortes Community Housing Society (CHS) is launching a summer fundraiser to expand and improve the trail system in the south end of Cortes Island.

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Forests, Parks

The Rainbow Ridge trail system

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You are probably going to hear a lot about the Rainbow Ridge trail system over the course of the next month.  

“We’re going to be doing a big publicity campaign to let the community know how we’d like to reroute the trail system,” explained Project coordinator Sandra Wood.

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