Tag Archives: Marina Island

Animals

Wolf Tales from Cortes Island

Cortes Island’s wildlife coexistence programs can be traced back to  human/wolf conflicts in 2009. Local biologist Sabina Leader Mense reached out to Bob Hansen, then wildlife-human conflict specialist with Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.  The Cortes Community Wolf Project is modelled on the Wild Coast program that Hansen had been running in the Pacific Rim for more than a decade. Hansen and Conservation Officer Ben York helped Sabina write ‘Learning to Live with Wolves on Cortes Island,’ a five-point primer which FOCI endorses and posts throughout the community.

Hansen returned to Cortes at Sabina’s invitation, for the first time since 2011, on February 3. He gave a workshop on electric fences and a demonstration on using bear spray at Linnaea Farm. There were also a lot of ‘wolf stories’ and new information. 

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Fire

An Open Burning Bylaw for Cortes Island

SRD staff is preparinig an open Burning Bylaw for Cortes Island. 

This is in response to Coastal Fire Centre’s decision to allow campfires, on June 20: ‘due to cooler conditions and rainfall, which has reduced the fire danger rating in these areas.’ However appropriate this may have been in other areas under the Centre’s control, it was not on Cortes Island. As Nancy Kendel wrote in the Tideline, “We have had basically NO RAIN since beginning of May, and our forests are tinder dry!”

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Animals, Rivers & Oceans

FOCI’s Marine Stewardship Initiative

“The best overview of the FOCI’s Marine Stewardship Initiative (MSI), the absolute best overview in a nutshell, is an Arthur C Clarke’s quote. It’s the mantra of the MSI. Arthur C. Clarke wrote ‘How inappropriate to call this Planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.’ That is, in a nutshell, the Marine Stewardship Initiative,” explained Sabina Leader Mense, Program coordinator.

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History, Rivers & Oceans

When fishing was an industry in Whaletown

A great many fisherfolk once worked out of Whaletown. The Cortes Island Museum’s list goes back to the 1930s, at which point there were 7 men and a woman. Three of them used rowboats. 

“There used to be a huge fleet rafted out, both six and seven abreast all along  both sides of the dock, in Whaletown.  In the last 10 years or so, there’s only been three or four boats in there, fishing. The main one  that I know of in the last little while is the ‘C-Fin,’ but he goes outside of the Vancouver Island area and fishes tuna. When he comes back he doesn’t sell it to a fisheries, he sells it from the dock, and the same with his prawns.  So he’s not using a middle man to sell his products, which I suppose is one of the few ways you could make a little bit of money now,“ said Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, in the latest instalment of her history of Whaletown.

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Communications, History

How telephones came to Cortes Island 

According to Lynne Jordan,  former president of the Cortes Island Museum, there have been telephones on Cortes Island for more than 110 years. They arrived in 1910, along with telegraphs, but only in the stores.

“Telegrams were really cheap. They were so much for 10 words and so much for 100 words.  People got really good at confining their messages to 10 words. Telegraphs that came in for people were just put in an envelope and then pinned on the bulletin board at the store.  Then they either had to check themselves or a friend would tell them that there was a message there for them,” she said.

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