Originally Published on June 25, 2023
Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, is writing a history of Whaletown. Her manuscript is already 300 pages long. In the first of a series of interviews about her research, Jordan describes the history behind Whaletown’s name.
Continue reading How Whaletown got its name
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.”
Continue reading At The Museum: ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbour’ Exhibit Explores Community Life In Cortes Island
The Creative Spaces Garden and Studio Tour is Saturday June 22, from 10 am to 4 pm. This is an annual fundraiser for the Cortes Island Museum, as well as a showcase of some of the island’s hidden gems.
“It’s a great opportunity to feature creative talents of people on the island, and it’s a self guided tour of studios and gardens that takes you all the way around from Whaletown, down to Smelt Bay, and Cortes Bay. We’ve got painters, textile artists, weavers, spinners, ceramicists . We’ve got a number of potters and pottery studios that are participating. And then some beautiful spaces with gardens that range from low bluff to high bluff. You pick up a map, which includes a button, and you just go around the island visiting people with talents you may not have known about, or see spaces that you were curious about but never had an opportunity to actually walk into. Walk through the gates and see what people are growing there,” explained Melanie Boyle, Managing Director of the Cortes Island Museum.
Continue reading The 2024 Creative Spaces Garden and Studio Tour On Cortes Island
Seafest will be returning to Squirrel Cove this Saturday, May 18, with delicious platefuls of locally grown and prepared seafood. with live music.
“ I think the first one was back in 1990 or 92. It was down in Smelt Bay with Redonda Sea Farms and the rest of the community and it was a huge event. I think they had walk-on overloads on the ferry. That was really when the Seafood Association was formed. Its primary mandate being water quality and it was formed in response to new technology that could assess dioxin pollution from the pulp mills,” explained Dave Nikleva.
Julia Rendall added, “I think in the late eighties, it was to fight the pulp mills. ‘Water quality’ was our mandate. Then there was a time when some people were a little bit reluctant about us oyster farmers. They thought maybe we were getting in the way of their pristine scenery. We decided to show them that we did have a good product for everybody to enjoy and that it is a viable industry on the island and it is necessary.”
Continue reading Seafest – Coming to Squirrel Cove Saturday, May 18
Early in the week of March 11th, during the annual herring run, a combination of weather and tides swept an unusual quantity of herring roe ashore at Smelt Bay.
On Tuesday the 12th of March, the roe in some places was piled 6-8 inches deep on the beach. From a distance it resembled lighter coloured sand piled on top of the familiar gray sand and shingle of Smelt Bay.
