Tag Archives: Trude Sweeney

Inspirations: An interview with Ruby Singh

Juno-nominated musician Ruby Singh recently returned to Cortes Island, both as a facilitator for the CASE Youth Leadership Conference at Hollyhock and to give a concert at Manson’s Hall. In this morning’s interview, he talks about his many forms of artistic expression, inspirations, and relationship with Cortes Island. 

Ruby Singh:  “I find inspiration in a lot of different ways. I feel like we are all just small tendrils of creation, so the act of creation and the act of creativity are among the most natural ways of being. Other artists really inspire me. I am deeply inspired by ancestry and futurity at the same time, so finding ourselves where we are in this timeline of inheritance from our ancestors, and what we are thinking about leaving here when we leave. Long timelines really inspire me, and deep time is a very inspirational thing. I get a lot of inspiration from my community, from the people around me, and from this more-than-human world that surrounds us.” 

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Cortes Day: Then and now

The Southern Cortes Community Association (SCCA) estimate 500 people may have turned out for Cortes Day on Saturday, July 15, 2023.

Mike Manson, whose great uncle(1) and grandfather(2) were among the island’s first known European settler, remembers there were once two festivals.

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Seafest 2023 At Squirrel Cove 

About 350 people* came to Squirrel Cove for Seafest on Saturday May 20. There was a flow-through crowd and not much more than a third of this number appeared to be at the six-hour long festival at any given time.

“I think Seafest is great, it brings a lot of cultures together and  lots of different seafoods,” said Sharon Francis, a Squirrel Cove resident and member of the Klahoose First Nation.

Curt Cunningham, owner manager of the Squirrel Cove General Store which hosted this year’s festival, added, “They’ve done an incredible job. We’re going to have a good day, a good summer, and this is gonna kick it off!” 

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Delores Broten: the 1990 logging blockade, FOCI and origins of the Watershed Sentinel

The Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) was talked about in the past tense, when Delores Broten and Don Malcom moved to Cortes in 1987. In the first of a series of posts about the origins of FOCI, Broten talks about the 1990 logging blockade that inspired FOCI’s rebirth, and led to the award-winning environmental magazine ‘the Watershed Sentinel.’

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Farewell To Trude’s Café

It was a beautiful time; you know, there’s these blips in history and you don’t realize that when it’s happening, how special it is. — Lovena Harvey

On February 9th 2022, Whaletown neighbours near the Robertson/Whaletown intersection were alarmed by an unusual sight: the old “Trude’s Café” building was on fire.

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