Tag Archives: mushrooms

Arts, Education, Nature

The Cortes Island Academy looks ahead to 2024/25 & back at the past year

The Cortes Island Academy’s school year is over. Graduation was on January 25. Executive Director, Manda Aufochs Gillespie, just gave Cortes Currents an overview of the 2023/24 semester and a peek into the year that is just about to begin.

“This school year (Sep 2023-Jan 2024), the Cortes Island Academy was a lot of fun.  We learned a lot from our first year. So this year we really got to just revel in the model, the awesome kids and local knowledge holders that came out to make this year happen. It felt to me like a lot more fun, and a lot less trailblazing,” she began. 

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Forests

MYCOBlitz 2023 on Cortes Island

“The goal of a MYCOblitz is to document MYCOdiversity; i.e. the diversity of fungal species present on Cortes Island.Fungal fruiting bodies vary month to month, location to location, season to season. Therefore ongoing MYCOblitz’s are required to cover these bases!!” – email from Sabina Leader Mense

Close to 70 people of all ages took part in Cortes Island’s community fungal forest walk on November 1, 2023. The students of the Cortes Island Academy were among them. We were greeted outside the Linnaea Education Centre by one of the islands better known scientists, who declared:

“Good afternoon. Good afternoon. ‘Truncocolumella citrina‘ you can call me, the Latin name for Lemon truffle. On any day other than MYCOblitz, my name is Sabina Leader Mense. I’m a founding director and an educational research associate with the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortez Island Society and it’s my pleasure on their behalf to be hosting MYCOblitz 2023.” (Cheers)

Continue reading MYCOBlitz 2023 on Cortes Island →
Farming, Indigenous Nations

Garden Vision to bloom in a west coast First Nation

qathet Living, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Indigenous forest gardens will soon be sprouting once again in Tla’amin, according to Erik Blaney, Tla’amin executive council member, and housepost of lands and resources. 

Continue reading Garden Vision to bloom in a west coast First Nation →
Business, Food

Getting above ground: rural mushroom business dreams big

By Greg Osoba, CKTZ News, through an LJI grant from Canada-info.ca

After toiling away in North Vancouver, Farhad Zahir made the move to Cortes Island in 2020 to escape the city and try rural life. He brought with him a passion to grow mushrooms for food and medicine and an ambition to do it commercially.

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Forests, Indigenous Nations

Searching for solutions in the Kispiox Valley

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Clear plastic bags hang from small spigots plugged into birch trunks in a  mixed stand of deciduous and coniferous trees on a hillside above the  Kispiox River in northwest B.C. Denzel Sutherland-Wilson and his  19-year-old niece, Hailey Wilson, pour the birch water collected  overnight from five trees into a 20-litre bucket, explaining they’ve  been doing this every day for a couple of weeks. 

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