Tag Archives: Smelt Bay

Parks

FOCI: Maintaining Cortes Island’s Regional parks

“A lot of the places people want to go and visit are either down a beach access or they are a park. We’ve got large areas of unfragmented forest in Ha’thayim or Von Donop Park. Mansons Landing Provincial Park is a really bio-diverse lagoon full of marine life. Those parks together make up quite a big parcel of land that’s set aside for conservation and for nature to thrive.  There’s no development pressure, that’s really important. We have those permanent resources protected, and obviously there’s a lot of really interesting ecosystems in them too,” explained Helen Hall, Executive Director of the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI).

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Communications

High Speed Internet could reach Cortes Island as early as December

Cortes Island’s new high speed internet system could be live as early as December, otherwise early in 2023.

Randy, from CityWest, gave Cortes Currents a very graphic illustration of what this will mean. I am currently downloading data from the internet at a rate of 21.35 megabits per second (Mbps) and uploading at 6.50 Mbps.  Randy discussed plans for up to 100 or up to 500 Mbps, download and upload, depending on how much I wanted to pay. That ‘up to’ is important because customers might not experience these speeds at their computer terminals, but we are still talking about much faster service. He also said there are no limits for the number of gigabytes I could use in a month, hence no overage charges.

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History

How fossil #144 came to the Cortes Island Museum

On Saturday, September 3, 2022, Christian Gronau installed a 130 million year fossil on the Cortes Island Museum porch. This is the third rock from his collection on display, and fossil #144 of a series.

“I believe this quest for fossils, the erratics that he’s been searching for has been a 20 year project,” said Melanie Boyle, Managing Director of the Cortes Island Museum and Archives.

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Arts

At the Gallery: Water/Colour from the Bute Inlet landslide

More than 12 years of research lie behind local artist and historian Judith William’s exhibition, which opened in the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery on Friday, August 26. In an interview with Cortes Currents, three months prior to the Bute Inlet landslide, Williams spoke against the installation of power lines in that area because it is too avalanche prone. The Bute Inlet slide is featured in ‘Water/Colour,’ but the exhibition really  focuses on a series of paintings she made using the water she has been collecting in that region since 2010.

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