Both the Campbell River Mirror and National Observer reported how the tiny Surge Narrows Community Association (SNCA) purchased 20 acres on Read Island in 2019.
“We just couldn’t bear to see yet another clearcut,” explained Read Island resident Lannie Keller. “It was a beautiful piece of treed land along the main road where people travel to get mail, to the school or the dock.”
Continue reading Taxes waived for Lot 302 on Read Island; a brief respite for Cortes IslandThere have been numerous reports of BC ambulances being understaffed recently. According to Prince Rupert Northern View, the Bella Coola ambulance was only in service for 52% of July. Quadra Island volunteer firefighter Marc Doll recently informed Cortes Currents there are times when no paramedics are available on Quadra and ‘any firefighter that currently has a class four license is basically being put on standby because they no longer have the ability to have two people scheduled to keep the ambulance going.’ After receiving a couple of anonymous tips on Cortes Island, Cortes Currents asked BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) for an update on the local situation.
Continue reading The paramedic situation on Cortes and Quadra IslandsOver the past 20 years, Christian Gronau has documented 149 fossiliferous rocks in our area.
Fossil #144 was recently installed at the Cortes Island Museum, but the German-born and trained palaeontologist said, “Palaeontology became a question for me when I was settled here. I looked around, of course was interested in the local geology, and realized that Cortes is just a big pile of granite with very little exceptions to that rule and started wondering what I was going to do with my interest in fossils.”
Continue reading Glacier-borne fossils in the Discovery Islands
Whaletown may get its name from an old whaling station, but Europeans really did not settle in the area for another 15 years or so. In today’s program Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, traces the modern community back to a logger named Moses Ireland.
First Nations people were using Whaletown Bay before that and a fish trap is believed to have once stretched across the entrance of the lagoon.
The whalers came for 18 months, in 1869 and 70.
“It wasn’t very many years after the whaling station left, in the mid 1880s, that Moses Ireland moved into the area as a logger and set up camp where the whaling station had been,” explained Jordan.
Continue reading Birth of Whaletown as a community abt. 1885-1914Squirrel Cove was much more important during the first part of the 20th century. Union Steamships tied up at the long wharf twice a week. There is still a Squirrel Cove General Store and post office, but there were once log boom, a sawmill, boatyard, machine shop, community hall, church and a school. Much of this infrastructure disappeared during the years that steamships were supplanted by motor boats and floatplanes. However Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, has another explanation for Squirrel Cove’s decline.
Continue reading How Gorge Harbour Road changed Cortes Island
