Tag Archives: David Rousseau

Communications

Help Cortes Radio Power the Tower

CKTZ is looking for donors to help power the tower during 2024 and 2025. 

Cortes Currents caught up with Bryan McKinnon, station manager and President of CKTZ, while he was manning the radio’s booth at Lovefest. In addition to the hum of conversation from some of the first people to arrive at the festival, in the background you can hear a sitar and tabla from the opening performance. 

Q: So tell us about the ‘Power The Tower’ campaign?

Bryan McKinnon: “Our broadcast antenna is on a tower, and all that equipment goes back 20 years to when  the radio station was first set up. Back then it was a pirate station where people were really pulling together equipment that was already used and old at the time. What we want to do is make sure that our signal goes as far, wide, and clear as possible. We’re looking to upgrade basically all the equipment around the broadcast tower.” 

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Communications

Why Cortes Island does not need Facebook

While there are Facebook groups on Cortes Island, they have largely been  marginalized by a wiki style community bulletin board. The Tideline is not a place for personal webpages or a typical news website, but for the past 20 years most of island’s population have used it to post notices, community announcements, reports and advertisements.

Someone suggested that this may be a model for the rest of the country to emulate, now that Facebook has barred Canadian news outlets from using its pages. 

This prompted me to ask a few people at Lovefest for their opinion. 

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Arts

Why is Lovefest such an ongoing success?

Image credit: Kim Pauley singing ‘The Book of Right On’ during Wiley Ferguson’s performance – Igor Backmann photo

(The podcast of this program opens with a clip of saxophone player Dave Blinzinger’s version of the blues classic ‘Route 66,’ in which he added lyrics like ‘Get your kicks right here on Cortes Island’ and ‘When you take that Linnea Farm trip, get your kicks on Route 66.’)

I can’t take too much heat anymore and had to pack it in by 4:30, but it was already apparent that this year’s Lovefest was another success. 

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Community, Parks

Opening of the Rainbow Ridge Trail System

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Close to 200 people gathered in the Village Commons, in Mansons Landing, to celebrate the opening of the new Rainbow Ridge Trail System. There were 177 ticket stubs for the door prize and some people wandered in after that. As it was a hot summer’s day, most of them clung to shade beneath trees, awnings and the main tent. 

Rose and Brenda Hanson, from the Klahoose First Nation, opened the ceremony.

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Environment, Housing

Good News about the drainage at Rainbow Ridge

“ If we achieve this, which I believe we’re going to do, this is a model for other communities.  We look at places like Salt Spring and even Quadra Island and places in northern BC where they have lost their lakes. The process is called eutrophication. When the lakes just become too rich in nitrogen, they become swamps. It’s not just our issue, it’s everybody’s issue and if we show a way to improve the nutrient flow into the lake while adding these extra homes, that’s a model for the whole world,” said Rex Weyler, one of the scientists monitoring Hague and Gunflint Lakes.

He was talking about the potential impacts of what would soon be called Rainbow Ridge. 

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