Tag Archives: Squirrel Cove

Arts, Food, Rivers & Oceans

Seafest returning to Squirrel Cove Saturday May 20

 Seafest is returning to Squirrel Cove on Saturday, May 20, 2023. 

“SeaFest is coming out of hiatus. It ran for over 20 years and then we shut it down during COVID. We were going to start it up last year at the Gorge, but then the Gorge was going through a lot of changes. This Sea Festival is coming back to Squirrel Cove. The view is spectacular. I think it’s got the best view on the island and it’s got a rustic feel about it too. The old store has been there for a hundred years. The interpretive centre is there. This Seafest probably won’t be as big as it was the last few years at the Gorge. It will be more like a community get-together. We’re going back to good food, good entertainment, and a lot of locals coming,” said Julia Rendall, Secretary of the Cortes Island Seafood Association.

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Waste

New waste management centre boss eyes busy summer season with concern

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

The Cortes Island Waste Management Centre is preparing for a busy summer and the organization’s new manager is worried about capacity.

Waste Management Centre manager Aaron McCulloch-Gary—who has been at the helm since the start of 2023 after taking over from long serving manager Brian Pfeifle—says everything is running smoothly at the moment, but he has serious concerns about the upcoming summer season, when the Cortes Island population triples beyond its 1,000 year-round residents.

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Animals

Provincial Biologist visits Cortes Island; Second Western Screech Owl discovered

A provincial biologist visited Cortes Island over the weekend. Emily Upham-Mills is an ecosystems biologist with the Ministry of Water, Lands and Natural Resource Stewardship and an important member of the team working with the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) on the Western Screech Owl Project. 

Helen Hall, Executive Director of FOCI, explained, “Emily very kindly came up on the weekend to talk to the community. This project is really important for FOCI. We’re doing really interesting scientific work and that data is going back both provincially and federally. It puts us in the spotlight with this particular species. It’s a project that’s running for three years. We’re in the second year of trying to discover whether there are Western Screech Owls on Cortes Island.” 

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Rivers & Oceans

Growers Perspective: Boats and Aquaculture in Gorge Harbour

On Monday March 6, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) closed the waters and intertidal foreshore of Deep Bay Harbour, on Vancouver Island, to oyster and scallop growers, due to ‘sanitary reasons.’ 

 Erik Lyon, owner operator of Rising Tide Shellfish on Cortes Island explained, “The problem is too many people  in too close a proximity to shellfish farms. You can’t have any shellfish destined for human consumption in  water where there’s any kind of a man-made dock, boat liveaboard or float house within 125 metres. That’s a setback that’s always been in place.” 

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History

‘Wayfinding’ at the Cortes Island Museum

‘Wayfinding: Stories of Maps & Place’ opens at the Cortes Island Museum, between 1 and 4 PM on Sunday, March 26.

“I think wayfinding really touches on so many aspects of our current life.  We have a really fabulous series of maps and artifacts. It’s an opportunity to share that with the public for the first time on many counts. I think everybody, on some level, has a personal story to do with wayfinding. This is a celebration, and a reminder that we all have stories to tell of place and an evolving relationship to the landscape,”explained Melanie Boyle, Managing Director/Curator of the museum.

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