Category Archives: Arts

Arts, Community

2025 MicroGrants 4 Neighbours Program on Cortes Island

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Immanuel McKenty is the new face of the Cortes Island Microgrants 4 Neighbours Program. 

When this ZOOM interview began, he was sitting in a room that looked very similar to where  I interviewed him along with the rest of the Awakeneers on previous occasions.

Cortes Currents: Give me your spiel and then I’ll ask some questions.

Immanuel McKenty: “  The 2025 round of the Cortes Island MicroGrants is now open for applications between March 10th and April 7th. We’re accepting applications for cool projects in on in theCortes community and giving out grants between $50 and $500. The application process is super simple. The link is on the Cortes Foundation website under their Grants section. And there’s also posts on Tideline and the various different Cortes Island Facebook pages. One interesting new thing we’re trying this year for the first time is we’re planning to put all of the applications out for input to the whole community once we receive them. So anyone who lives on Cortes can log in and view all the applications and submit their votes on which are their favourites.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing all the creative projects that get submitted and there’s a few that are coming in already.” 

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Arts, Indigenous Nations History

Public Launch in Campbell River of Homalco First Nation’s Graphic Novel

Xwémalhkwh Hero Stories, was publicly launched at a reception at the Museum at Campbell River on February 27, 2025.  Homalco’s Community Launch was held in November, 2024, at the Discovery Inn.  Xwémalhkwh Hero Stories is the latest outcome of a journey of rediscovery and preservation of Xwémalhkwh history, culture, language, and traditions that began in the early 1990’s with recordings of the stories of the elders.  

At the gathering on February 27, the Project Manager and Editor of the Graphic Novel, Tchadas Leo, explained how the novel came into being as an outgrowth of Homalco’s radio station, The Raven, 100.7 FM’s podcast series, that used a portion from the recordings of the Elders to produce 12 episodes entitled, Remember – Recordings of the Elders Explored, available on Spotify. The gathering was treated to segment of one of the recordings with the voices of Elders speaking their language and translation.  This introduction provided the context for the graphic novel which tells three traditional stories.

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Arts

Cumberland Gold for Frank Mottl

Frank Mottl’s latest novel, Cumberland Gold, takes us to the quaint village of Cumberland BC. This is the same setting as his first novel,  The Cumberland Tales, in which Mottl described the community he knew in the 1960s. Only now he is writing about the late 19th century, when Lord Dunsmuir (1825-89) was attempting to recruit Chinese immigrants to work in his coal mine.   

Mottle explained, “ I did some research at the Cumberland Museum, and there was an unsolved homicide in the 19th century in the old Cumberland Chinatown. Nobody knew much about it, other than it was unsolved. That really appealed to me, so I just ran with it. Of course I spent a year teaching in China, so it did have a lot of that Chinese influence inside of it.” 

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Arts

Teenage Breakthrough: A Poetic Response To The Cortes Island Academy Year End Presentation

By Dancing Wolf

Last Thursday, Jan 24, many of us were witness to some great visionary ideas and concepts regarding our near future in 2040.

I was deeply moved and inspired by this remarkable presentation created by the Students of the Cortes Island Academy and wonderfully supported by their Teachers.

So much so that I wrote a short poem to express my gratitude.

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Arts

Dance Temple Cortes

Starting on Saturday, January 11th,  Dance Temple Cortes will be held every two weeks in Manson’s Hall.  

“Everyone has an excuse not to dance. In Gabriel Roth’s book, Sweat Your Prayers, there’s  a two page list or maybe a three page list of all the reasons. That’s great, if that’s your choice, but there’s something to be said for  getting over the resistance because there’s no wrong way to dance. There’s no wrong way to move. It’s incredibly freeing to be in a space where you can  dance in all your goofiness, offbeat, rolling around, whatever works for you and just engage with your body in a healthy way,” explained Connie Quail. 

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