Michael Manson’s grandfather came from the Shetland Islands and founded Sunny Brae Farm in the late 1880s. Mike told me the Cortes Island Story, as experienced by one of the first settler families.
Continue reading The Manson Family: One of Cortes Island’s First Settler FamiliesHave you ever wondered what life was like in a small island community in simpler times? Imagine: no ferries, no electricity, few roads or cars, no medical services, ambulance or firefighters. Back then life was what you made of it, with the help of your neighbours. Local self-reliance meant gathering and growing food, rowing and walking to get around, and generally having a great deal of practical knowledge and skills. And making your own entertainment. But that doesn’t mean life was dull. Not at all.
Continue reading Vintage Vignettes #8-#14Come on board for the first season of Vintage Vignettes, a joint project of Cortes Community Radio and Cortes Island Museum and Archives, brings you “radio snapshots” of local life in simpler times. These brief episodes feature dramatized voices from the past with archive recordings of music from the “Old Timers”, a dance band that played locally for several decades. In Vintage Vignettes 1 -7 we focus on colourful characters and memorable events, from the first drive across Cortes Island to the 1946 earthquake.
Continue reading Vintage Vignettes 1-7There are more than more 40 names on the Cortes Island Museum’s list of fishermen from the 1970’s. Some were wives, who worked alongside their husbands. Others may have been deckhands. The names of 28 boats are given, though not how many were working in any given year. Now there are two.[1] In this week’s radio program (podcast below), the owner of one of those 28 fish boats describes close to four decades of gillnetting on Cortes Island.
Continue reading Four Decades Of Gillnetting On Cortes IslandThere are many stories of tree hangups, but one of the most colourful comes from Cortes Island. According to local tradition, the Survivor Fir would not be standing if it were not for a steam donkey’s explosion in 1923.
Continue reading The Survivor Fir
