Tag Archives: Cortes Island

Cost of Climate Change

Turning Down the Heat Part 2: Change Your Life Bulb

By Carrie Saxifrage and the Climate Action Network

In early July of 2024, a small group of Cortes Islanders, supported by Friends Of Cortes Island (FOCI), screened the film “How to Boil a Frog” for the community. You can watch the film here. The film is about the five-pronged problem life on Earth is currently facing — overpopulation, a war on nature, wealth disparity, peak oil (hee hee), and climate change—and offers five actions that can help—boycott Exxon, change your “life bulb” (reduce consumption), a change of heart, one kid per couple, and kick some ass. 

This article is the second in a series focused on each of these five solutions. You can read Maureen Williams great first article on a change of heart here. This second article is about changing your “life bulb.” The term refers to the end of Al Gore’s 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth in which minor suggestions, including a switch to LED bulbs, float across the screen. The disconnect between the size of the problem and the size of the suggested solutions was so very obvious. It still is. Whether or not you change your “life bulb,” it is still important to “Kick Some Ass.” That will be the next article in the series.  

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History

Brian Scott, Sherman Barker & Isabelle LaPlante: on the Cortes Experience

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Around 40 people turned out to the Cortes Island Museum on November 10 for the launch of a series of community speakers. The host, Brian Scott traced the idea for ‘Finding Home: The Cortes Island Experience’  to a conversation he had with Sherman Barker. 

“Sherman and I have known each other for a few years, it’s long other story, but he was up on Easter Bluff one day when Jane and I went up for a hike.  We’re chatting, and he started telling us his arrival story. It actually goes even further back to when he came as a kid.  He said, there’s lots of stories on the island here and if we don’t somehow capture them, we’re going to lose them.” 

“I thought it would be an interesting thing for the museum to do because the museum has artifacts that it’s saving and preserving and sharing with the public. Stories are artifacts as well. How do we capture those? Then it occurred to me, well, why don’t we do a speaker series? I approached Sherman and said, ‘Hey, what do you think? You want to be the first?’ And he’s like, ‘yep, It’s awesome.’”  

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Forests

Proposed Conservation Area In The Manson Bay Forest

The Nature Trust of British Columbia wants to purchase 35.7 acres in the Manson Bay Forest for a land conservancy. They have already raised about half of the necessary funding and have until December 31 to raise the remaining $408,000. 

“One of the landowners has come forward, and they’re interested in selling the land for conservation. They’ve never developed the land, and they’d like to see it stay in the intact condition that it is right now. We are working with them to purchase the land so that we can prevent the conversion of habitat to residential use and maintain the habitat values for the species at risk that live on Cortes Island,” explained Dr Jasper Lament, CEO of the Nature Trust of British Columbia.

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Arts

Jane Newman: Upcoming Creative Craft and Decoration Workshops at the Museum

Jane Newman will be leading a series of creative workshops at the Cortes Island Museum this season.  

“The museum was in contact with me about running some programming this fall,” she explained. “After thinking about it I was like, ‘yeah,  I’m really interested, but I only want to run creative programming. I want to do things that are hands-on.  It’s my thing, I love doing it, I love sharing it with people. I love hanging out with people when they’re making things. The things that come out of it are so precious!’ So I designed three programs. One of them is collage card making, another  is making some garlands and ornaments at ‘Vintage Christmas’ at the Museum and the third one is making homemade snow globes.”

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