Tag Archives: Mansons Landing

Food

Cortes Food Bank Needs $35,000 For A More Perminent Home

The Cortes Food Bank is trying to raise the $35,000 needed to relocate their base of operations to two sea-cans in the Village Commons at Manson’s Landing.

Operations Manager, Angelica Raaen, explained, “We have raised $14,000 so far, and we have a generous donor who’s offered to match donations up to $10,000. So we’re hoping that by the end of this month we can get $10,000 in community donations to match the $10,000 this donor has offered.”

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Disaster

Purchasing an Early Wildfire Detection System for Cortes Island

Cortes Island is close to raising the funds for a wildfire detection system that identifies fires within minutes of their inception. In today’s interview Claudia van der Vorm explains what SenseNet is and Cortes Island Fire Chief Eli McKenty says why he thinks we need it. 

 Claudia van der Vorm: “SenseNet is a Canadian company based out of Vancouver. They work on very early wildfire detection, in most cases under the minute, they can detect a fire when it’s still in smouldering stages. So when we don’t smell it, we don’t see it, in areas hard to access. They have a combination of sensors, camera, satellite, and a platform that allows that early detection, prevention and mitigation.”

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Arts

Folk U at the Village Commons Music Series 2025: Denise Wolda, Owyn Pengelly, and Thomas Aerie

July 4, 2025 saw the launch of the Village Commons Music Series, a simultaneously live and live-broadcast show, happening on Fridays from 1 – 2:30pm on the new Pavilion stage. 

Host Manda Aufochs Gillespie was joined by Denise Wolda, Owyn Pengelly, and Thomas Aerie, 3 local musicians who sat together on stage for an intergenerational in-the-round style performance, swapping songs, stories, and jokes.

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Education, History

Schools of Squirrel Cove

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Originally published January 22, 2024. This is the first audio recording of the article below, and may have sufficient additional details to be called the most recent version. The text was originally published in the booklet Squirrel Cove (Cortes Island Museum & Archives Society)

At the beginning of the 1900s, Squirrel Cove on the east side of Cortes Island was a hub of activity for homesteaders, loggers, fishermen, miners and trappers. They came from all the surrounding islands for supplies, groceries, mail, repairs, radios and dances in the hall. There were two stores, a post office, church, hall, two machine shops, a boatworks, a marine ways, and a big dock where the Union Steamships stopped regularly. Jim Spilsbury also stopped frequently to install or repair his radios in boats and homes.

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Arts, Community

At The Museum: ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbour’ Exhibit Explores Community Life In Cortes Island

What does it mean to be a neighbour on Cortes Island? This  question is at the heart of the new Cortes Island Museum exhibition ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbour?’ curated by Melanie Boyle, Managing Director of the museum and Monica Hoffman. Opening Sunday May 4th the exhibit invites visitors on a visual and narrative journey through both the historical and contemporary communities that shaped life on the island.

“The  idea of focusing on neighbourhoods came from the prior exhibition, ‘From the Ground Up,” explained Hoffman.

Boyle added, “We did touch on how people work together to build structures, in terms of collaboration.  It was also about repurposing material and sharing of resources and, in a way, this is also what this new exhibition is about. Collective land arrangements are a way for people to live affordably on Cortes, to share  the land, but also to share the material, resources and work collaboratively. So there’s a lot of overlap.” 

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