“There’s no shortage of challenges and real mountain topography here,” Jan Neuspiel says of Vancouver Island’s mountains. “Island mountains have a unique beauty that is all their own.”

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

As the storms roll through day after day, the portents are all in place for another wild winter on Vancouver Island. The snow is piling up in the mountains and more snowfall records are likely to be set as La Nina returns again this year. For Cumberland based Island Alpine Guides (IAG) that means they are likely to be busier than ever.

IAG offers extensive courses and guided trips to make exploring the Island “Alps” enjoyable and safe. Year round they offer an array of climbing and hiking packages. In winter, they specialize in avalanche training and back country touring.

Jan Neuspiel, IAG’s managing director, has 25 years guiding experience. Born and raised in Ottawa, the genial 50-year-old says that skiing was a family affair—“almost a religion.” He left Ottawa “very soon after first year university to become a ski bum, which I’m proud to say, I’m still doing today on some level.”

Neuspiel’s first stop was to explore the Rockies, where he soon became involved in back country skiing and mountain climbing. His introduction to guiding was in the river rafting business. “I discovered that I really loved that way of life, that job—the whole business of taking people into beautiful wild places and sharing that with them and looking after them,” Neuspiel says. “All of that stuff really appealed to me so then it morphed pretty quickly into guiding climbing and ultimately skiing as well.”

After stopping long enough to get a diploma in outdoor recreation from North Vancouver’s Capilano College, Neuspiel headed to the Himalayas in north western India on a skiing expedition, which would be the start of 25 years of Himalayan adventures. “That trip kind of fell apart but it got me over there and then I made my way across to Nepal and that is where I got my first job,” Neuspiel says.

“A couple of years later, I made my way back to northern India with my skis and finally realized the dream of skiing in the Himalayas there. I did some of my skiing there with a friend I had made in Nepal, an Australian, who was starting to toy with the idea of starting a helicopter skiing operation in that part of the Himalayas. Long story short, a few years later I did end up hooking up with him and working at that operation. And, before I knew it, I was running the operation and had been there for 11 years!”

Neuspiel laughs, noting how lucky he has been throughout his work life. But hard work no doubt enters into the mix as well. Himachal Helicopter Skiing is based in Manali, India, a city of 30,000 people located at 6,398 feet. “We grew it from a business that, when I joined, ran about three weeks of heli-skiing, to a business that owned three helicopters and was operating 12 weeks a winter, 250 clients in a winter. So yeah, we grew it into quite a business.”

While in Nepal Neuspiel met and married his wife Amanda, originally from England. Amanda works as a medical herbalist and thus when they decided to leave Nepal their destination had to be temperate for her work and mountainous for his. “The main contenders that fit that description are New Zealand and the west coast of BC,” Neuspiel says. “Neither of us is from New Zealand so we thought we’d consider the West Coast. We came to visit a friend in the Comox Valley and liked it. At first we really dropped our bags here but over time we settled in.”

Neuspiel continued to spend about four months out of the year in India, while gradually building his knowledge of Vancouver Island’s mountains and back country. When they adopted their son Vijay five years ago it was time to think about making a more permanent home here. That was when Neuspiel and another Cumberland resident, Cliff Umpleby, started Island Alpine Guides.

In his web blog Neuspiel sums up how IAG is doing: “Here we are entering our fifth year thinking, ‘The timing was about right.’ We’ve grown considerably every year since we started and are looking strong into the future as Vancouver Island’s premiere mountain school and guide service. Looking into the future we certainly intend to keep meeting the needs of our fellow islanders right here in the island Alps.”

IAG’s most popular winter course is the Avalanche Skills Training One (AST 1), followed closely by the Intro to Winter Travel. The AST 1 is offered at both Mount Washington and Mt. Cain. IAG is licensed by the Canadian Avalanche Centre to provide the two-day courses composed of about six hours of classroom and 12 hours of field instruction. In the classroom, participants learn about avalanche terrain, mountain snowpack, the nature and formation of avalanches, assessing avalanche danger, avalanche transceivers, safety measures and self rescue. In the field students learn terrain recognition, route finding, safe travel, stability evaluation, hazard recognition and small party self rescue. IAG also offers a four day long Avalanche Skills Training 2 course.

For the two day long Intro to Winter Travel the staff guide participants through gear selection and preparation while they manage the logistics of transportation, tenting and cooking. Neuspiel describes a typical outing from the arrival at the departure spot: “We would do final checks through gear, pack up our packs, and have a briefing before we head off up the mountain. We would ski our way to a location where we intend to camp for the night. In the process there is a lot of learning that goes on. Our instructors realize that the best way to teach a lot of outdoor pursuits is through using teachable moments to allow people to learn the stuff they’ve come there to learn.

“We get to a spot, set up a camp, and if the timing is right, probably go out for a little cruise around. If it is a trip where people are on skis, go for some ski runs; if it is a snowshoe trip, go for a wander around on snowshoes. If a person is on a split board, we’re going snowboarding, whatever it is. Camping out in the winter is full of lessons of its own and so we would help people through all of that and teach them how to be comfortable and enjoy sleeping out in the snow. The second day would involve doing a whole bunch more ski runs or whatever and ultimately heading out to finish the trip.”

Not sure if back country touring is for you? “Back country skiing is really suitable for anyone who skis and who is interested in being outdoors, particularly in the wilderness,” says Neuspiel. “It is particularly well suited to those who like powder snow. In terms of criteria the person needs to be a strong intermediate level skier and reasonably fit. Other than desire and a sense of adventure, that is about it.”

Once you’ve taken the courses, Island Alpine Guides has a multitude of tours to satisfy all tastes and abilities. There are Mount Washington and Mt. Cain back country tours, weekend ski tours to Mount Myra, Mount Adrian, or Mount Tom Taylor, heli-accessed touring at Alexandra Peak, Mount Adrian, or Mount Matchlee, as well as a seven-day Mount Washington to Comox Glacier traverse to name just a few of the winter options.

Neuspiel laughs when asked about the snow and the quality of local skiing. “Everyone asks that. Surely it is all Island cement, right? The best skiing is anywhere on the right day. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time. I’ve skied snow as good as anywhere on Vancouver Island. I’ve skied cold smoke powder, over the shoulders, on the back of Mount Washington. It is a matter of being in the right place at the right time and that is a big part of what we do as guides. We make sure we get people to the right spot at the right time to get the best snow they possibly can.”

Island Alpine Guides staff is almost all based in the Comox Valley and are members of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides. “They are an interesting group of people who share my passion for the mountains and for being in the mountains with people,” Neuspiel says. “They come with a variety of different experiences—from a mountain guide from France that has joined us here in the last couple of years and brings his own French flavor to things, which is fantastic, to a woman who has a really strong background with Outward Bound as an instructor and so comes with a really strong set of teaching skills, to a hiking guide who has been with us for a little while now who has just got keen with a capital K written all over him with everything that he does.”

Neuspiel also focuses his energy beyond the clients of IAG to assist all back country enthusiasts through two reporting services: the Vancouver Island Mountain Conditions Report and the Vancouver Island Avalanche Bulletin. The Mountain Conditions Report was initiated by IAG as a way to share information among people travelling in the backcountry.

He describes what information is provided: “What’s the access like on these logging roads now, what condition is that trail in, are the crevasses on that glacier opened up more, did you see avalanche activity, was there a big rock slide somewhere? Whatever it is that helps people planning their trip.” A new blog has been developed for this report to combat previous problems with spam. Information should be sent to info@islandalpineguides.com.

The non-profit Vancouver Island Avalanche Centre Society publishes an avalanche bulletin three times a week throughout the winter. The current bulletin advises that the many storms to pass over Vancouver Island in the last week of November have created high snow packs with a lot of instability. Jan is the lead forecaster for the Centre and he wants to encourage everyone to send him any information they have about snow conditions on the Island. Email him at forecaster@islandavalanchecentre.com. The information will make the Bulletin better and the interaction with the forecasters will also provide people with an opportunity to hone their skills in assessing snow pack.

Vancouver Island may not be the first place that comes to your mind when you think of mountain adventures but Neuspiel is working on changing that. The motto for Island Alpine Guides is “think globally, adventure locally.”

“There’s no shortage of challenges and real mountain topography here,” Neuspiel says. “The other point is the Island mountains have a unique beauty that is all their own. I have to say that over the years it has really grown on me to the point where, in my aged state, if I just wander around in these mountains for the rest of my career I’ll be more than happy.”

Avalanche Safety Tips

Carry avalanche rescue gear—probe, beacon/transceiver, shovel, etc.—at all times when travelling in the winter backcountry.

Avalanches can be associated with sunshine and daily warming. Consider travelling early while everything is frozen, or at night. The Canadian Avalanche Centre website (www.avalanche.ca) lists conditions that may lead to avalanches.

Watch for cracks across the snow surface and listen for the tell-tale “whump” noise associated with a slope collapse.

In avalanche country, always travel in a group and ensure everyone stays within sight of one another. If caught in an avalanche, use a swimming motion to try and stay at the surface. If possible, move to the side of the avalanche. If you’re not at the surface when the slide stops, quickly punch the snow to create an air pocket with one arm and push your other arm toward the surface to help rescuers locate you.

www.islandalpineguides.com
www.islandavalanchebulletin.com

Two years ago they launched their own production and distribution company, Hollie Wood Oysters, choosing that name because it was easy to remember and it made people smile.  It is with that sort of cheerful spirit that this young couple approach life and their work.  They take the same positive attitude with them when they engage in the debate about the pros and cons of the proposed Raven Coal Mine.

“I would love to make sure that there is something here for my kids,” says Hollie Wood, working their Baynes Sound oyster lease with husband Greg and daughters Roseanna (left) and Jasmine (right).

Photo by Lisa Graham

Greg and Hollie—both Islanders, he grew up in Bowser and she on Denman Island—met in 1994 while working at Fanny Bay Oysters for the summer.  Hollie had been in the process of switching from studying engineering at the University of Victoria to Malaspina College where she wanted to pursue aquaculture or forest resource technology.

Hollie explains how that summer job helped her to decide her future:  “When I started at Fanny Bay Oysters I was doing beach work then it turned into the nursery so I was learning how to grow the babies,” she says.  “That is what my schooling was going to teach me, but I was already doing it so I thought I might as well stick with it.  I was enjoying it.”

In 1996 they bought two small shellfish leases.   “There was lots of work back then,” says Greg, 38.  “As long as you were living and breathing you could easily get a job at Fanny Bay Oysters, they were so busy.  So off we went to work and we just never left.  We like where we live so it just seemed natural to stay and see where it goes.  We bought our farm very early on.  I think we were 20 years old when we started farming.  At that point we continued to work for Fanny Bay and learned how to farm.”

They were able to buy two small parcels in an 11-acre lease through a co-op arrangement.  With leases costing on average $30,000 an acre, buying the smaller 1.5 acre sections worked well on many levels says Greg:  “It is actually much better because there are less taxes and everybody shares the expenses.  You don’t need a lot of land to make a good living so it is a smart way to do it.”

“We grow smaller oysters and start them on the rafts,” says Greg.  “Just the cycle and the way we manage it— we don’t let them grow on the beach very long.  As soon as they’re ready they’re picked and more are brought down and then they’re picked, so it is a quicker cycle I think, so you just don’t need 10 acres to do that.”

Hollie and Greg work the oyster lease themselves, with Greg’s brother lending a hand if they get really busy.  In addition to a couple of days a week working on either the beach or the raft farm locations, they make deliveries, take care of maintenance and tackle the paperwork.  The Woods’ family life is busy, as their Fanny Bay household includes their two daughters, nine-year-old Jasmine and six-year-old Roseanna, as well as two cats and a gerbil.

According to Greg, there is no such thing as a typical day.   “It is different every day because our life revolves around the tides.  Sometimes it works really well to get the kids to school and sometimes that is when low tide is so we have to figure it out.”

Adds Hollie:  “After I’ve coordinated the kids going to school and worked out the time of the tides, depending on the weather, I would decide if I’m going to go by boat to the beach or take the truck.  I like to work on the beach; I let Greg focus more on the raft stuff.  I would get down there two or three hours before low tide and I would be doing a bit of maintenance maybe before I gathered my oysters up into bags, counting and sizing.  I’d organize that and then I might get a bit of maintenance in after that too.”

“The rafts are like our nurseries,” says Greg, explaining the process of growing the tiny hatchery-produced oyster seeds.  “All of them start there, they grow really fast on the rafts but the shell isn’t very strong so when you put them on the beach they toughen up.  We prefer to let nature harden the shells and the quality is very superior and they last longer in the fridge for the chefs.

“My job is to keep the growth under control because if you let it go it’s a nightmare,” he adds.  “Especially on the rafts because they are in kind of oyster apartments underwater and there is only so much space in each tray.  So if they fill up, which can happen in three weeks, I have to go out and take half out and put them in a different tray; or else you’ll become plugged with ugly oysters.”

They admit that breaking the ties with Fanny Bay Oysters and going solo with Hollie Wood Oysters was a scary and stressful thing to do, but, the last couple of years have gone well and they are meeting their business targets sooner than expected.   They love where they live and the work they do.  They enjoy interacting with their clients—mostly mid-Island restaurants—and developing products to meet their needs.

They grow two varieties of Pacific Oyster.  “One is Zen, grown on the raft, and then Satori is the same size but grown on the beach.  It is the same oyster but they taste very different.  Then the next size up is called a Beaufort oyster, grown on the beach that overlooks the Beaufort Mountains.  That same size grown on the raft we’ve called Glacier oysters for the Comox Glacier.”

To promote their products they have started hosting oyster-tasting opportunities in restaurants.    “I love it,” says Hollie.  “You get to talk with people and they’re asking all these questions.  It’s amazing what people want to know.  And, I always love introducing oysters to someone who has never had a raw one before.  That’s always fun.   But, yeah, that’s like our date night—Greg and I go out and serve oysters to people!”

Part of their business plan was to work with the 100-mile diet concept.   They both express deep concern for the high level of CO2 emissions and the consequences for the planet their children will inherit if people everywhere don’t start to understand that emissions levels are too high and need to be reduced.

“We need to make changes now—yesterday,” says Hollie.  “Maybe it has to be forced upon us to make those changes?

“My heart really is my kids, and my great-great-grandchildren,” she adds.  “I would love to make sure that there is something here for them.”

They say ocean acidification levels are increasing and development continues to put more pressure on Baynes Sound.   For many years Greg has been advocating to protect Baynes Sound by making it a marine conservation area.  “The growers all know that between Union Bay and Deep Bay is a really magical pristine area and it’s shrinking every year.  It used to go all the way out to Comox but the area isn’t clean there anymore.”

He points out that the conservation area would be in sync with renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle’s recent call for more ocean protection.  Earle, who is currently an explorer in residence with the National Geographic Society, won the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) award in 2009.  Award recipients receive $100,000 and the chance to state their wish to help change the world.  Earle used the money to found Mission Blue and wished to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas.

“We can’t protect what is already gone” says Greg, “but we can protect what we see today, and if we protect them maybe they’ll thrive.”

He points to the recently opened Deep Bay Marine Field Station, the centrepiece of Vancouver Island University’s Centre for Shellfish Research, as an important reason to protect Baynes Sound.   “With the Deep Bay Field Station that just opened the potential for creating jobs here is enormous—sustainable jobs.  I just want to see that place given a chance.  Give it a full opportunity to grow—give it 10 years and see what comes of it.”

A hot topic for those in the shellfish industry is the proposed Raven Coal Mine in Fanny Bay.   The website for the mine promises that “the project team is committed to developing a project that is socially and environmentally responsible.”

The Project’s October 19, 2010 Fact Sheet states that “the proposed project will be designed and managed to protect shellfish, salmon and other aquatic species” and that “research indicates the project will not affect Baynes Sound.”

According to John Tapics, Compliance Energy CEO and Raven Project spokesperson, if studies indicate there could be impacts on the shellfish industry “then it will be up to us in our project design to provide environmental management plans and mine design that will eliminate, reduce or mitigate or manage those impacts.”

Hollie and Greg recently took a big step outside their comfort zone and made presentations at the June 7 Raven Coal Mine environmental assessment meeting in Union Bay.  Greg put forward his concerns about CO2 emissions and the effects of climate change and suggested the creation of a conservation area in Baynes Sound.  Hollie described her roots in the area, pointing out that her 17 years shellfish farming is longer than the 16 years the coal mine proposes to operate.  She then asked a series of questions including this one:  “Wanting a better environmental future for the generations to follow, is there any way the company can ‘change gears’ so to speak, and apply to have the claim changed for the purpose of doing something more environmentally sustainable?”

Hollie explains why she took this approach:  “If I was in their shoes, I wouldn’t want someone to come and tell me, ‘No, you can’t do that anymore.’  But then again, times have changed and coal isn’t going to work today.  Yeah, you might think that you need it, but as far as I’m concerned we all need to change our ways.  So my thought was if the government and the company with that coal permit can change the permit to allow for something else, they would have first dibs on having that area to do something else with it that could generate them money.  We want to see environmental sustainable energy.  I thought we could put our minds together to think of something better.”

A few hours before making her presentation in Union Bay, Hollie was serving oysters as part of the local Shellfish Festival.  Given the choice, she and Greg would choose growing and promoting oysters over public speaking any day.  But for the sake of their children and the industry and region they love, they are speaking about their concerns and offering positive alternatives.  Their respectful and constructive approach could be essential to bridging the differing visions of the Comox Valley’s future that the mine project is bringing forth.

For more informtion visit www.holliewoodoysters.com.

The Deep Bay Field Station will function as a marine science museum: there will be a 30-foot long aquarium, a jellyfish tank, rotating displays and touch tanks like this one above. The research labs have windows so the public can peer in and see what a marine biologist actually does.

Photo by Lisa Graham

If the shellfish of Baynes Sound could talk, what a story they’d tell.  The millions of mussels, clams, oysters, barnacles, crabs and more that make their home in this 40×2 km strip of water between Vancouver Island and Denman Island could tell us stories both profound and dramatic, about the earth and the ocean, about tides and time, about sea creatures and shore creatures.

The story might begin 400 million years ago, with the birth of what is now known as Vancouver Island.

Vancouver Island was not originally part of North America, or even of Pangea, the ubercontinent that eventually split to form the current world’s seven continents.  Rather, it emerged from the earth’s mantle in the South Pacific Sea, and from there it slowly — very slowly — migrated across the ocean to its current spot, hugging the Western shore of BC’s mainland.  Here it functions as a gigantic, and gorgeous, breakwater, creating the sheltered environment which has enabled shellfish, and so much else, to flourish.

The shellfish might also explain their role in sustaining the teeming web of life around them.  As author Rowan Jacobsen describes in his book about Pacific Northwest oysters, The Living Shore, shellfish are considered the “engineers of the ecosystem.”

“They are like living pool filters, complete with hard outer casing.  Each day, the casing opens a fraction of an inch and the pump turns on.  They pump water across their gills, straining out algae and other particles and expelling filtered water.  Unlike man-made pool filters, shellfish power themselves, maintain themselves, and even manufacture their own replacements.”

The resulting clean water is essential to the whole ecosystem.  Because the shellfish eat the algae, the water is clean enough for sunlight to filter down to the ocean floor.  Because of the sunlight, seagrass can grow on the stable reef created by shells, forming a marine meadow.  This provides shelter for a myriad of tiny ocean creatures, which in turn feed bigger ocean creatures, and so on up the food chain, including fish such as salmon and herring, birds such as heron and eagles, sea mammals such as porpoises and otters, and ultimately terrestrial species such as bears and humans.

Without the living filters and reef-makers—the shellfish—this interdependent community of flora and fauna would break down.

We humans are just one of the many creatures that have depended on the shellfish of Baynes Sound over the millennia, but in our typical way, we’ve had a particularly big impact on their lives and their home.

Shellfish harvesting in Baynes Sound goes back some 5,000 years.  Middens made of discarded shells, and heaped up rock berms from ancient clam farms, tell us that the region’s First Nations relied extensively on this super-healthy, readily available protein.

These days, shellfish harvesting in Baynes Sound is a mainstay of the local economy, a $22-million-a-year industry that accounts for 52 per cent of BC’s total shellfish industry.

Over the millennia, the human/shellfish relationship has remained reasonably balanced, with humans managing not to inflict any irreparable damage.  But now, many people who are intimate with the Baynes Sounds ecosystem worry that this balance may be threatened.  “We’ve had a sustainable shellfish economy here for thousands of years,” says marine biologist Brian Kingzett.  “But ours could be the generation that sees this die out.”

Luckily, Kingzett is ideally placed to do something about this: he is the manager of Vancouver Island University’s Centre for Shellfish Research Deep Bay Marine Field Station, a brand new multi-million-dollar facility that defines its goal as “supporting sustainable shellfish aquaculture development and preserving coastal ecosystems.”

The mussels and oysters of Baynes Sound may not have noticed the existence of this impressive structure, with its unique clamshell-inspired design and ambitions to be one of the greenest buildings in Canada.  However, the work done here, if all goes according to plan, will have a positive impact on their future.

VIU’s Centre for Shellfish Research, in Nanaimo, has been around since 2001.  The Field Station concept, borrowed from land-based agriculture, is a form of applied academics—it takes the research literally out into the field (or in this case, the ocean) and fosters close collaboration with industry, government, and the public.

“We are taking the university out into the community,” explains Kingzett enthusiastically.  He has no doubt there is a pressing need for this.

“All of these coastal communities are absolutely connected to the sea, and there is no one in the area doing public education related to the marine environment,” he says.

The Field Station has a bunch of plans to rectify this.  The building will function as a marine science museum: there will be a 30-foot long aquarium, a jellyfish tank, rotating displays, touch tanks, and the skeleton of a 35-foot-long grey whale hanging overhead.  The research labs have windows so the public can peer in and see what a marine biologist actually does.

As well, there is a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen for culinary events, workshops, and courses.  Students from VIU’s culinary program are already using this space.

The Field Station is currently hosting its first summer day camp for kids, and will be offering educational programs for Kindergarten to Grade 12.

As well, it is available for rental, whether for conventions, weddings, or anyone wanting a big room with an amazing view and a great kitchen.  There are long term plans to build accommodation, but for now Kingzett is happy to provide business for local B&Bs and resorts.

While putting all this in place to engage and educate the public, the Field Station is also keeping a keen focus on its other goal—improving and supporting the shellfish industry.

Commercial aquaculture has been around in Baynes Sound since the 1930s and provides approximately 500 jobs in the area.  It’s a keystone of the local economy, but it also garners its fair share of controversy.

Environmentalists give aquaculture mixed reviews.  On the one hand, the presence of shellfish demands, and contributes to, clean water.  On the other hand, as the industry gets more mechanized, there are impacts such as trucks, cranes, winches and other machines on the beaches; increased boat traffic; and physical modification of the shore such as rock walls and channeling of streams.  There are concerns about the effect of anti-predator netting on other intertidal species and about the leaching of toxins from plastics used in shellfish farming.

As well, residents in shellfish farming areas sometimes report their peace is disturbed by intrusive noise, visual, and light pollution; their shores are littered with washed up debris; that swimmers and boaters are endangered by floating netting, submerged rebar, etc; and that the natural beauty of the foreshore is destroyed by rafts, equipment, netting, and traffic.

Kingzett is well aware of all this—and he has plans to improve the situation.

“Let’s have the most sustainable industry possible—economically, socially and environmentally,” he says.  “I know there’s lots of room for improvement.”

One of the Field Station’s first projects involved working with engineers to design an aquaculture raft that won’t break up in storms.  In a similar vein, the Field Station is developing a shellfish nursery that uses solar panels, which will take generators off the ocean.

“We’re testing prototypes here on site, so industry can come and see these things in action.  We’ll release the plans on the internet so the industry doesn’t have to pay for intellectual property.”

The Field Station also has a conservation-driven research project aimed at re-establishing the Olympia Oyster, the only oyster native to the Pacific Coast of North America.  The tiny “Oly” once carpeted the shore from California to Alaska, but almost disappeared due to over-harvesting and pollution.  The research project will hopefully act as reparation for past human mismanagement.

All farming has impacts, Kingzett points out, but we still need to eat.  Ideally, we should be doing more of that from local sources.  “Vancouver Island imports 90 per cent of its food.  There’s a huge environmental impact to that that is transferred somewhere else, so we don’t see it,” he says.  The shellfish industry brings us face to face with its consequences, but because it’s local, it offers a far more sustainable choice than eating foods from far away.

“Talking about local food is part of living responsibly on the coast,” Kingzett adds.

The aquaculture industry has plenty of common ground with citizens concerned about the quality of their community and environment, he points out.

“It’s projected that this area will see 20,000 more people in the next couple of decades.  That’s going to have a huge impact.  We need to find a way for the shellfish industry to still be here, and for that to happen, we need our coastal environment to remain healthy,” he says.

The globe offers many examples of prime shellfish habitat destroyed by human activities.  In fact, 85 per cent of all the native oyster reefs in the world have vanished.  Unless human behavior and decisions are informed by an understanding of, and respect for, the coastal ecosystem, this fate could threaten Baynes Sound.

“What can happen is a death of a thousand cuts,” explains Kingzett.  “You’ve got all sorts of problems—runoff from fertilizers [from farms and private homes], increased siltation from logging and clearing, phosphorus and nitrogen from sewage… it wouldn’t be hard to push Baynes Sound to a tipping point.”

Kingzett and his colleagues are keeping a close eye on the Raven Mine proposal, which has garnered vociferous opposition locally, in large part fuelled by concerns that it will pollute Baynes Sound.   “We don’t at this time have any formal opinion on Raven,” he says.  “We are waiting for more research.

“The mine itself may not be an issue, but there could be a fuel spill or an accident such as the loss of a tailing pond.  But on the other hand, 70 people living here could have as much impact as the mine if they have failing septics, use fertilizers on their lawns, use their cars a lot.  Our role is to provide education to everyone.”

A big piece of that education comes from the Field Station building itself.  Like Dr.  Seuss’s The Lorax, who “speaks for the trees,” the building speaks for its coastal habitat.

“This building is all about telling a story,” says Kingzett.  “It is a holistic building because coastal sustainability has to be a holistic model.  We have to have jobs, we have to be brighter about how we live here, and we have to protect the marine environment.”

The clam-inspired design of the building mirrors and points to its surroundings.  You cross a ramp to get to the entrance, which evokes the feeling of walking along a dock.  Once you enter, you face a giant wall of windows opening out to Baynes Sound, with the mountains of the mainland in the background.

“The physical design projects your attention to the outside.  The purpose of the building is to get people to think about the coastal environment,” says Kingzett.

It also models green building approaches and technologies, and was built with the intention of gaining the highest possible rating from the Canada Green Building Council—the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum Level.

Only 13 buildings in Canada have achieved this rating, and Kingzett is confident that the Deep Bay Marine Field Station will join this exclusive club.

The building’s “green-ness” ranges from the use of natural materials (wood from pine-beetle-killed trees), to utilities (geothermal heating and cooling; a 97,000 gallon cistern for rainwater catchment, self-dimming lights) to landscaping (drought-tolerant native species) and much more.

The Field Station, which had its official opening June 23, was honored in April as one of seven winners of the 2011 Sustainable Architecture and Building Awards.  It has also garnered plenty of local interest and is already influencing builders in the area.

“There’s a 200-acre development coming in here.  The developer heard from the community a request to ‘build it like the university building,’ and so they came to us with questions.  They now are planning a green development and have hired a designer who does that sort of thing,” says Kingzett.

The building gets an average of 50 walk-in visitors daily, who come because they are curious, he reports.  And there are international visitors coming for meetings and conventions.

“Everyone who comes will get ideas about green building,” says Kingzett.

Outside the building, in the ocean, the shellfish demonstrate the greenest approach to building there is, maintaining a whole ecosystem simply by being alive.  They adapt to the changing tides and changing seasons, and thus far have adapted to the humans around them.

If they could talk, surely they would express the wish that this big new building, so different from the holiday cottages, bed and breakfasts, and retirement homes that dot the shores around them, will speak to the humans, and teach them how to live in harmony with their coastal habitat.

For more information visit www.viu.ca/deepbay.

“We’ve really gotten to realize what an amazing experience the kids are having here and how it is impacting their lives,” says Barbara Odegard, far right, with from left, husband Bryne and WWOOFers Anna Pape, Alice Cazzola and Hirofumi Ozawa.

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

The Odegard’s moved to Fanny Bay in 1996 from Parksville where they had operated a one-acre market garden and nursery.  Bryne had been a troller fisherman on the West Coast for more than 20 years and a combination of factors lead to the decision to make the switch to farming.

“The industry was dying and it wasn’t much fun anymore,” Bryne says.  “I was noticing that all my friends were dying at sea.  It didn’t make sense, you know, everyone else was dying, maybe I’m going to die out here, you know.  The more that died the less I enjoyed the idea of it.”

Barbara fills in the rest of the thinking behind the transition:  “We wanted our daughter to have a healthy life and we thought this was a good lifestyle.  Plus we love plants and growing.  We realized that as we were married and spent more time together that our real passion together as a couple is growing things.  Love it, you know, love, love, love it!”

When they found the 11.5 acres that had been fallow for 10 years but still had good soil and water potential, they knew they had found the key to launching their dream of becoming full time organic farmers.  Established in 1948 by Mildred Halgren, the farm had mostly produced hay and housed goats.   The Odegards loved the farm and the unpolluted Fanny Bay area right from the moment they saw it.   They chose to name it Ironwood Farm because they felt it signified strength.  Ironwood is also one of the names for a native hardwood bush that is best seen in June when it produces sprays of white flowers.

The mice had to be evicted from the house and the floors needed more support, but eventually they had a comfortable home and were able to focus on developing their crops.  “It takes time to get to know your piece of land and weather patterns,” says Barbara.  “When you first start out you want to do everything and you realize very quickly that there are many factors that don’t make things work.

“Number one you take stuff to the market and you realize people don’t want that.  One thing we have learned is that consumers are very stuck in their ways and it is a challenge to get people to eat a vegetable that looks even a little bit different from what they are used to.  And then we learned very quickly too that you have people say, “Oh you have to grow lemon cucumbers, everybody will buy them!”   How many times did we try doing stuff like that?

“So we’ve learned over the years what does well here, what crops you get good money from, what crops keep producing for the minimum output” she adds.  “We always indulge in a few new things every year because you can and its fun to, but, by in large, it took about 10 years to figure out what is going to make you the money and what will the land produce for you.  They have to go together.”

“We’ve learned over the years what does well here,” says Barbara Odegard, at work in their Fanny Bay gardens.

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

Their mainstay crops include lettuce, greens, rhubarb, leeks, spinach, chard, kale, green onions, tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, arugula, squash, zucchini, radish and parsley.   They also grow bedding plants, potatoes, various fruit and, occasionally, they have sold eggs and organic chicken.  Over the years they have experimented with selling directly from the farm and while they are not currently doing that, it remains in the planning mix.  Mostly they sell off-farm at the Comox Valley and the Tofino Farmers’ Markets.  They also supply goods to a local food box program, Sunshine Organics, and the Tofino/Ucluelet Culinary Guild.  The purpose of the 65-member Guild is outlined on their website:  “As members of a dynamic culinary community, our mission is to work closely with each other and our region’s farmers, fishermen and foragers to provide unique food experiences that rely on sustainable farm/boat-to-table practices and the freshest local ingredients prepared with integrity and passion.”

Passion is something Barbara and Bryne have in great abundance when they talk about farming and living sustainably.  Given our cool spring I thought asking about how they deal with the weather might dampen their enthusiasm.  Not so, as Bryne responds: “We grow so many things that something is always happy.  Luckily this year we planted a lot of stuff that likes the cool weather.

For example, “We knew that it was La Nina this year and that it was expected to be a cool spring, so you sort of consider that and don’t think that you’re going to be planting something that really likes the heat early in the year.”

Adds Barbara:  “We are constantly paying attention to the weather forecast for sure, and as far as planning months ahead that is difficult, but I think this is where the small market farms really have an advantage because we potentially prepare ourselves to grow everything.  The diversity makes it like Bryne says—something will always grow.  As long as you have all the bases covered and you get it out there and get it in the ground, if we don’t get the heat and the zucchinis don’t grow then you’ve got lettuces, etc.”

One topic that definitely brings out their passion is when they describe the difference that working with “WWOOFers”—World Wide Workers on Organic Farms—has made to Ironwood Farm and their lives.  WWOOF was originally founded in Britain in 1971 as Weekend Workers on Organic Farms.  The organization has spread out across the globe and is now referred to as World Wide Workers on Organic Farms.  The Canadian branch of WWOOF was formed in 1985.  In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles.

The Odegards found out about WWOOFers from a presentation at a Courtenay Earth Day soon after they started Ironwood Farm.  They signed up to be hosts the next year.  Barbara laughs, noting that “we realized very quickly that we couldn’t do it alone!  But, I think a lot of farms like ours find they’re in the position that you don’t make enough money to pay people to help you and a lot of people don’t want to do this kind of work.”

The first year they hosted a young couple from Ontario.  It was quite a task to figure out how to utilize their help.  Fifteen years later, Ironwood Farm is an extremely popular destination for people from all over the world.  They host three to five people at a time, and ask workers to make a minimum three-week commitment, and if possible to arrive on a Sunday and leave on a Saturday.

Barbara handles the scheduling and both of them work directly with the WWOOFers because the vast majority of them have never worked on a farm or done any gardening at all.

Arranging a good mix of applicants is what Barbara strives for because she believes one of the biggest joys of having WWOOFers at their farm is helping them to learn about each other.  The day I visited there were WWOOFers from Japan, Germany, Italy and Belgium.

Many WWOOFers stay in touch and some have returned to visit to underscore in person how pivotal their experience at Ironwood Farm has been for them.

“We’ve really gotten to realize what an amazing experience the kids are having here and how it is impacting their lives,” says Barbara.  “It is a humbling experience.  They are realizing there are more ways to live than to just think about how much education do I need to be a doctor, lawyer or accountant?  And, is money the only thing I need to be thinking about?  What about, how do I want to live in the world?”

She cites as an example a current WWOOFER, Hiro Ozawa, a 26-year-old man from Japan.  “He says we have totally changed his life,” says Barbara.  “He says he has become organic man.  He never thought about it, and he’s a chef working with food, and he never thought about how different food can taste when it is grown by hand.”

Ozawa is from near Tokyo, Japan.  He tells me he decided to try WWOOFing because as a chef he wanted to learn more about growing herbs and vegetables.  Before coming to Ironwood he made a bicycle journey from Alaska to San Diego.  So he is fit, but at Ironwood Farm, he says he has become more fit and he has learned a lot about good food and working.

Alice Cazzola, pronounced Alicea, is visiting from Turin, Italy.   At 19, many of her friends thought she was crazy to come to Canada to work on a farm.  I asked what she thought about her experience.  “You need much patience but it gives you satisfaction,” she says.   “You can see the result of your work.  Maybe with other jobs you don’t see so clearly.  And it is manual work.  Not only mental and thinking so you need both your brain and your body.  Sometimes jobs are too much in one direction but here you have a good mix.   Maybe the right one, I don’t know.”

Anna Pape, also 19, from Germany, adds:  “I like the moments when we have good laughs and sharing the dinners and sitting together at the table.   It’s always fun and interesting.”

There are journals filled with enthusiastic messages written by WWOOFers about their time at Ironwood Farm.  It is obvious that it is an arrangement that works well and adds a unique dynamic to this farming operation.  Barbara summarizes its importance: “Here was a way for Bryne and me to get some help and to teach at the same time, and, to give something back.  It has become such a huge part of our experience.  We probably would not be farming if we did not have these, mostly young people, coming here.”

Farming is a difficult life.  Few farmers in Canada can make a living without working off the farm.  The Odegards have faced these challenges and they continue to try to creatively overcome them.  In addition to their daily farm work, they contribute to organic growers’ organizations, sit on boards, teach courses and give lectures.

After 16 years of running Ironwood Farm they still love each other and love what they’re doing.  Would they, I asked, suggest that others give farming a try?

Bryne’s answer epitomizes the essence of my visit to Ironwood Farm:  “I don’t know if I’d recommend it to anyone, but, there’s lots of satisfaction.  Just when you put the seed in and three days later it has popped up.  It’s a pretty good feeling to see that new energy coming out of the ground again and again and again.  And when you transplant something and it rains the next day or that night and everything just gets their feet and they take off.  That’s a good feeling too.  Or, you run the hoe down the row and you’ve killed millions of weeds in five minutes just by walking with the hoe and they’re all dying.  You know.”

FMI go to ironwoodfannybay.blogspot.com or search for them on Facebook.  Purchase their produce at the weekly Comox Valley Farmers’ Market in Courtenay.

“The camera gives a personal picture of eagle behavior,” says Doug Carrick. “Rather than seeing the eagles as statistics, we see them as individuals, beautiful in appearance, with endlessly interesting behavior, steadfastly struggling to bring up their offspring.

Photo by Barb Biagi

At the same time Doug and Sheila Carrick were building their retirement home on a waterfront lot on Hornby Island 21 years ago, a pair of bald eagles was building their nest 120 feet up in a tall Douglas fir tree right next door. It didn’t take the Carricks long to notice that the avian couple was engaged in work that paralleled theirs, and to get curious about them.

But they had no idea how these birds would take front and centre in their lives, and how that curiosity would propel them into an adventure that would put them on the leading edge of Internet innovation.  No one could have predicted a journey that began with something as simple as bird watching and ended up as an unprecedented mélange of high-tech communications, environmentalism, and international media attention.

The Carricks are the unassuming citizens at the heart of the Hornby Eagle Webcam, an Internet project that went viral big time in 2006 when it first was launched.  The live feed of the webcam, which broadcasts a close-up view of the eagles’ nest, was at one time the most viewed site on the web. Since then, hundreds of nature-observation web-cams have sprung up, many no doubt inspired by the Hornby one, which is still going strong.

“This has been the most moving experience I’ve ever had in my life,” says Carrick, a genial, silver-haired former accountant and teacher, who smiles often as we speak.  “I’ve received letters and emails from all over the world telling me that watching the eagles has been a life-changing experience.  They say they have learned so much from the eagles.  This is such an amazing way of connecting people to nature, and inspiring them to learn more and to take care of the environment.”

The Carricks’ house, on Hornby’s Grassy Point, is a light-filled, graceful space with huge   windows on the north side facing the beach, which is where the eagles hunt.  Along the opposite southern wall are desks with four different screens.  Two show the eagles from different angles, one displays the ongoing discussion on the Eagles of Hornby Internet forum, and the fourth he uses to show me photos of the birds.

The relationship between the northern wall and the southern wall is quite dynamic. When Carrick, watching the screen, sees an eagle take off from the nest, he turns around to watch for it flying over beach. When he sees the eagles on the beach, he updates the Forum with news of their antics and their interactions with the other creatures that live there.

“For instance, they’ve been chasing goslings on the beach.  I count the goslings every day, and there are still the original number—six,” he says.  He reports on what the eagles are hunting and eating, their feeding frenzy during the annual herring spawn, and their conflicts with crows as they squabble over midshipmen, a tide pool fish that is a welcome source of summer food for both these species.

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Photo by Boomer Jerritt

Looking out at the beach, Carrick points out the tree the eagles like to perch in to survey their territory.  “One way I can tell them apart is by their habits.  The female likes to roost on one side of the tree, the male on the other.”

Back at the northern wall, he shows me the coaxial cable that feeds into his computer from the camera.  Then he takes me outside and shows me how it is strung up the Hydro pole, alongside the Hydro lines, and up to the tree.

“It’s all quite amazing,” he says, enthusiastically.

Although he’s probably done so hundreds of times, Carrick is happy to tell the tale of how all this happened.

“It started with my own curiosity.  I got more and more involved in observing the eagles,” he recounts.  He began learning about other eagles and eagle nests on the Island, and educating himself about eagle lifecycles, including mating, nest-building, care of young, migration, and their relationship with other species.  As curiosity often does when it is fed, his deepened.  He assumed there were eggs in the nest—and he wanted to see them!

But putting a video camera in a tree is no easy feat.  Carrick enlisted the willing help of a friend from Victoria, a retired electronic systems engineer who had previously installed video cameras focused on eagles (and an underwater one to capture spawning salmon) at the Goldstream River.

The next step was to get permission from the Ministry of Environment, which doesn’t let people meddle with eagle trees without good reason.  He convinced them he was going to write a book, which fulfilled their criteria for “educational purposes,” and he got the permit.

Next, he had to build a box to protect the camera from the weather.  It had to keep the rain out but let air in, to avoid rot.  And then he had to find someone to climb up the tree with the camera, and someone to string the cable up.  The eagle tree is almost 18 feet around at its base, which makes it almost impossible to climb.  Jed Young, the climber, had to go up a smaller tree nearby for the first 50 feet, and then swing across to the eagle tree for the remaining climb to the nest.

Carrick calls September 27, 2004, Eagle Cam Day. That afternoon, the Carricks sat in the living room with friends, finally watching close-up live action of the eagle nest they’d been peering up at for 15 years.

“For us, it was like watching the first man on the moon,” Carrick says.

The eagles weren’t entirely oblivious to all this.  The Plexiglas cover of the camera box showed them their reflections.  Carrick watched as the eagles first spotted this.  “They stared at it and glared at it as only eagles can do.  One of them stepped closer, pecked around the edges of the camera, and then pushed its beak into the centre of the lens.  As the eagle stepped forward, it became larger and larger until it looked like a giant staring out of the TV into our room,” recounts Carrick in the book he did indeed write, called The Eagles of Hornby Island.

The eagles soon learned to ignore the odd-looking box, but Carrick remained fascinated.

“The camera gives a personal picture of eagle behavior.  Rather than seeing the eagles as statistics, we see them as individuals, beautiful in appearance, with endlessly interesting behavior, steadfastly struggling to bring up their offspring.”

At the end of the eagle season (they migrate north to the salmon rivers from late August to early October), Carrick edited all the video footage down to one 36-minute presentation, and began showing it to groups of people, starting with the local elementary school and progressing to what he calls “eagle people” on Vancouver Island.  It was one of these, an eagle biologist named David Hancock, who declared, “Everyone in the world must see these eagles!”

Several weeks later the Carricks were hosting Hancock and a computer-savvy friend, who set up a system that sends the video signals to a server in Los Angeles which transmits them out onto the Internet.

Soon after that, says Carrick, the whole thing “exploded.”

The team had decided not to publicize the website for the first month or so, to give them time to work out the glitches.  But one or two people found it, started blogging about it, and things took off.

“On the first day there were 15 people discussing the eagles on a blog.  By the fifth day there were several hundred,” says Carrick.

By the time the webcam address was officially made public, it was getting a million hits per day. A few days later there were four million hits. Carrick says there were more people watching the eagles than were watching the Pope’s inauguration.

And then the mainstream media caught on, and starting bombarding the Carricks with phone calls and emails from early morning till late at night.  He recalls a reporter from the London Times waking him up at 5:00 am for an interview!

It was exciting—but all a bit much.  Especially when the Eaglecam server started putting ads up on the site, creating a furor and accusations of “commercialism”.  At one point Carrick considered pulling the plug, but he didn’t—he could see how much of an impact the eagles were having on their viewers, and that gave him renewed energy.

And soon, Carrick’s on-the-ground drama was overshadowed by the drama going on in the seven-foot wide nest: the two eggs that millions of people had been watching, that two eagle parents, oblivious to their fame, had been carefully tending, sitting on, turning every 20 minutes, and padding with dry grass for protection, ought to be hatching.

But when the 35-day incubation period benchmark came, there were no signs of action. The world watched and waited and hoped on-line, but the eggs never hatched. This is not unusual in the eagle world, but it had never before been witnessed in real time by millions of humans.

“People were incredibly moved by the whole thing,” says Carrick.  Webcam watchers wrote about how the eagles had inspired “fascination, anticipation, joy, devastation, grief and finally…respect, awe, and acceptance and wonder.”

A woman in England recounted how she had spent the last month with her dying father, brought closer together by watching the eagles, who had reflected the deep bonds of family and the reality of dealing with death.  A teacher of a special needs class wrote that watching the eagles brought her students closer together and helped them express emotion.  Others wrote about the sense of connectedness they felt with the millions of people all over the world watching the eagles.

“In a world struggling with monumental, disastrous issues, these two living creatures have shown us a commitment to life that is breathtaking,” wrote one person.

Another stated: “It showed that people around the world can all enjoy and appreciate the same thing, regardless of politics or geography or any other boundaries.”

What made Carrick happiest was that hundreds of these emails and letters concluded by saying, “We must take better care of our environment.”

In the following years, the webcam’s many viewers got to see a number of eggs hatch successfully. They watched the parents tend their young, and saw the hatchlings grow up till they were ready to leave the nest.

This is the heart of the project, but other interesting developments have taken place. Carrick wrote his book, which was published in 2008 by Hancock House Publishers.  The on-line forum has continued to be widely used and serves as a great educational tool, with people writing in their questions about eagles and eagle-experts sharing their knowledge.  An organization called the Hornby Eagle Group and Partners has developed to support the project and protect the Hornby environment, which provides such wonderful eagle habitat.

Carrick plans to write another book, this one not about eagles but about vultures, hawks, salmon and other coastal species, all of whom are integral to the eagles’ survival.

“One thing I learned from studying eagles is that they are entirely dependent on the whole ecosystem.  You can’t understand eagles without understanding everything.  If the salmon are scarce, the eagles suffer.  If the herring are scarce, the salmon suffer.

“The eagles are great teachers, and what they’ve taught me most is the interrelatedness of all things,” he says.

The Hornby Island eagles, as the pair is known, are getting old. They are 28, which is an usually advanced age to still be producing young.  The Carricks, and the millions of Hornby eagle followers all over the globe, learned early on that death is part of the lifecycle.  They will keep watching, inspired by their connection to the eagles’ lives, to each other, and to their own deep love of nature.

Check out the Eagles of Hornby Island at hornbyeagles.com

“The plants are the catalyst by which healing happens,” says Horticultural Therapist Lisa Hamilton.

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

But there is a therapeutic field (no pun intended) that takes healing out of the clinics and hospitals and into the garden.  A field where the healing properties of dirt are embraced.  Known as Horticultural Therapy (HT), this little-known but widely-practiced treatment harnesses the power of the garden for healing.

HT is used around the world to help a huge range of people—veterans dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress-Disorder, physically and mentally challenged children and adults, survivors of sexual abuse, the terminally ill, and people with brain injuries.

Most gardeners will tell you that gardening is therapeutic—physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.  HT draws on this potential by having a trained Horticulture Therapist design and facilitate programs specifically around a client’s needs.  HT activities encompass everything to do with the garden, from sowing to weeding and watering to harvesting and using the harvest in many different ways, as well as the simple power of just enjoying a garden’s beauty.

“The plants are the catalyst by which healing happens,” says Courtenay resident Lisa Hamilton, a certified Horticultural Therapist.  Hamilton recently graduated with an HT diploma from Vancouver Island University (VIU), which runs the only HT program in Canada west of Ontario.

Hamilton has joined forces with Chanchal Cabrera, another Horticultural Therapist, Master Gardener, medical herbalist, and the founder of Gardens Without Borders (GWB), a new Comox Valley non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and providing Horticulture Therapy locally and, eventually, globally.

These two women are a perfect fit.  When Hamilton graduated last spring, she was faced with the challenging prospect of carving out a path as one of the first certified HTs in the Comox Valley.  Cabrera was just in the early stages of founding Gardens Without Borders and needed support.  It was a natural step for Hamilton to join GWB, helping with all aspects of founding and running a non-profit, as well as coming on board as a working Horticultural Therapist.

For Cabrera, GWB is in many ways an evolution of the work and training she has done over the past 20 years.

“I’ve been a medical herbalist all my working life,” says Cabrera.  With a Masters in Science in Herbal Medicine, she works as a clinician, treating patients much as a Naturopath does, and also an educator, teaching herbal medicine at institutions and to the general public.  She has also been an avid gardener her whole life and qualified as a Master Gardener in 1999.

Cabrera first encountered Horticultural Therapy while browsing at Vancouver’s Banyen Books.  Intrigued by the title, she picked up a book called The Healing Fields, by Sonja Linden and Jenny Grut.  This account of using HT to treat refugees and victims of torture moved her deeply.  “It was a real ‘aha’ moment,” she says.  “I’d been gardening and working as a healer for years, and never realized there was a discipline that put these two together.”

At that time the VIU program didn’t exist, but there was an excellent HT educational centre in the Cowichan Valley called Providence Farm.  Cabrera, originally from Scotland and living in Vancouver since 1988, enrolled in their linking program for students who already have a relevant professional background.  A one-month “extremely full-time” program qualified her as an HT.

When the idea for Gardens Without Borders first came to Cabrera, the focus was international, but as it turned out the first step involved putting down roots in local soil.

“I dreamed up Gardens Without Borders out of a sense of outrage, to be honest,” Cabrera explains.  “I was reading about what was going on in Palestine.  Here was a fourth generation born and raised and probably going to die in refugee camps.  Olive groves destroyed, farms destroyed, people’s capacity to grow food and medicine destroyed.  People’s roots literally torn up.  It made my blood boil.

“So my initial idea was to go to places where trauma has occurred and help set up gardens there to grow food and medicinal plants.  But it became apparent really quickly that there was a need right here, and I thought I should learn more before landing in a foreign country and just being a nuisance,” says Cabrera.

About five years ago Cabrera and her husband bought land in Royston and founded Innisfree Farms as a multi-purpose agricultural centre, growing and marketing produce and medicinal plants, running courses, hosting the Comox Valley Seed Savers, and providing a home base for Gardens Without Borders.

The garden at Innisfree is designed specifically for therapeutic purposes.  There are raised beds which are accessible to people with impaired mobility.  For people with vision limitations, there are many tactile and scented plants and a water feature so they can hear where they are to help stay oriented.  Also, the garden is contained, which provides a feeling of safety and also ensures that clients can’t wander off across the fields.

GWB started offering Horticulture Therapy at Innisfree about a year ago.  Programs are custom-designed.  Hamilton conducts a thorough initial consultation with clients and, if appropriate, their caregivers, assessing needs, limitations and goals.  She then designs activities for each session.

Hamilton says that HT involves less actual gardening than most people imagine.  Success is not measured in rows planted, weeded or harvested, but rather by improvements to the client’s well-being.

Clients range greatly in their abilities and needs and the HT’s job is to find a balance between what clients can do, what they want to do, and what will be most therapeutic.

“If we have someone with severe Down Syndrome, we need to figure out how they can benefit.  How do we know what’s good for them?  They may not have language skills but they do communicate.  We can tell they like having their hands in the dirt.”

“The program is very flexible and ultimately depends on the weather and how the client is doing on that day,” Hamilton says.  “It could just be walking in the garden.  It could be creating a tea-cup garden that they can take home or give to someone, or a craft such as making pressed flower cards.  It could be photographing the flowers, feeding the chickens, or walking the labyrinth.

On the other hand, there are plenty of instances where HT involves full-on gardening and farming activities.

Sessions at the farm include lunch, which the clients help prepare and serve.  This adds a social element and provides opportunities to learn cooperation, communication and planning.

Because GWB is a non-profit society, it keeps its fees very low—just $15 for a three-hour session including lunch.  Clients have a variety of funding sources and Hamilton is trained to make formal reports on the HT sessions for funding authorities when needed.  As well, GWB offers group programs, such as a recent afternoon session with women from the Comox Valley Transition Society.

There are countless ways that gardens can be therapeutic.  “Physical agility and dexterity happen.  People learn skills that could help them get a job, so there’s a vocational training element.  And there’s also a huge emotional and spiritual healing,” says Cabrera.

There’s plenty of research proving that access to nature is therapeutic.

“Just breathing dirt helps calm anxiety,” says Hamilton.  “There was actually a study done measuring this with children with ADD.”

“And there was an article in [British journal] The Lancet looking at what factors influence health in inner city populations,” says Cabrera.  “The single most important criterion was access to green space.  It trumped income and education.

“And here’s another interesting one: they compared two groups of people who’d just had gall bladder surgery.  One could see green space from their room, the other faced a brick wall.  The ones who could see nature had, overall, a quicker release, needed fewer pain medications, and had fewer complications.  Just from seeing nature!”

Science is just confirming what writers and artists have been telling us for centuries.  From Van Gogh’s radiant sunflowers to the children’s classic, The Secret Garden, where a broken family is healed through the magic of a garden, our culture has always reflected on nature’s healing powers.

In fact, Horticulture Therapy has been around in various forms since long ago; it just wasn’t given that name.  In Ancient Egypt, physicians prescribed “walks in the garden” to aid in the recovery of their patients.  In Europe and America, throughout the 1700s and 1800s, it was a common practice to have people with mental health challenges work at farms and gardens to treat their symptoms.  In the 20th Century, after WWI, therapy gardens were founded across the United States at veterans’ hospitals to help returning soldiers heal their physical and emotional wounds.

Today, you can find therapy gardens at prisons, psychiatric hospitals, schools, and residential care facilities.

It’s hard to pin down the exact moment HT was launched as a formal discipline.  Some would say it was in 1955, when Michigan State University created its first Masters of Science degree in HT.  In 1973, the American Horticulture Therapy Association was founded, and in 1987 its Canadian counterpart came into being.  HT is also widespread throughout Europe, especially Germany and England.

No one has an exact count of Horticultural Therapists, but the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association has 175 members.  The discipline has strong roots in BC, thanks largely to Providence Farm, which has been offering HT programs since 1979.  It was the founder of this program, Christine Pollard, who launched the VIU program Hamilton attended.

To become a certified HT, Hamilton attended the university full-time for two years, combining horticultural studies and education in community support work.  Training ranged from the technical, such as how to design and build gardens that are accessible for people with disabilities, to interpersonal, such as how to develop an effective therapeutic relationship.  Although she has many of the skills of a traditional therapist, Hamilton sees her role as more of a facilitator.  “I don’t try to steer the clients to any sort of rehabilitative solution; the clients themselves hold the key to their own healing.”  Ultimately, she says, it is the relationship with the plants that brings healing.

“Being with plants speaks to something non-verbal in us.  People who’ve been traumatized often find a very deep sense of peace from sitting in a garden, walking in the woods, or digging,” says Cabrera.

“And there are so many ways gardens provide metaphors for our lives.  Think about composting.  You discard all the bits you don’t want, that don’t work for you.  But then you have to turn it regularly, and although it’s stinky and ugly, you have to see it, work it, poke at it till it transforms into black gold.  Out of that, something nourishing and beautiful will grow.”

Although HT focuses on bringing healing to specific people, there is a wider relevance to the whole endeavour.  As our world becomes ever more mechanized and our reality ever more virtual, our need to reconnect with nature grows more and more urgent.  You could argue that human society itself needs some Horticultural Therapy.

In fact, Cabrera points out, Nature Deficit Disorder is increasingly recognized as a problem affecting our health as individuals and communities.  Richard Louv, who popularized this term in his book, Last Child in the Woods, links the lack of nature in the lives of today’s wired generation to disturbing childhood trends, such as the rise in obesity, attention disorders, and depression.  His book has helped galvanize a “no child left inside” movement aimed at getting kids back outside.

Louv emphasizes that Nature Deficit Disorder is not an individual affliction but rather a social disorder.  We can see society’s desire to reconnect with nature expressed in everything from the rising popularity of farmer’s markets to the hit film Avatar.

In a society afflicted by Nature Deficit Disorder, the garden increasingly seems like the perfect setting for healing.  Clearly, the time is right for Horticultural Therapy and for Gardens Without Borders.

“People are so hungry for a relationship with plants,” says Cabrera.

For more information about Gardens Without Borders visit: www.gardenswithoutborders.org

All that changed last October when he attended a community meeting to learn more about a proposed coal mine in his neighborhood.

One of the first things he discovered was that this is a big project:  Compliance Energy Corporation, a Vancouver-based company working in partnership with Korean and Japanese investors, is proposing to dig more than 2,200,000 tonnes of coal a year for the next 20 years out of an underground mine in a valley overlooking Fanny Bay.  The mine will cover 200 hectares on the surface and 3,100 hectares underground, and will operate 24 hours a day.  The coal will likely be shipped by truck to Port Alberni and then by ship to China, where it will be used in steel production.

Snyder was concerned about his well, which had almost run dry the previous summer.  Might a coal mine make this worse?  Indeed, it might, he learned at the meeting.  And there were a whole lot of other things a coal mine just might do.  None sounded good to Snyder.

“We’re not going away,” says John Snyder. noting that one of CoalWatch’s concerns is damage to fish-bearing streams. “We’re under no illusion that we’ll stop this mine in the early stages, but we’re prepared to go the whole route.”

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

Never mind his well—now Snyder was worried about air pollution from toxic coal dust, which can cause or exacerbate health problems ranging from black lung disease to asthma; noise pollution; water pollution that could poison salmon-bearing streams, groundwater, and the ocean waters of Baynes Sound; increased highway traffic;  adverse impacts on the local shellfish industry; decreased property values; dangers associated with methane gas in the mine; and something nasty called acid mine drainage (ADM), a type of long-term toxic leakage that can continue long after a mine has closed down, necessitating long-term, expensive remediation efforts.  Not to mention the mine’s contribution to global warming.

Today, Snyder is Chair of CoalWatch, the Fanny Bay-based community organization that formed to oppose the coal mine after the October meeting.  Part of his job includes talking with the media, which is why he’s sitting with me on a picnic table at the Buckley Bay ferry terminal on a July afternoon, answering questions and enjoying the sunny skies, sparkling ocean and cheerful hubbub of ferry passengers.

With a steering committee of 14 who meet regularly at each others’ homes or in the Fanny Bay Community Hall, CoalWatch is as grassroots as you can get.

“It seems that most of us who are really involved live on Tozer Road,” says Snyder with a laugh.  He gestures with his head toward Ship’s Point, a peninsula snaking off of Vancouver Island just to the south of where we’re sitting, which houses Tozer Road, a bucolic country lane that dead-ends in a stand of Douglas Firs.  “That’s the hotbed over there,” he adds, grinning.

CoalWatch may be markedly local, but it has a mailing list of 350-400 concerned citizens, not just from Fanny Bay.  “If people think this is just the problem of little Fanny Bay, I’m sorry to say they are mistaken,” says Snyder.

He points out that Compliance has rights over a large area extending up to Cumberland, including several possible other mine sites.  One of these is the Bear Coal Deposit, about 10 kilometres northwest of Raven, which also would produce metallurgical coal, but with an open pit, rather than underground.  No proposal has been submitted for this mine, but the Compliance website states, “It is anticipated that it would be developed in conjunction with the Raven Deposit.”

Although the Raven project is still in the planning stages, many individuals and organizations are voicing their opposition, or at the least, watching the situation closely.

The BC Shellfish Growers Association (BCSGA) passed a resolution opposing the mine, on the grounds that heavy metals and other toxic runoff could compromise this thriving local industry, which depends on clean waters.   Baynes Sound (the waters between Vancouver Island and Denman Island) houses 51 per cent of BC’s annual shellfish harvest.  The local shellfishery is valued at $17 million annually and employs more than 500 people in jobs that will be around long after the miners pack up and leave, says Roberta Stevenson, BCSGA President.

Neighboring Denman Island, whose western shore is just 6.2 kilometres from the proposed mine, has launched a barrage of opposition from its governing body, the Local Trust Committee, its Residents’ Association, Marine Stewardship Committee, and United Church, and has spawned its own citizens’ group, Denman Island Opposes Coal (DOC), which is working diligently to stop the mine.

Many governing bodies in the region, including the Rural Directors of the Comox Valley Regional District, the Courtenay Council, the Town of Qualicum Beach, the Village of Cumberland, Comox Town Council and The Islands Trust Council have formally expressed concerns, calling for more detailed studies and assessment or simply opposing the project outright.

Environmental groups such as the Wilderness Committee, Sierra Club BC, and Comox Valley Conservation Strategies Planning Association (a consortium of eight organizations) have been speaking out against the mine.   In June, a group of activists demonstrated outside Compliance offices during the company’s board meeting, protesting the proposed Raven mine.

Concern from outside the region tends to focus on the implications of opening a new coal mine—the first in almost 25 years—on Vancouver Island, at a time when reliance on fossil fuels looks increasingly short-sighted.

“This campaign is not just about one coal mine in the Comox Valley,” says Tria Donaldson, Pacific campaign coordinator for the Wilderness Committee.  “At the heart of our concern is the pure hypocrisy of expanding our fossil fuel industry while claiming to be climate leaders.

“The government of BC has set lofty goals of reducing our provincial emissions by 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020.  The massive planned expansion of coal mines like Raven Coal undoes any work done on the climate front.  If we don’t want to burn coal in Canada because of climate change, how is shipping it off to China to get burned any better?” she adds.

Although most of the coal from the Raven Mine would probably not be used as fuel, virtually all its carbon dioxide, the culprit in global warming, is still released into the atmosphere during the steel-making process.  As well, the transportation of the coal—an estimated 98 trucks coming, and 98 going, per day (that’s one leaving every 15 minutes) plus 20 ships coming in and out of Port Alberni—leaves its own considerable carbon footprint.

Beyond the local issues, this is a debate about the direction of BC’s economy and its approach to sustainable resource management.

“I wouldn’t be putting so much time into this if I hadn’t realized that this goes a lot further than my own backyard,” says Snyder, who estimates that he spends 20 to 30 hours a week on CoalWatch business.

British Columbia is North America’s biggest coal exporter, and critics say it is time to change course.  “Maybe it’s time to look at saying no new coal mines, period,” says Snyder.

“I’m not under any illusions that we’re going to quickly transition to a totally green economy,” he adds. “But we can start making moves in that direction.  People do need jobs, so maybe it’s time to start asking the government to create green jobs.”

Denman Islander Patti Willis saw the big picture right away.  A founding member of Denman Island Opposes Coal, Willis has a background that puts her in sharp contrast to John Snyder—she’s a veteran activist with more than 35 years experience engaging in, and often running, peace, forest protection, anti-mining, conservation, and other social justice and environmental campaigns, both locally and internationally.  Early this August she was honored with a Stewardship Award from the Islands Trust in recognition of her many years of community service.

Willis says this campaign is different than any other she’s been part of.  “The fact that it is 2010 changes the complexion of this.  People are looking at these things with a new lens—the lens of climate change.  They are asking, ‘Do I want to perpetuate this kind of reliance on fossil fuels?’

“One reason we haven’t seen any group come out seriously in favor of this is that there’s a widespread level of concern and wariness that there never used to be.   It’s hard to come out in favor of coal of any kind.”

Willis says the Raven Coal Mine represents the biggest environmental threat Denman Island has seen in at least half a century, and Islanders are clearly very concerned.  DOC has about 20 active members and a mailing list of 100; at a June community meeting, close to 200 people showed up, packing the hall, and not a single speaker supported the mine.

While opposition to the mine may seem deafening, especially from the “hotbeds” of resistance on Tozer Road and Denman Island, Compliance Coal Corporation remains confident that the concerns are either unfounded or can be dealt with.

“Our job is to be able to answer the questions that those people are posing.  From the very beginning we’ve been committed to being transparent throughout the process and to developing this in a socially and environmentally responsible manner,” says Compliance CEO and President John Tapics in a phone interview.

“It’s very early in the process and we’ve been completing a number of studies that cover a broad spectrum of areas; all of those studies and information will be available to the public,” says Tapics.

Although he is certainly aware of the opposition, Tapics says many people welcome the mine.   “There’s a lot of support out there,” he says.  “We’ve had over 100 job applications from individuals and contractors looking for employment.  We’ve heard lots of positive interest at public meetings and there have been a number of letters to the editor in various papers from individuals indicating they believe this type of employment is necessary in the area and they support us.”

Employment is definitely the big draw for those who support the proposed mine.  “The coal mine will create real jobs for people with families that will buy houses and help refill our schools… this will encourage our younger residents to stay here instead of moving to Alberta where the money is,” writes Kim Morton in a letter to the Qualicum publication, The Beacon.

The project website (see below) has FAQs and information sheets offering responses to various concerns.  For every point raised by opponents, Compliance offers a solution, a rebuttal or a commitment to study the issue further.

For instance, in response to concerns about coal dust pollution, Compliance states: “The project team will work closely with the community to minimize or eliminate potential impacts from coal dust.  All coal transportation trucks will be covered and modern technologies will be used to ensure dust control.  An environmental management plan will be put in place to manage dust emissions and air quality will be monitored throughout the life of the project.”

Concerns about the effects of coal washing—which separates dirt and non-coal rock from the coal—include both the amount of groundwater it uses, and the potentially toxic run-off.  Compliance responds:  “It is estimated that 330 to 490 cubic metres of water will be used per day for coal washing.  This is equivalent to the amount of water a medium to large hotel uses in an average day.  Almost all the water used is expected to be recycled.  Any water released will meet or be better than government water quality standards.  A comprehensive water management plan will be implemented to safely and efficiently manage all water requirements.”

And so on, point counter point, for each topic. Snyder, however, finds these responses insufficient.  He and his colleagues are in dialogue with Compliance, but their hopes of stopping the mine are pinned on both the Federal and Provincial governments.

To move forward, the project must successfully pass through complex environmental review processes both provincially and federally.  In theory, either of these could stop the mine—although there is no precedent for this in BC, says DOC’s Willis.

“They have never turned down a mine at the environmental review stage in BC,” she says.   Still, she remains optimistic. “Ultimately, it will come down to the citizens; it’s so important for the citizens to be vigilant and to comment.  The government needs to know we’re watching this; they need to know our concerns,” she says.

Both the Federal and the BC environmental reviews include periods for public input.  Willis and Snyder encourage people to express their concerns both in writing, which has a more formal impact, and by showing up and speaking at public meetings, which makes a bolder, more public statement.

As the public review process gets underway, CoalWatch will provide guidance on its website for members of the public wanting to take part.

The review process itself is controversial.  CoalWatch and its allies are pressing to have the federal process upgraded from its current form (called a Comprehensive Federal Review) to a more stringent level, called the Full Expert Panel Review, which will include public hearings along with the opportunity to have scientists, mining engineers and other experts present their testimony.

“This is the most exhaustive form of review and from our point of view this deserves nothing less because it is so far reaching in terms of who it affects and how it affects the environment,” says Snyder.  As well, almost all the concerned parties are calling for thorough mapping of aquifers, and scientific studies of how they would be impacted by the mine.

In the meantime, things are getting more complicated.  Much to many people’s surprise, on July 19, the Federal Office of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency  (CEAA) commenced a public comment period for the proposed mine, with no public notice other than a posting on the CEAA website.

Within days Snyder had fired off a letter of protest to Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice and spoken on CBC Radio’s On the Island, as well as local radio stations JET FM and The Eagle.

Snyder’s got quite a long list of complaints about the timing of this process: he points out that the proposal for the mine is not even complete, that the key background document is not yet available, that the public can’t properly evaluate the project without aquifer mapping, that there has been no public advertising of the public comments period, and that the project warrants a Full Expert Review Panel.

Annie Roy, CEAA spokesperson, speaking on CBC radio, said the 30-day limit for public comment will be measured from the day the full proposal and background document are posted on the CEAA website, but that no public advertising of this would take place.  She did not comment on the other issues.

In his letter, Snyder calls the CEAA to task, stating, “The surprise announcement on July 19 creates the impression that the federal government intends to pursue a hasty and far less rigorous assessment than the proposal warrants,” and he firmly but politely asks the Minister to “restore public confidence” by moving ahead with the Full Expert Panel Review and with aquifer mapping.

This type of swift, decisive response suggests CoalWatch knows how to be a fierce opponent.

“We’re not going away,” says Snyder.  “We’re under no illusion that we’ll stop this mine in the early stages, but we’re prepared to go the whole route.  Sure, it’s a David and Goliath situation—we’re just a small group up against a bunch of guys whose lunch budget is probably more than our annual income.  But I am hopeful that this mine can be stopped.”

He points out that local shellfish farming already provides twice as many jobs as the mine promises, and that these are connected to a sustainable industry which may be threatened by the mine.  It’s a lot easier to preserve these jobs than to build a mine that would put them, and so much else, at risk, he says.

“We live in paradise, in the land of plenty.  To jeopardize this for a couple hundred coal mining jobs doesn’t make sense.”

Snyder may not have been an environmental activist this time last year, but he sure sounds like one now.  Whether he and his many allies will actually stop the Raven Underground Coal Mine remains to be seen, but clearly, he’s not going to give up.

For more information:

www.coalwatch.ca
www.theravenproject.ca
www.complianceenergy.com
www.wildernesscommittee.org

“Part of the attraction of green burial for Denman Islanders is having the option to reclaim that part of things,” says Dr. Doreen Tetz. “We tend to be a very self-reliant group of people here.” The Denman Conservancy Association has donated one hectare of the protected Central Park for the cemetery site (above).

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

These days, it seems, we are all trying to live a greener life—but few of us have considered what it could mean to die a greener death.

A group of Denman Islanders have been doing just that.  With the appropriate acronym DIMS (Denman Island Memorial Society), they are spearheading a community initiative to create what will probably be Canada’s first entirely green cemetery.

DIMS is, in fact, joining a modest but growing green burial movement.  The first natural burial ground was created in 1993 in the United Kingdom, where there are now more than 200 such sites.

In Canada, two cemeteries (one in Victoria and one in Ontario) have created natural burial areas within the larger, conventional cemetery.  Closer to home, DIMS members have been in touch with groups from Salt Spring and Pender Islands wanting to include a green area as part of their cemeteries.

BC painter and writer Emily Carr eloquently summed up the emotional attraction of green burial in a poetic, heartfelt plea:

“Dear Mother Earth, I have always specifically belonged to you.  I have loved from babyhood to roll upon you, to lie with my face pressed right down onto you in my sorrows.  I love the look of you and the smell of you and the feel of you.  When I die, I should like to be in you, uncoffined, unshrouded, the petals of flowers against my flesh and you covering me up.”

For many people, the attraction of green burial is less to do with poetry and more to do with science—environmental science, to be specific.

Conventional burial violates the environment in quite a number of ways.  The building of big concrete vaults for families hugely disturbs the earth.  Heavy caskets take decades to biodegrade and usually include toxic materials.  Embalming fluid renders the human remains toxic, as well.

Also, the standard design of a cemetery is distinctly unfriendly to the environment.  Typically, the site is extensively cleared.  New species, often non-native, are planted, and large swaths of lawn are maintained with chemicals and copious watering, both poisoning and depleting the groundwater.  Huge gravemarkers, often placed on concrete foundations, further disturb the natural order.

The goal of green burial, sometimes called ecological burial, is to return human remains to the earth in their natural state, with little or no impact on the environment.  No embalming fluid is used and the body is placed in the ground in a biodegradable shroud or coffin.  Concrete vaults are not used.  Burials may include cremains (ashes) as long as the container is biodegradable.  However, many green burial advocates discourage cremation because of the greenhouse gas emissions and toxins caused by the burning process.  (The Denman cemetery will welcome cremains.)

Green cemeteries are considered to be nature preserves; flower gardens and lawns, and the related use of fertilizers and pesticides, are not part of the picture.  The sites are marked with simple indigenous flat stones, other small structures, or plants, rather than big heavy markers.

While natural burial is currently a new trend, driven by environmental concerns, it is also a very old practice.  Historically, North America’s settlers very likely practiced green burial, and today, some remote Northern communities, isolated from government-certified undertakers, morticians, hearse drivers, and all the other paraphernalia surrounding the business of death, simply put their bodies in the ground.  On the other hand, practices to preserve the body in an undeathlike perfection are as old as ancient Egyptian mummies.

Although natural burial sites meet all the required health and bureaucratic standards, the whole idea can be simply too “out there” for many North Americans.  After all, death is hard enough to deal with, and people may feel more comfortable when things remain sanitized and conventional and a little less… earthy.

“Society in general is adverse to the whole microbiological world,” says Dr. Doreen Tetz, a general practitioner on Denman who, along with Local Islands Trust representative Louise Bell, met with me to talk about the green cemetery project.  Both are members of the DIMS Cemetery Project Committee.

“Modern burial practices evolved as part of a general movement in the early part of the last century for everything to become more sanitized, after antibiotics were discovered,” explains Tetz.

“And yet,” continues Bell, “what actually happens to a body as it is being prepared for conventional burial is actually really gross!  People just don’t know it.”  Bodies are stripped, shaved, washed with disinfecting chemicals, massaged and manipulated; formaldehyde is injected into the circulatory system and into the body cavities.  The mouth may be sewn shut and devices are used to set the face in a proper expression.  So much indignity and mess for a process meant to preserve our dignity!

Thus far, Bell, Tetz, and their colleagues on the DIMS Cemetery Project Committee have found Denman Islanders very supportive toward the project, speaking in favor of it at public meetings, and participating enthusiastically in a recent table-tennis tournament fundraiser.  In fact, say Bell and Tetz, there has been no opposition—perhaps, says Tetz, because this community of avid gardeners, composters and farmers tends to be somewhat more comfortable with the “whole microbiological world” than others.

But mainly, says Bell, Denman Island has needed a new cemetery for years.  With the old cemetery full, locals have had to send their loved ones to other communities to be buried.

“This project resonates with what I’ve seen in my 20 years of medical practice on Denman,” says Tetz.  “In that time there have been two very tragic situations where young children died, and the cemetery was full.  It makes a very strong impression when a family needs a place to lay their child’s body to rest.  Plots were eventually found, but it was very difficult; we had to ask permission from other families and it was quite a process.”

Bell says the reason she got involved with DIMS was simple:  “I made an election promise.  In the lead up to the last Islands Trust election, two people asked me if, were I elected, I’d be willing to give some time to creating new cemetery.  I said yes.”

Bell’s extensive experience dealing with the intricacies of government agencies has proven to be very helpful.  As is typical when someone wants to do something new with land use, there is a daunting amount of bureaucracy involved.  In fact, more than two thirds of the budget for the cemetery goes toward bureaucratic costs such as rezoning and subdivision fees, land appraisal fees, applications to the Agricultural Land Reserve and the BC Business Practices and Consumer Protection Authority, which oversees all things burial-related, as well as the legal work, surveys and consulting needed to accompany all this.

DIMS’ very first challenge was perhaps the largest—they needed to find someone to donate an appropriate piece of land.  Luckily, they soon found a willing donor: the Denman Conservancy Association (DCA), a well-established non-profit conservation society that owns a number of properties on Denman, stepped on board.

One of DCA’s flagship properties, the 60-acre Central Park, has one corner that is adjacent to the old cemetery.  After some deliberation—including discussion about how to legally ensure that the new cemetery honoured the conservation values that are intrinsic to DCA’s mission—the DCA board agreed to donate a hectare of Central Park to DIMS.

This meant DIMS could celebrate, but not rest.  Founding a cemetery is not a simple project.  Fundraising is particularly challenging, since “cemeteries” are completely off the radar of funding agencies, says Tetz.

Also complicating things is the fact that burial is a highly regulated field, with legislation covering not just cemeteries, but also who can deal with human remains.

“For instance, you aren’t allowed to touch or to transport a body without special certification,” says Bell.  The DIMS group is looking at ways to work within the regulations while keeping the burial process at home on Denman.

This is part of a larger movement in the way families handle death and dying, says Tetz.

“Over the course of my career I’ve seen a really large shift.  It used to be death happened mostly in hospital, often alone.  As a doctor, I’d be called in to pronounce someone dead.  I wouldn’t know them; I wouldn’t know their family.  So I’d end up making a call to someone I didn’t know, on the other side of the country, to tell them that a family member had died.

“Now, more and more people die at home, with their families around them—while still receiving the best medical care,” Tetz adds.  “Families have been reclaiming that event in their lives.  But all that stops when someone dies.  The body goes off the island into the hands of strangers.

“Part of the attraction of green burial for Denman Islanders is having the option to reclaim that part of things.  We tend to be a very self-reliant group of people here.”

Bell is keeping meticulous notes of all the steps DIMS is going through to achieve its goal, with the intention of being able to offer help to other communities who are interested in creating a green cemetery.

“We are breaking new ground—no pun intended,” says Tetz with a twinkle in her eye.  “Down the road we’ll certainly be willing to educate others.  And I anticipate that there will be interest.”

Death, after all, is a part of life, and it makes sense for people to want their death to mirror the values they live by.  The new Denman cemetery will offer this possibility to all those who value environmental sustainability and connection to the local in their lives, by providing a place where they can comfortably return to the earth, in their own communities, after their death.

A scene from ‘Garbage Dreams’, showing at this year’s Festival in February.

The World Community Film Festival has been bringing films from around the globe to Courtenay for the past 18 years. February 5 and 6, 2010 sees the 19th annual festival launch yet another exciting weekend of documentary films showing in five venues in Downtown Courtenay.

“It seems that there’s an organic process that happens,” explains Wayne Bradley, one of the four committee members who chooses the films. “The films we receive for selection seem to reflect the issues we hear people talking about in our own community—how to live sustainably, global warming, healthcare, the economy, farming and finding common ground. Issues such as resource extraction, whether from the Canadian tar sands or Latin America, whether it’s for minerals, oil or exporting water, these are big issues that affect people all round the globe.”

It’s issues like this that many Valley residents and people from as far as Victoria come to find out about. They want to be informed and independent movie making is an excellent source for information. People also want to know about solutions to many problems we experience in our own towns. The festival is a showcase of stories of everyday heroes who have stepped forward to take action, responding to the challenges they see in their world. Those solutions can come from as far afield as Bogata, Columbia.

“To many of us, Columbia is a country filled with drug-running gangsters, and we don’t know of the huge strides being made in its capital city,” Bradley says. “The film, Bogotá: Building a Sustainable City, shows how the mayor of Bogata had a vision for his city. In Bogotá they have an enviable transportation system with bikes and walking being an integral part of it; parks and green spaces are proliferating—it’s marvellous. These people are creating a sustainable city, it’s an inspiration.”

The Film Festival is a vital conduit for information from unusual and alternative sources. Solutions to common problems are being found around the planet and their films share the information and knowledge with us.

Choosing the films is a long process that begins months before opening night. Films make the rounds of the four committee members—Bradley, Janet Fairbanks, Heather Wilkinson and Gordon Darby. Each participant rates their opinion on the cover before sending it on. All the films are chosen by concensus. This is a time-consuming labour of love with the potential to be overwhelming—there are films on many topics most of us don’t want to know about. The committee has to do a fine juggling act between information that is helpful or that they think ought to be more widely known, yet not have the viewers leave with a feeling of helplessness and that the world is a vile place.

“The aims are to unite people and let us see we are facing the same problems, and that there is power in protest, raising one’s voice, getting involved politically, whether it’s writing letters or running for office.

“We’ve never had such a huge choice before,” Bradley says. “With the recent strides in affordable technology, anyone can make a film now. One of our selections comes from Burma and was made by Burmese people with cell phone cameras, or little cameras held at waist-height, during the recent uprisings there. Brave people—and it’s totally riveting!”
Another film entitled Garbage Dreams, was filmed over four years and has won multiple international awards, including being short listed for an Academy Award. Garbage Dreams follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade in the world’s largest garbage village, a ghetto on the outskirts of Cairo and the decisions they are forced to make when globalization threatens their livelihood.

“In these times of wars, financial collapse, and environmental devastation, people everywhere are wondering, is change possible? When you find out what people are doing around the world to help make a positive change, it’s inspiring. Gandhi called it ‘soul force,’ and Martin Luther King called it ‘love in action’—it’s discovering the fierce light of compassionate activism, which awakens the human heart while simultaneously transforming the world.”

Tickets for the festival will be available at the Sid Williams Theatre mid-December, just in time for Christmas. $28/weekend pass and $18 Saturday only. Low-income tickets $12 for the weekend and $8 Saturday; youth under 20 can attend for $3. When not viewing films, festival-goers can browse through the Bazaar, held Saturday in the Upper Florence Filberg Centre, to find info about community groups and have a snack. For a list of films see the program guide at worldcommunity.ca

Rennison talks about “his” beautiful Vancouver Island and the waters of the Georgia Strait with as much pride and reverence as a preacher at a pulpit. And no wonder! He’s a fourth generation Islander and his memories and family history here go back almost 200 years. His ancestors moved here from England in the early 1800s and Rennison Road in Courtenay is named after his grandfather.

Compared to Rennison, West is a newbie. She moved here from Alberta in 1984. Although she is well traveled, she is proud to call the Comox Valley home. Upon returning from a round-the-world trip in 2002, she says she felt a wave of pride as the airplane touched down at the Comox Airport. “It felt good to be ‘home’… to the most beautiful place in the world!” she recalls with a hint of nostalgia.

Rennison had been employed in the logging industry for most of his adult life. In 2007, he made a career change when he purchased a 34-foot Double Eagle fishing boat and started a business called Adventure Marine Tours. He and his wife, Donna, redesigned the boat as a pleasure craft that could accommodate 10 passengers and a crew of two. They re-named the boat After Ours—a play on words to signify that they had raised their family and were looking forward to the next stage of their lives.

After Ours is larger than many charter boats, boasting a fully enclosed cabin with seating, a washroom, a small kitchen, a covered deck and an open deck area. Its overall length and width, combined with the depth of its hull, make it more stable in open seas than similar, but smaller watercraft.

“We spent the first year getting our feet wet—so to speak,” explains Rennison. “We began by offering whale and bear watching tours and fishing charters out of Kelsey Bay, which is about a 45 minute drive north of Campbell River. Then the economy tanked. We were struggling, as there was an oversupply of this type of charter in the Campbell River area.

“Our location in Kelsey Bay was also proving to be a bit of a challenge,” adds Rennison. “The weather in the bay was often poor and this restricted our ability to take people out. In addition to that, Kelsey Bay is not a destination stop. Already on tighter budgets than before, tourists were gravitating to charters being offered directly out of Campbell River, rather than travel north. That further restricted our ability to book customers and maintain our business.”

During the summer of 2008, the Rennisons realized that in order to succeed and make the business profitable, they needed a change of location and a change of focus. While Ric had many years of experience navigating the water, he recognized they were in unchartered waters when it came to other aspects of running the business. They knew they would benefit from adding someone with a financial background to the mix. So Rennison asked former business associate and chartered accountant, Jackie West, owner of Valley View Accounting in Courtenay, to come on board.

Aside from their long-standing friendship, Rennison approached West because she is well versed in tourism from her previous world travels. This was a valuable asset to bring to the table.

A new partnership was formed between the Rennisons and West. The company was incorporated and they sought out a new focus for its future. They spent most of the last eight months redefining the services that Adventure Marine Tours would offer for summer 2009 and beyond.

They chose to relocate to the Comox Valley, not only because this is where their families live (so they could go home each night) but as importantly, because no similar service was currently operating out of the Comox Marina.

In the spring 2009, they invited Reg Webber to join the team as a management consultant. Webber had been a client of West’s for the past 18 years and has known Ric Rennison even longer. The two men have worked together countless times over the past few decades. With many years of business management experience to his credit, Webber brought another valuable asset to company.

With a new focus on eco-tourism and oceanic education, Adventure Marine Tours is now open for business. Rennison mans the boat; West makes the bookings and manages the finances; and Webber acts as tour guide and general manager.
While you can still convince Rennison and Webber to take you out a fishing charter, Adventure Marine offers three new flagship excursions: A Taste of Hornby, Ocean Exploration—A Hands-on Experience and Tree Island Romance. There is a set cost for each excursion for guests age 15 and older; children between the ages of 7 to 14 are half price and kids under age six are free.

“These tours give us an opportunity to share some of Vancouver Island’s history with people,” says Rennison. “It is something we all really enjoy and that we take great pride in. I love being on the water several times a week… and the fact that I am not stuck sitting behind a desk in an office.”

In addition to the above-mentioned tours, Adventure Marine will also consider a ‘Create Your Own Adventure’ tour, whereby you dream up your own adventure and, if your dream is “doable”, you can charter the boat for $215 per hour, for a four-hour minimum for up to 10 people.

A Taste of Hornby tour is an all-day event for $289.50 per person. Guests board the boat in the morning at the Comox Marina. After Ours is usually moored at the Gas & Go marine station at the south end of the marina, near the boat launch. The boat then travels down the coastline, then around Denman and Hornby Islands. During the 90-minute trip, Webber and Rennison tell stories about local landmarks, flora, fauna and sea life.

“We dock at Ford’s Cove on Hornby Island, where the guests disembark for their choice of a five-hour guided or unguided bicycle tour to enjoy the Island’s wineries, artisans, beaches and Helliwell Park,” says West. “We supply mountain bikes as part of the tour package or electronic bikes at a small additional charge. For those choosing not to bike, we will take them around the corner to Tribune Bay, where they can enjoy the beach or hike to Helliwell Park. Guests are also provided with a picnic lunch and we will accommodate special dietary restrictions and requests.”

The Ocean Exploration Tour ($198) is designed for people of all ages, but will be especially fun for kids enamored with nature. This six-hour tour leaves the Comox Marina and travels south to Baynes Sound to get a hands-on look at how oysters and scallops are farmed, as well as watch as prawn and crab traps are hauled up from the ocean floor.

“I will never tire of watching people’s faces when the traps first break the surface of the water and then when we spread the catch out for them to see,” says Rennison. “People are always amazed and in awe of the various sea creatures that may be in the traps… and they are thrilled when they get to take home some fresh-caught seafood!”

In addition to learning about what lies beneath the waters of the Georgia Strait, guests will also learn about the commercial fishing and logging industries and how they play an important role in the region’s past, present and future.

Recognizing that there was also a niche to fill for a more romantic and relaxed ocean excursion, Adventure Marine Tours even planned something special for lovers… and others.

The Tree Island Romance Tour ($235 per couple) takes guests from the Comox Marina to a special place the locals call “Tree Island,” but its official name is Sandy Island Provincial Marine Park.

Guests looking for a romance rather than recreation are picked up at the Comox Marina and transported to Tree Island. They are supplied with a gourmet picnic supper and then dropped off on the beach for a few hours to enjoy some quiet time while they watch the spectacular sunset. For couples looking for something totally out-of-the-ordinary and hopelessly romantic, you can’t beat a rendezvous on an island oasis, complete with a sunset.

Families looking to explore Tree Island get more enjoyment from arranging a morning drop-off, picnic lunch and early afternoon pick-up, rather than scheduling the sunset cruise.

Recognizing the importance of doing only three or four tours, but doing them well, Adventure Marine Tours will spend this summer perfecting these three tours. But that isn’t stopping them from dreaming about what possibilities the future will hold.

“My ultimate plan is to host five and seven-day cruises up the coast, from Comox to such places as Telegraph Cove,” says Rennison. “These tours would be the ‘full meal deal’, offering overnight lodging at various resorts and hotels, meal packages and more. They would include everything from charter fishing to bear and whale watching and so much more. We are surrounded by so much beauty here in the Comox Valley that there is no limit to our dreams for the future of this company.”

FMI call 250. 871.7655 or visit adventuremarinetours.com