Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Bob Chamberlain, former Vice President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs  and former elected chief of the Kwikwasut'inuxw Haxwa'mis First Nation is endorsing NDP candidate Tanille Johnson in North Island Powell River.  “I just hope that your listeners are understanding and supportive of justice for First Nations people.”  “I hope they'll vote for the NDP. I say that be...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -First Nations leaders are calling upon the Conservative Party of Canada to drop Aaron Gunn, candidate for North Island-Powell River, due to a series of tweets he made between 2019 and 2021. More than 150,000 First Nation, Métis and Inuit children were taken out of their homes and forced to attend residential schools between the 1870s and 1997. The Truth and Reconciliat...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - All of the recent polls report the Liberals ahead in this election. If the election were held today, 338Canada and CBC’s Poll tracker are projecting a landslide victory, with between 193 and 202 seats going to Mark Carney’s Liberal Party. It’s a bit more difficult when it comes to calculating the outcome in individual ridings. According to 338Canada’s projections, Nor...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The Cortes Island Museum had their AGM on March 30th. “We had  52 people come out despite a really nice gardening day. You could see people having conversations and lots of hugs.  Nice to see everybody out after the winter. Coffee and treats were available, a nice wide selection of home baked goods. So it's like the social atmosphere was really positive,” explained Me...

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - While she recognizes DRIPA as a valuable document, MLA Anna Kindy recently informed the SRD Board that she does not support ‘article 26.’ The topic came up when she took part in the May 26 Board meeting.  Kindy began by stating, “ Part of the reason I'm here is to actually learn how things are run.  I'm not going to pretend I know everything, far from it.  It's a ste...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - On March 21, Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a press release stating that in 2023 Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped to their lowest level in 27 years (excluding the pandemic years). The exception in this otherwise positive picture was the oil and gas sector, where emissions continue to rise. However there is good news within that sector as well, ‘...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) has been helping maintain Mansons Landing Provincial Park since 2016. They’ve been putting up railings to prevent further erosion of banks, putting up interpretive signage and maintain the trails. FOCI also holds a Broom Bash every year. 15 volunteers and staff showed up to remove this invasive species on Saturday, March 21, 2025. Corte...

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - There hasn't been a major wildfire on Cortes Island for decades, but this could change as our summer’s grow hotter and drier. The Rainbow Ridge Affordable Housing project is being designed with this in mind. “The main idea is to try to have more of a FireSmart community and get rid of the conifers that are much more prone to embers catching fire and then catching the...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The election writ was dropped Sunday and the following day Cortes Currents published responses from the candidates in our riding. As they were either emails or excerpts from press releases, it is only on the web. However NDP candidate Tanille Johnston just sent in an audio clip as well. She’s referring to a meeting the Cortes Island Climate Action Network put on in Ma...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - A four acre clearing was carved out of the forest in downtown Mansons Landing to make way for the Rainbow Ridge Affordable Housing Development. A crew was busy piling the last of the logs when Cortes Currents arrived on site, and the ground was covered with branches, wood debris and stumps. Construction on the first building is expected to start in a month, which mean...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - There were a couple of changes in the plan for the Rainbow Ridge Affordable Housing Development as the site was cleared. A small parcel of land along the northern border of the property was given to the Cortes Island Fire Department, to enable it to expand. Plans for a hedge of trees between Rainbow Ridge and the Cortes Island Senior’s Village were drastically altered...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Mascon by TELUS informed at least 10 Cortes Island residents that their internet service will be terminated on June 2, 2025. A dozen people were chatting about it on the Cortes Island Is Home Facebook page, where one typed a message to Regional Director Mark Vonesch, “The SRD was part of the whole CityWest to insure all communities were connected? Most of us do not ha...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - mmanuel McKenty is the new face of the Cortes Island Microgrants 4 Neighbours Program.  When this ZOOM interview began, he was sitting in a room that looked very similar to where  I interviewed him along with the rest of the Awakeneers on previous occasions. Cortes Currents: Give me your spiel and then I’ll ask some questions. Immanuel McKenty: “  The 2025 round of th...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, the oil and gas sector is a major contributor to Canada’s economy, employing 182,000 people and generating $209 billion in GDP during 2023, yet it is also the source of 31% of Canada’’s Greenhouse gas emissions.  “Demand for oil and gas is not going to go to zero tomorrow.  It is a transition that takes decades  to u...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Wave and Range Cortes Island has decided it's time to go public. “This year we're going to be putting on the Cortes adventure challenge, essentially a Cortes triathlon: It's a kayak or a canoe, a swim and a trek. We've got a short course, and a long course. That'll be on the 12th and the 21st of July, tentaively. I'll need to confirm those dates with you, but we'll ad...

Sadhu Johnston/Cortes Housing Society - Tune in on March 14th for another collaborative monthly housing forum presented by the Cortes Housing Society, and supported by Folk University. Themed “Land Sharing”, this forum featured 5 local Cortesian guest speakers chatting about different land-sharing formats (Tiber Bay, Siskin Lane, land partnerships, living estates, and more!), what has worked for t...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - As Canada prepares for an election, which may be called sometime before parliament is recalled on March 24, polls show the Conservatives and Liberals in a statistical tie. But 6 out of 8 recent polls also show the Liberals rising quickly and now narrowly ahead. On Sunday 338Canada projected the odds of a Conservative forming a majority government has fallen from 99% o...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - One of the 2025 RIEP Virtual Forum presentations was a panel discussion of how the affordable housing societies were faring on eight rural islands. There were a lot of common themes running throughout their stories: difficulties obtaining funding through BC Housing, CMHC and other organizations whose requirements are drawn up for urban rather than rural areas; the cos...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - One of the most popular presentations at RIEP’s 2025 Virtual forum was Former Green Party MLA Adam Olsen’s identification of ways to further support the success of BC’s Indigenous economy. Francine Carlin, Chair of the Rural Island Economic Partnership (RIEP) introduced Olsen, “ Adam is a proud member of the Tsartlip Nation. He currently serves as the lead negotiator...

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Around 100 people signed up for the Rural Islands Economic Partnership 2025 Virtual Forum. At least 10 were from Cortes Island and there were others from Quadra, Texada, Hornby, Denman, Cormorant, Malcolm and the Gulf Islands, as well as the Broughton Archipelago. Several of the topics were of great importance to islanders. One of the foremost was Aaron Cruikshank’s...

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - CityWest’s internet service for Cortes Island was cut off again, sometime after 10:44 on Saturday, March 8, and not restored until after 9:00 on Monday, March 10. This is the third or fourth time in the last 12 months. The outage did not affect CKTZ, which relies upon Mascon de TELUS, but did shut down numerous CityWest customers (including Cortes Currents). ‘Rumour’...

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - On March 7, 2025, host Manda Aufochs-Gillespie was joined by a group of Cortesians as they swapped stories of unexpected detours, chance encounters, and the adventures that changed them. Are we talking international travel or trips to town gone wrong? Tune in to find out! Folk U Radio is taking old school viral every Friday at 1 p.m. and Mondays at 6:30 p.m./Wedne...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - On Sunday, March 9th, the Liberal Party chose Mark Carney as their new leader. While there have been no polls taken since his election, EKOS carried out a survey just prior to the Convention that suggests Carney may be able to lead the Liberal Party to a majority government. 42% of the respondents between March 2 and 5 chose the Liberal Party, while the Conservatives...

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Jennifer Lash has been working at the intersection of the economy, ocean conservation, climate change and reconciliation for the past 27 years. She founded two non-profit organizations in Sointula and more recently was a senior advisor in the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. Now she is running for election in North Island-Powell River. "In the situation we...

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Environmental Defence just released a report showing that last year oil and gas company lobbyists were targeting the Conservative Party, in preference to the Canadian Government, by more than a 2 to 1 ratio. Cortes Currents interviewed Emilia Belliveau, lead author of ‘Big Oil’s Playbook, A Summary of Big Oil’s 2024 Federal Lobbying’ and asked Max Thaysen, from the Co...