Podcasts about Desolation Sound

Diver Bruce Bott shares what it was like to be underwater with the orcas on the chaotic night when the Pedder Bay 5 were captured, and his later experience diving down to Chimo, the prized white whale, when she got tangled in her net and was drowning. 

The white whale and the rest of her pod have been captured in Pedder Bay, Vancouver Island... but now what? The handlers quickly realize that these whales are unlike any they have ever come across. 

In this gripping new West Coast adventure series, Grant Lawrence tries to crack a 55-year-old mystery that involves the tragedy and triumph of a unique family of orcas. 

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 advertise that. We'll do a little bit of lead up training for that,” explained Kay Hope. “There's an opportunity with where we live to have not so much a love affair, but like a marriage with the physical place that we live in. I think a majority of us are really disconnected from our biophysical reality. All sorts of things have unfortunately corrupted a lot of people away from a connection with their body and the environment. I'm just trying to foray back into that. I think there's a big opportunity for all of us to just keep doubling down on hiking up Easter Bluff, going to Mansons Lagoon, getting a sweat on, but then exploring in, around and up Desolation Sound. The beauty we have around us, it's really underutilized by us as a community together. I don't want to go out and just be exploring by myself. I'd love to go out on the weekend and see more kayaks than I see power boaters. That's my wish, and my wish for my baby boy.” “I've traveled to so many different places and the stuff that's just in our backyard here, it's world class. The longer term plan is just to connect more Cortesians to get outside together, and to get away from these damn screens and all the internet fights.” “I've been interacting with Cortes for over 15 years now. We're living in Vancouver for the most part and coming here in the summers. My partner Tiana grew up here and we moved here a bit over two years ago.” “I'm pretty busy. I've got a young son, the business to run and that sort of thing, but I'm really passionate about this sort of stuff. I've been getting people outdoors for a long time. I run a business in Vancouver helping people do that.” “Essentially we looked at what Quadra Island was doing. They have the Quadra Island Outdoor Club. It's essentially a member led club. They do trips outdoors, hiking, skiing, kayaking, all that sort of stuff. “We incorporated Wave and Range in April 2024. We get insurance through the BC Federation of Mountain Clubs as a nonprofit. There's myself, Jordan Best and Tiana on the Board right now. We're looking for more board members and more people to get involved. We are a bit over 20 members.” “We've done maybe 32 plus trips. We've been canoeing and hiking. I've been putting on strength and mobility classes at the hall for our members as well, for people to build up the strength and mobility they need to go adventuring.” “Josh Bannister does some of the hiking stuff. Aaron Ellingsen is going to be there and Sanchez is going to be there. Trevor Bass , Kenny and Evie have been coming to the strength and mobility classes. Kate Madigan and Mike Moore are coming out on the canoe. It's just cool to interact with those people, and listen to the sea lions carrying on down at Mary's Point and getting to know the different places.” “I've got a big 22 foot, eight person canoe. I've done a bunch of canoeing and adventure trips, as much as I can with running a business. We canoed up from Vancouver to Cortes. I brought some of my coaches a few years back. Just a couple of years back, we canoed from Cortes and climbed up Mount Denman, which was really cool. Last season, Jordan Best, one of the board members and I kayaked around the Redondas in two days. We're both busy fathers, and we crammed that in.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - At their December 11 meeting, the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) Board passed a bylaw to regulate bulk water processing, bottling and sales on Maurelle, Sonora, Stuart, and the Rendezvous islands. Three Campbell River Directors voted against receiving the staff report for this bylaw. Director Susan Sinnott explained,  “I just want to hear from staff, the reasons necessary. Is there a pending application for people to bulk water in the distillation sound area? Is there an imminent issue?” Chief Administrative Officer David Leitch replied,  “The impetus of this. Bylaws came from the directors. So I think it's probably more appropriate for the director to speak to it.” Cortes Island Director Mark Vonesch pointed out,  “This is the same bylaw we already passed for Area D, Cortes and Quadra Islands.” Director Sinnott:  “Well, thank you, my recollection was there was concerns about water usage and aquifer protection. I just wanted to know if this was similar. I don't know if there's an issue in the Desolation Sound area that's similar.” Robyn Mawhinney is the Regional Director for Area C, which includes Quadra, Maurelle, Sonora, Stuart, and the Rendezvous islands:  “Although it says the Desolation Sound Rural Land Use Bylaw it's funnily enough, not in Desolation Sound. It's Read, Maurelle, Sonora, Stuart, and the Rendezvous Islands. If you look at the bylaws, it's really about providing an opportunity for community to have a public hearing If there is an application for a commercial water extraction enterprise.”  Director Sinnot: So raising my question again, are we regulating something that's not ever going to happen? I can't imagine there's ever going to be a person that wants to bulk water bottling or any type of extraction of a very remote area without ferry service. So one, I don't like the idea of regulating things if we don't have to, but second of all, we're intruding into an area outside our jurisdiction if it's about water preservation.” Director Mawhinney: “I would suggest that providing an opportunity for the community to have input on a commercial enterprise, which could drastically affect their drinking water is reasonable. I think when you look at what happened in Merville, if you wait until an application is coming forward it's too late.” The concern about bulk water extraction can be traced back to a Merville property owner's idea to bottle and sell the water beneath his property. On March 8, 2023, two weeks before CVRD approved MacKenzie's application, Regional Director Robyn Mawhinney asked the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) to report on the possibilities for limiting groundwater extraction within Area C. The District had just gone through the severest drought in Campbell River's records and it was about to go through the drought of 2023. On September 25, 2024, the SRD passed bylaws prohibiting ‘bulk water sales, bulk water processing and bulk water bottling' on any upland or foreshore area of Cortes or Quadra except where expressly permitted within a zone. That was when Director Mawhinney then introduced what has erroneously been called the Desolation Sound Bulk Water Regulation. Director Mawhinney: “ We've had a public hearing and the community was in support of it, as they have been for Area D, Area B (Cortes Island) and the Quadra island portion of Area C.”

Erin and Sara Foster join Seth and Josh on the podcast this week! They talk all about growing up in Los Angeles, Winnebago roadtrips, their Mom taking them to Cabo for Christmas, going to Desolation Sound in Canada with their Dad, and so much more! Family Trips is supported by Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much more at airbnb.com/host to learn about hosting. So thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of Family Trips. Now go find your path, and enjoy the ride along the way.  Learn more at nissanusa.com Get your free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase at drinklmnt.com/trips  Also try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com/familytrips to claim your credit. Terms and Conditions apply.

Jemma Hicken/ Folk U - What really matters most in the world? How will we help inspire the next generation of truth-seekers and truth-tellers? At the Cortes Island Academy we believe in the passion and skills of the people and wild places of this place and are proud of our youth who learned along side our community and shared their growing skills through journalistic podcasts, Elder Documentaries, Field Guides and unsung hero posters (the one here is by artist Zella Aufochs).   This week on Folk U Radio CKTZ 89.5 FM (1 p.m. Fridays, repeats on folku.ca/cortescurents.ca/cortesradio.ca) youth journalists interview neighbours and regional experts on the issues of the day in our communities in their Audio Series called Desolation Sounds.    Friday March 8 will feature:  Jack – Serpent Stories Alora – Why Colour?   We hope you will tune in! You can listen to the CIA youth podcast series, Desolation Sounds, anytime at https://cortesislandacademy.ca/podcasts/ Watch the breathtaking and moving CIA/ReelYouth Elder Films at https://cortesislandacademy.ca/films/ Get your own pocket Biodiversity Field Guide for Cortes (e.g. edible berries, local fungi, marine species, seaweeds, mosses, and more!) at https://cortesislandacademy.ca/biodiversity-project/

Cortes Island Academy/Folk U - What really matters most in the world? How will we help inspire the next generation of truth-seekers and truth-tellers? At the Cortes Island Academy we believe in the passion and skills of the people and wild places of this place and are proud of our youth who learned along side our community and shared their growing skills through journalistic podcasts, Elder Documentaries, Field Guides and unsung hero posters (the one here is by artist Zella Aufochs). This week on Folk U Radio CKTZ 89.5 FM (1 p.m. Fridays, repeats on folku.ca/cortescurents.ca/cortesradio.ca) youth journalists interview neighbours and regional experts on the issues of the day in our communities in their Audio Series called Desolation Sounds. Friday February 2nd features: The Way of the Wolves by Dylan Harvey Understanding Dyslexia by Zella Aufochs One Thousand Nine Hundred and Four by Rowan Joiner And the Cortes Forestry General Partnership by Salix Webb We hope you will tune in! You can listen to the CIA youth podcast series, Desolation Sounds, anytime at https://cortesislandacademy.ca/podcasts/ Watch the breathtaking and moving CIA/ReelYouth Elder Films at https://cortesislandacademy.ca/films/ Get your own pocket Biodiversity Field Guide for Cortes (e.g. edible berries, local fungi, marine species, seaweeds, mosses, and more!) at https://cortesislandacademy.ca/biodiversity-project/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE: In this episode, host Megan Cole talks to Grant Lawrence. Grant's book Return to Solitude: More Desolation Sound Adventures with The Cougar Lady, Russell the Hermit, The Spaghetti Bandit and Others, was a finalist for the 2023 Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award. In their conversation Grant talks about how these solitude seekers ended up turning to community, and how he used a more journalistic approach in Return to Solitude. Visit BC and Yukon Book Prizes: https://bcyukonbookprizes.com/ To hear some of the podcasts about Desolation Sound that Grant's done visit his website: https://grantlawrence.ca/ About Return to Solitude: https://bcyukonbookprizes.com/project/return-to-solitude/ ABOUT GRANT LAWRENCE: Grant Lawrence is an award-winning author, and renowned CBC broadcaster. He is the author of three best-selling books for adults: Adventures in Solitude (2010), The Lonely End of the Rink (2013), and Dirty Windshields (2017). Bailey the Bat and the Tangled Moose, his first children's picture book, was released in 2021. Grant Lawrence is the first author in the history of the BC Book Prizes to win the Bill Duthie Booksellers Choice twice. Grant is also the host of the CBC Music Top 20, the lead singer of The Smugglers, and a Canadian Screen Award winner. He is also a goalie for the Vancouver Flying Vees beer league hockey team. Grant Lawrence is married to musician Jill Barber and they live in Vancouver with their two children, Josh and Grace. Return to Solitude is Grant's long-awaited sequel to Adventures in Solitude. ABOUT MEGAN COLE: Megan Cole the Director of Programming and Communications for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. She is also a writer based on the territory of the Tla'amin Nation. Megan writes creative nonfiction and has had essays published in Chatelaine, This Magazine, The Puritan, Untethered, and more. She has her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of King's College and is working her first book. Find out more about Megan at megancolewriter.com ABOUT THE PODCAST: Writing the Coast is recorded and produced on the territory of the Tla'amin Nation. As a settler on these lands, Megan Cole finds opportunities to learn and listen to the stories from those whose land was stolen. Writing the Coast is a recorded series of conversations, readings, and insights into the work of the writers, illustrators, and creators whose books are nominated for the annual BC and Yukon Book Prizes. We'll also check in on people in the writing community who are supporting books, writers and readers every day. The podcast is produced and hosted by Megan Cole.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Paul Muskee has been working for QXMC for close to 15 years and the last decade of that has been with Klahoose Aquaculture. 
 “I feel like my life has led me this way. When I was younger, I did work in aquaculture and I did work in forestry. I was also a mining technologist for a bunch of years, but I grew up  around Powell River, Lund and Desolation Sound.  Running boats has always been part of what I've done. I've loved working for Klahoose. They've been a great employer and I really like the people I've gotten to work with,” he explained.   
 “I started working in their forestry department. I was out in the bush, helping to engineer blocks, plan roads and timber cruising. When the Jimmy Creek project happened,  the development corporation picked up a bunch of pieces of that, running the 220 man camp, fuel supply for the project, barging,  and that's when I got pulled out of the bush and into the office.”  
 “I've been helping to organize things ever since.”  
 “I was also involved with our first tourism initiative, which was grizzly bear tours in Toba Inlet which is now grown into the Klahoose Wilderness Resort and Gorge Harbour.”
 CC: When did QXMC come into being? 
 PM: “It was before my time. I see the incorporation date, 2007. Cortes Cortes It was probably set up under Chief Ken Brown. The Development Corp, I believe, would have been Klahoose's initial engagement with the power companies in Toba Inlet.”  
CC: How did you become involved in Klahoose Aquaculture? 
PM: “Before my time, Klahoose had already embarked on acquiring aquaculture tenures and geoduck aquaculture, which was actually quite an innovative step because  geoduck aquaculture is quite a new thing, still is. There's a lot of unknowns to it, and that was one of the things that I was asked to continue pursuing once I was working in administration.” “Geoducks take about seven years to grow. A lot of things that can happen in that time. It's all underwater aquaculture, so you can't closely monitor your stock on a day to day basis.” 
 “We tried to draw on the advice and the knowledge of others that have done it. We tried to improve that and we still don't know exactly how successful we'll be because those plantings are still on the bottom from six years ago. We tried to give the seed every chance at health, so we boosted their growth inside Squirrel Cove and baskets of sand before planting them out in the deep.” 
 CC: Where is the principal market?     PM: China: when we harvest geoducks, sometimes the divers will finish diving around two in the afternoon, and by that night those geoducks will already be on a plane to China. Everything has to move quickly. It takes a lot of coordination to meet boats, to meet trucks, to meet processing plants, and out to the airport. Ideally they can drop the geoducks in a live tank” More about clams, oysters, seaweed and geoducks in podcast

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - years. He started coming after a family sailboat trip through Desolation Sound. 
“The last two days of that trip were spent at Manson's Landing and Gorge Harbour. And we just said, ‘holy cow, we got to check this island out!' So the next summer we rented Cedar Moon for the first of many years and came up for one or two weeks, pretty much every summer since.” 
Antle is also the lead vocalist in a band that plays traditional Hawaiian music and this Thursday, August 31 at 6:30, he will be performing at the Cortes Island Museum.

In this 134th episode, I share my Kayak Trip Expedition from Desolation Sound, BC from August 13th to 19th, 2023 I arrived at vacation and this episode is my daily reflections along out kayak trip. Youtube: https://youtu.be/cJ2TmKzEPTk The cover art is a pic of my wife, in the front seat of our red kayak, along with our friends. Enjoy! ---------------------------- Track: Know Myself - Patrick Patrikios ( NoCopyrightMusic ) | My Audio Library | Background Music Bumper: Elementary Music Teacher - Jessica Peresta --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshairatfive5/message

Here are all ten parts of Grant Lawrence's series about a wonderfully driven, talented, and outspoken art school teacher from Tacoma, Washington, named Handy Candy Anderson, who calls Desolation Sound home in the warmer months.

Handy Candy takes a terrible tumble from her shoreline rocks on the evening of Desolation Sound's annual Full Moon Float in this final chapter of the series. 

Handy Candy shows a physical will and sheer determination to get to her cabin that has possibly never been seen before or since in Desolation Sound. 

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - In the most recent of her interviews about Cortes History, Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, traces one of the Island's foremost industries from its pre-contact beginnings up until recent times. Lynne Jordan: “ The First Nations cultivated clam gardens on this coast for 3,000 to 5,000 years, maybe even longer. One on Quadra Island was recently dated at being around 3,500 years old.” “In her book ‘Clam Gardens: Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada's West Coast,' Judith Williams describes how natives would choose a small, bay/beach area and increase the amount of sand on that beach by collecting all the rocks off the beach and taking them down at low tide to the bottom of the beach and throwing them into the water. You do that for enough years and thousands of years, the rock wall builds up and gets bigger and bigger. As the rock wall grows, more sand gets trapped behind the rock wall, which increases the beach size, and that's how they cultivated and grew their clams on the beach.” “Clams were very important because First Nations were mostly gatherers, and you could find them all year long. When other foods that they would normally gather weren't growing in the forest or the meadows, they would eat a lot of clams.” “There are alot of those gardens around Howe Sound area, but also all around the Desolation Sound.” “Gorge Harbour, on Cortes Island, has a number of old clam gardens around the outer edge of the beaches. If you go down to the wharf at the bottom of Robertson Road and you're on the dock, look to your left. There used to be a clam garden along the beach. It's identified mainly by what they call clam hash, broken little bits of shell that mixed with the sand. The beach is quite soft. If you look to your right, towards the Gorge Harbour Marina, you can actually see where the clam garden continued along that way too.” “The marina has disrupted what was left of the clam garden. If you stand at the end of the wharf at a low tide and look down on that right side, you will see a rock wall there. The dock was built overtop of a clam garden.” “That's the easiest one to pick out, but once you know what to look for, you start seeing clam gardens in many places around Cortes Island.” Continuing on to after the settlers arrived, calms and oysters were cutivated in Squirrel Cove during the 1920s. Quadra Island's Heriot Bay Inn had a lease. In 1938 Harry and Teresa Daniels were cultivating oysters near the head of Von Donnop Inlet. Lynne Jordan: “They started with seed from Japan, which is a larger oyster than the native variety.” The Daniels “were the first to have a beach lease there, and they actually had it marked off on the beach with cement edging. It had a curb all around it. They don't do that nowadays.” “In the 1940s Alf Layton also had a beach lease at the upper end of Von Donnop Inlet.” “Shellfish sustained a lot of Cortes islanders for many years, particularly through the depression years. You could harvest oysters, clams, scallops, mussels, you name it. If you had a boat, you could also add in crabs, prawns, but you'd need the boat and traps to catch them, whereas the beach was open to anybody.” More in the podcast

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A great many fisherfolk once worked out of Whaletown. The Cortes Island Museum's list goes back to the 1930s, at which point there were 7 men and a woman. Three of them used rowboats. “There used to be a huge fleet rafted out, both six and seven abreast all along both sides of the dock, in Whaletown. In the last 10 years or so, there's only been three or four boats in there, fishing. The main one that I know of in the last little while is the ‘C-Fin,' but he goes outside of the Vancouver Island area and fishes tuna. When he comes back he doesn't sell it to a fisheries, he sells it from the dock, and the same with his prawns. So he's not using a middle man to sell his products, which I suppose is one of the few ways you could make a little bit of money now,“ said Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, in the latest instalment of her history of Whaletown. Early fisherfolk based in Whaletown The first name on the list of commercial fisherfolk from Whaletown is Frank Tooker, who had a rowboat named ‘Lone Star' in the 30's. Lynne Jordan: “Fishing was sort of secondary to the main Whaletown occupation of logging, but there were a lot of fishermen that came up from the Lower Mainland and Victoria to base themselves out of Whaletown because the fishing was good in the Desolation Sound area, particularly between Cortes and Quadra Islands.”

Handy Candy continues to improve "Camp Candy", and sees opportunities for other neighbouring properties to clean up as well, believing strongly that "how things look matters." Some neighbours don't take kindly to Candy's unsolicited opinions.

Handy Candy rents a broken down cabin in Desolation Sound which she discovers is already occupied.

Handy Candy decides it's time to buy a lot in Desolation Sound, but her husband Bob has other plans, which comes as a shock.

Handy Candy and her husband Bob discover the ultimate sea kayaking campsite in Desolation Sound, so good that it would remain their driftwood camping kingdom for 14 straight summers. Where is it? Have a listen. 

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Last April, Cortes Island became part of an international monitoring project for Dungeness crab larvae. There were 20 light trap stations stations in the Salish Sea and 17 in the Puget Sound. Three of these traps were within our listening area. Surge Narrows School had a trap on Read Island. The Hakai Institute and Quadra Island community had another on Quadra Island. Kate Maddigan and Mike Moore coordinated volunteers looking after the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) trap in Cortes Bay. “Hakai and the Pacific Northwest Crab Monitoring Group are working in concert with each other to provide data as to what is happening to the larval Dungeons Crab populations. It's been happening in Puget Sound for a few years. They have about five years of data down. Dungeness Crab fishing is one of the most lucrative and important crab fisheries on the coast. Catches have been diminishing, this is an effort to find out why,” explained Moore. He added that the first phase of this project came to an end in August. “Our Cortes Bay trap had very promising results to start with, then the warm fresh water layer moved in. That warm fresh water layer is what makes Desolation Sound so famous and warm for swimming in, but it doesn't support marine life very well. In fact, if you jump into the water, in say July, and swim down sometimes 7 meters that's where you're going to find the moon jelly fish. They're not up in the warm, fresh water. Our trap that floats at the surface was encapsulated by this warm fresh water and our results really diminished.” They only caught a handful of ‘statistically valuable' megalope (the stage the young Dungeness Crabs become recognizable as crabs). “The day we caught the most didn't count. We had pulled the trap, I'd taken off the bottom and emptied it into our container to count. We're looking at the Pipefish and the big Polychaete Worms and all that sort of thing, looking for crab larva,” said Moore “We didn't find any and then (my son) Fergus Walker, who was with me that day, goes, ‘What's that?' and I look on the outside of the trap and we counted, I think it was 44 Dungeness Crab megalope. Those are the first ones we caught, but they didn't count because they weren't inside the trap. It's not statistically significant because it weren't inside the trap, but for us it was pretty significant.” According to the Light Trap Station map, on Hakai's Sentinels of Change website, 11 Dungeness Crab megalope were caught on Quadra, 20 on Read and 74 on Cortes Island. The teams posted pictures of other larvae they captured on the Hakai website.

Handy Candy and her newlywed husband Bob make their first-ever trip to Desolation Sound, in a double yellow kayak. On that trip they stumbled across a spectacular location that would serve as "Camp Candy" for the next several years.

The summer may be over but British Columbia treasure Grant Lawrence visits the podcast to discuss his latest book Return to Solitude about life in Desolation Sound.It's been over a decade since renowned broadcaster and indie rock musician Grant Lawrence launched his writing career with the award-winning Adventures in Solitude, yet some things never change - including the winding Sunshine Coast Highway, close calls at the BC Ferries ticket office and carsick children. But this time, Lawrence returns as a husband and father, not as the vomiting and nerdy kid dragged along by his athletic and unflappable parents.Grant shares how to get Wi-Fi in Desolation Sound and what people from Savary Island actually think of him.Adventures in Solitude by Grant LawrenceReturn to Solitude by Grant LawrenceFollow Grant Lawrence:Instagram: @grantlawrencebcFollow Red Fern Book Review:Website: https://www.redfernbookreview.comInstagram: @redfernbookreviewFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/redfernbookreview/Newsletter: https://www.redfernbookreview.com/newsletterBook Subscription Box: Holiday 2022 Junie Book Box

With her brand new boat hung up on the rocks on a dropping tide, Handy Candy makes a big mistake: she gets out of "Tinkerbell" to give it a shove, but the outboard engine is running, and in gear. Reverse gear. 

In this new series, Handy Candy, one of the most beloved characters from Grant Lawrence's books "Adventures in Solitude" and "Return to Solitude", takes centre stage for a series that charts Candy's artistic, danger-prone, off-grid lifestyle that has spanned over 40 years in the oceanic wilds of Desolation Sound, BC. This is "Handy Candy: Coastal Crafter of Desolation Sound."

Find out how Handy Candy Anderson went from a childhood of living all over the USA with a father who worked for the Pentagon, to discovering the coastal Canadian wilderness of Desolation Sound.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Heather Reimer took over as General Manager of Gorge Harbour Marina in February. Her day usually starts at 6:30 AM with coffee as she looks through the emails that came in throughout the night. Two hours, and several cups of coffee later, Reimer will usually be in the office. She and her partner Ron Quire are currently overseeing the activities of more than 50 employees: 10 in the Gorge Harbour General Store. 4 in the office 10 in the maintenance department that's taking care of the campground, RV sites and all of the maintenance needs of the property. 10 to 15 working part time and a few full time, in the Floathouse Restaurant. 6 in the marina, 5 housekeepers 3 more employees were hired this week “Right now we're running at about 50% occupancy. In another week, we will be running closer to 90 -95%,” she said. They have four rooms in the lodge, 14 RV sites, 90 tent sites and 1,800 linear feet of dock space to oversee. Reimer works seven days a week, but they aren't all 10 hour days. “Some of those days are only four hours. I consider that to be a holiday.” She likes to take long walks. That gives her a quiet time to think through the day's challenges. “I get a lot of problems solved on those walks,” she said. “I am pretty full on all of the time. My priority is the care and feeding of this resort. So it's always on my brain.” Reimer started working in resorts when she was young and worked her way up the management ladder until 2000, when she was hired by TYAX Lodge & Heliskiing. They provided heliski holdiays in the winter and mountain biking in summer for up to 100 guests. She and Quire went sailing from 2010 to 2016. “We sailed all the way down to the Galapagos and had many, many adventures. The ocean is very much close to our hearts and that was the reason which really drew us to this place,” explained Reimer. Their 53 foot trawler is currently in Port Townsend, but it will be coming up home to the Gorge. Reimer and Quire intend to explore Desolation Sound and the Disovery Islands. “I knew some of the principles here at QXMC. They encouraged me to apply for a management position to run Gorge Harbor, and I very happily did so.”. “Ron is my other half. He's been with me through thick and thin, on the seas and off the seas. We're running this place side by side. We also have another couple here, Lisa Argue and Zoa Scott. They are our assistant managers and we are very much a team in running this place together. I'm more of the spokesperson, but it's very much a team effort not only with them, but certainly with the entire group of employees that we've got here.”

Ahh, the Sunshine Coast Trail. At 180 kilometres, and with at least 14 huts, it's Canada's longest hut-to-hut hiking trail. The trail stretches along the coast of British Columbia, from Desolation Sound to Saltery Bay, through a region separated from the rest of B.C. by several fjords, and only accessible by boat or plane. It traverses a wide range of landscapes, passing along coastal shorelines, creeks and lakes, through old growth forests and logging clear cuts and up over mountains. Its total elevation gain is 6,000 metres, which is more than the height of Mount Kilimanjaro.  It's situated on the traditional territory of Tla'amin Nation, which is also the namesake of some of its features, like the anglicized Sliammon Lakes.  This episode's guest is Greg Zolob, who hiked the full trail last summer just before I hiked it. Greg offered a lot of very helpful advice as I was planning my hike, so it seemed fitting for us to sit down, share stories from our hikes and profile the trail for other prospective hikers.  Today's episode covers: Megan and Greg's 2021 hikes What to expect on the trail Resources for planning a hike How to get to Powell River and to the trailhead Megan and Greg's favourite huts Water availability Resupply strategies A rousing game of "Would you rather...?" Like, rate, review and follow If you're enjoying the show, please rate, review and follow @catchmeoutsidepodcast on Instagram and TikTok and like the Catch Me Outside Podcast Facebook page. Music Yaki Tori and Mango by Smith The Mister https://smiththemister.bandcamp.com Smith The Mister https://bit.ly/Smith-The-Mister-YT Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/-yaki-tori Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/oZ0U4Q5epUs 

We hear from founding member Ken Neilson and his recollection of forming the Alumni Association of HMCS Quadra.  Ken provided guidance and encouragement to all founding members in the development of the organization.Ken has an amazing memory of the development of Flotilla and specifically Group North, he tells some great tales from his days working in the Desolation Sound area.  Ken in his civilian life was a long serving employee with the City of Victoria, the Director of Engineering and the first full-time Emergency Coordinator for the City before moving on to another career as a consultant in Emergency Planning.Audio editing done by Todd Mason.More about the Quadra Alumni Podcast: - Join the Quadra Alumni Association at https://www.quadraalumni.com/ - Follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/QAAPodcast - Follow on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/q_alumni_podcast/?hl=en Email us at quadraalumnipodcast@gmail.com for any inquiries or requests to be on the Quadra Alumni Podcast

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Recreational vessels are no longer permitted to moor at Cortes Island's government docks for extended periods without prior approval from the Harbour Authority of Cortes Island (HACI). “Just to clarify, it's recreational vessels that are looking for a month, three months or six months long-term moorage,” said Harbour Manager Jenny Hartwick  Boats can still ‘sneak in' and use docks overnight, at places like Squirrel Cove, providing there is room for them. “We're incredibly lucky we have five docks on the island. I think it is highly unlikely that boaters will come to Cortes looking for longer term moorage and we will not be able to provide this. It may mean that you don't get moorage at your first choice dock. We're doing our very best to make sure that everybody who is looking for moorage on Cortes will find it somewhere on Cortes.” HACI was forced to adopt this policy because of the increase in recreational traffic over the past few years. Possibly as a result of the emphasis on local tourism during COVID, boaters have ‘discovered' Desolation Sound. Destination BC is promoting this area as one of the best marine tourism destinations in BC. At the high point last summer, boats were rafted four deep at the Cortes Bay Dock. “This makes it incredibly difficult if you happen to be the individual on the inside and you're trying to get out to go boating for the day. Or you are a commercial user who needs to access their vessel to get to and from work. You have to move three vessels simply to get your boat out!” said Hartwick. She explained that HACI leases the docks from Small Craft Harbours, a Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) program. “ The docks were put in place to support the commercial fishing industry and to support aquaculture, so that is the number one priority at all of the government docks on Cortes,” said Hartwick. “Second is to support commercial usage of those docks. So maybe not for vessels that are used directly in aquaculture, but group boats that are running regularly or water taxis, and other types of vessels that are used for commercial purposes on a regular basis.” HACI''s mandate is to provide moorage for those parties. “After we have met the needs of those users, we can offer any additional space at the dock to recreational moorage in our community.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Klahoose First Nation conducted grizzly bear tours in Toba Inlet for five years before their economic development arm, Qathen Xwegus Management Corporation (QXMC), purchased the former Homfray Lodge in November 2020. Many of the packages are already booked for the Klahoose Wilderness Resort's second season, which starts May 12th. “This year, we have a full season ahead of us. We're really happy with the number of reservations. We're welcoming guests from all over the world and September is mostly full. We've got a couple of rooms left for the grizzly bear viewing season, and then May through August is filling up,”explained Chris Tait, the resort's Tourism Manager. “We're a hundred percent Indigenous owned and the activities that you're going to do will be Indigenous led. The most authentic tourism in Canada is Indigenous tourism and our Klahoose Wilderness Resort allows people to have that connection. We could tie it back to reconciliation, especially for Canadians if they want to have that piece of reconciliation, support Indigenous business and meet local people who live there.” Tait explained Quathen Xwegus' decision to purchase the lodge in terms of controlling the narrative: “Not just having people in the territory, but actually guiding guests in the territory. Leading those tours, having the guests know the place names, having guests know the culture that they're visiting, that's really important as a business,” he said. Guests come from Europe, Vancouver and the surrounding local communities like Powell River and Campbell River to ‘experience the Klahoose First Nation, the Indigenous people that live in this area that have always lived here.' Many are picked up in Lund by the Klahoose catamaran ‘Goat1.' Their experience begins with the trip up Desolation Sound, where they may see marine life like humpback whales, orca, sea lions and/or eagles. Their arrival at the resort starts with a traditional Klahoose greeting on the dock. “It's a three or four nights stay. They're going to be on the land or on the water with an Indigenous guide. They may go on a boat tour to Toba Inlet to visit the waterfalls and watching for more marine life, pictoglyphs that we see along the way in,” said Tait. “Back at the resort, they can go kayaking, they can do stand up paddle boarding, ocean swimming. We have nature walks into the rain forest where we even have some old growth forest tucked back behind the lodge.” Grizzly Bear Viewing tours in Toba Inlet are included from late August to mid-October? Guest all-inclusive packages start at about $2,895 per person for a three night stay, based on two guests sharing a room. This includes accommodation, meals and all activities (including passage on the Goat 1). A four night package is about $3,795 per person. (These rates do not include taxes.) Beer and wine are provided with meals, but guests will have to pay for extra alcohol. “We're really happy to have hired up to 15 staff, which are all Indigenous, from the Klahoose community, Tla'amin, Homalco or other nearby Indigenous people. They will lead our tours, serve food, work in housekeeping, as boat drivers and grizzly bear viewing guides.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Regular water taxi trips between Lund and Cortes Bay are only one of services that the Access Point Marine Group is bringing to our area. They are transforming Finn Bay, a two minute walk north of Lund, into a hub for water transportation and tourism The water taxi started making scheduled trips to Cortes Island last November, but went to charter service at the end of February because of low volumes. Sue Bossley of Access Point Marine Transportation says regular service will resume in May. “Our target is for that to open on the May long weekend,” she said. “We are going to be offering three runs to Cortes and back per day in the peak summer months, June 4th to September 5th. Starting in May, there will be a morning and late afternoon run on Mondays, Fridays and possibly Sundays.” Access marine continues to offer day trips to the wharf on Savary Island and this year are adding hourly drop-offs at South Beach. This is Savary's most popular beach, but up until this point tourists have had to hike across the island to reach it. “Also groups or individuals can book charters at any time. We can take up to four people with their bikes on our smaller landing craft, and that's $200 an hour for the boat, but there's also an extra fuel surcharge of $50 an hour right now because of the fuel prices. We also have a larger landing craft that can be chartered for $300 an hour, and that can take up to eight people,” said Bossley. They can drop people off at any ‘marine access only' campgrounds in Desolation Sound. “We also can drop people off at Sarah Point, which is the Sunshine Coast Trail drop off point. We've got fishing adventures in the Salish sea. We've got a new 44 seater boat and we're going to be taking people on Desolation Sound cruises to see the wildlife.” The Access Point Marine Group has also developed a campground and two cabins for people to stay at Finn Bay. While everyone is eating at the restaurant, the boat will be used for a Powell River Harbour tour. MOVED BELOW They plan to offer a dinner and sunset cruise from Lund to the Seasider at Beach Gardens and back to Lund after dinner. During the time they are eating, the boat will also pick up folks at Beach Gardens and take them on a 90 minute Powell River Harbour Tour. Bossley said the details are still being fleshed out, but both tours ”will include a close up cruise by the famous hulks in Powell River. There are big concrete ships with a ton of history that are being used as a breakwater for that area. They're really cool. It's actually one of the top 10 things to do in Powell River.” The harbour tour will be over by the time the group from Lund is ready to leave Beach Garden and the boat will return to pick them up

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -Cortes Island Air was based in Gorge Harbour in the 1990s. That was before Richard Godfrey sold the company to Mike Farrel in 2000. Farrel relocated to Campbell River, but preserved the company's origins in its new name. CorilAIr is short for Cortes Island Airlines. While the airline now flys out of Campbell River, it still serves Cortes. Operations Manager Shannon Quinn explained, “Cortes Bay is our primary location for pickup and drop offs, maybe three times in one day. Gorge Harbour would be the second, we do a little bit with Mansons Landing, but not as much with Squirrel Cove as we have in the past.” Later that morning, Farrel confirmed that the two or three flights coming into Squirrel Cove every year are probably CorilAir. He added that most of the planes seen flying around Cortes are probably theirs. “There's a lot of different companies in the summer months that come and go. In the winter time, it's probably us. Of course, if they're doing something you don't like, or making a lot of noise, it's not us,” he quipped. The Klahoose Wilderness Resort was added to the list of destinations last summer, with customers flying in from Campbell River, Vancouver and Cortes Island. CorilAIr is now based on the Spit in Campbell River. They have four airplanes: two cessnas that carry up to three passengers and two Beavers that can carry six. CorilAir carries the mail to Refuge Cove on West Redonda Island, Surge Narrows on Read Island and Big Bay on Stuart Island on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Those last two days they also service Blind Channel on West Thurlow Island. From mid May until late September or early October, they have scheduled local flights out of Campbell River. (9:30 AM, 12:30 PM and 5:00 PM). “We drop people off on the Discovery Islands, Desolation Sound and pick up anybody that needs to be picked up and return back to Campbell River,” said Quinn. “During July and August, we offer a Vancouver scheduled service out of Campbell River, which services the Islands and Desolation Sound, to take people back and forth to Vancouver.” They set out from Campbell River at noon, pick up any passengers in the Discovery Islands and then proceed south to Vancouver airport in Richmond. The return flight leaves Vancouver at 4:00 PM and, after dropping off any island passengers, ends up at Campbell River. Though CorilAir services most of the Discovery Islands, fights to Quadra are less frequent. Most of the traffic uses the ferry. However they do pick up and drop people off on the Vancouver run, often at April Point, and they sometimes do boat to plane transfers at Heriot Bay. In addition to scheduled flights, people sometimes charter out an aircraft. This can be more economically viable for groups. In the podcast, Quinn mentions of Cortes family of four who saved a couple of hundred dollars by chartering an aircraft on the return trip from the Sonora Resort. (There is a lot more detail about pricing and destinations in the podcast.)

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -Spirit of the West Adventures had a much better season than expected. Co-owner Breanne Quesnel says that after BC's interprovincial travel restrictions were lifted, last June,“we saw unprecedented demand for our particular outdoor experience.” The kayaking company adjusted their routine to be more COVID friendly. “For example we met customers in Squirrel Cove, instead of transporting them from Quadra,” explained Quesnel. “We didn't accept as many reservations as we had previously; We were trying to keep it slow, limit group sizes and be responsible in that manner.” Spirit of the West still had 80% of the volume they experienced in 2019, their peak year. “Last year was about 10% of 2019,” she added. “We were only taking private levels; We were only running one tour.” Her customers typically come from around the world, but have mostly been British Columbians for the past two years. By the time the U.S. border opened this year, Spirit of the West only had three spots left. “So we did have three Americans join us, but the rest were of our customers all Canadians this summer,” said Quesnel. Though Spirit of the West is based on Quadra Island, they run tours all over the BC Coat. The Broughton Archipelago, Johnstone Strait, Bella Bella area, Nuchatliyz, and Great Bear Rainforest are all popular areas. Four or five times a year, they also come to Cortes Island to embark upon an expedition into Desolation Sound. “The majority of our tours are in the Johnstone Strait region, so based out of Telegraph Cove and into the Broughton Archipeligo,”she said. “We run trip abroad in the winter as well - In Chile, Patagonia, and the Bahamas.” Q/ Where is your favourite destination? “I know it sounds like a cliche, but the whole coast! Everytime I get in a kayak, anywhere I go - you just can't help but stop and pause and love it all. The Johnstone Strait region when you see a whale surface, or for that matter, off Rebecca Spit or in the backyard of Quadra or Cortes. We are just surrounded by beautiful places.” Photo - courtesy Spirit of the West Adventures

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A massive beach clean-up is underway in the intertidal zones of the Southern Discovery Islands. “The volume of debris we are finding is mind blowing. We are focusing on the larger items instead of the tiny little microplastics. We're trying to get the larger items out before they become the microplastics,” explained Breanne Quesnel. “I know we have some very responsible aquaculture operations in our region, but the amount of aquaculture debris is mind boggling: trays; baskets; nettings and things that have just gotten away at one point - or derelict sites.” Her company, Quadra Island based Spirit of the West Adventures on Quadra Island, obtained the the contract to clean up between 200 and 400 kilometres of shoreline on Quadra, Maurelle, Read, Cortes and Marina Islands. It is part of the Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative, a provincially funded program support coastal communities as they recover from the COVID-19 economic downturn and loss of tourism. “We have just over a month to get to all those, and so far we are on track,” said Quesnel. Spirit of the West was working in Granite Bay and Kanish Bay, on the northern end of Quadra, when Cortes Currents caught up to them on October 14th. “Yesterday we were just focused at the very [southern] tip of Quadra Island, Francisco point around to close to Tsa Kwa Luten Lodge. We have a 28 foot landing craft that we are using as part of this and it was stuffed to the gills. We had to stuff more debris, in order to come back for it,” said Quesnel. “So far we've cleaned around Marina, some of the north end of Cortes and south end of Quadra. We're kind of weather and tide dependant, so it's picking the best place, the best time.” She expects to collect 50 tons of debris. There are 4 crews of 5 in the field, and a support team working behind the scenes. Most of the debris is destined for marine debris specific facility, in the Lower Mainland. The Oceans Legacy Foundation established this connection, when it teamed up with Fishing for Plastic for a beach clean-up last Spring. Kelli Turner, Managing Director at Desolation Sound Ocean Protection and Research Foundation (as well as the new Cortes Bay to Lund water taxi service), was one of the participants. “Shoreline clean-up is one of our big and true heart loves. We try to support a lot of that stuff with the funds we are able to get from moving people and growing the company,” he said. Turner said they cleaned the eastern shore of Cortes Island, from the northern tip down to the Twin Islands, as well as “a good chunk of Desolation Sound,” Hernando Island and Savary Island. “It can be very easy to be overwhelmed by the staggering volumes of debris, not having real control and it getting to the ocean in the first place. A lot of this is docks and industry, as well as consumer goods like plastics,” said Quesnel. “I think we just really need to focus on what kinds of changes we can make on a daily basis and what we can control. Starting at home and thinking with small and then just using our voices, of course, to try and encourage the government and industry to be more proactive so that this debris doesn't end up in the ocean in the first place. Photo credit: courtesy Spirit of the West Adventures

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Current - As November 1st, a new Water Taxi & Cargo Deliveries service will be connecting Lund to the government wharf at Cortes Bay, on Mondays and Fridays. “It will be a 25 minute boat ride across to Cortes Bay and we're going to and from Cortes Bay twice a day. We're offering 12 spots on a water taxi, with the option to bring cargo as well,” explained Kelli Turner, who owns the Finn Bay Group (soon to be renamed Access Point Marine Transportation). “That rate will include 85 pounds of cargo per each person.” Should you wish to transport more cargo, the rate is $0.30 a pound. 09:15 Finn Bay to Cortes Bay  09:45 Cortes Bay to Finn Bay    4:15 Finn Bay to Cortes Bay  4:45 Cortes Bay to Finn Bay Tickets are $35 for adults; $30 for children and seniors. “We're going to be giving a soft start to get it rolling throughout the winter on Mondays and Fridays and then go into six return trips a day starting in June,” said Turner. The Finn Bay Group also plans to operate tours of Desolation Sound, in their new 40 person water taxi, during the summer of 2022. Turner launched his company as “U Call We Haul Marine Services,” in North Vancouver, during in 2010. He relocated to Finn Bay, just outside Lund, two years ago. Since then, the Finn Bay Group has been serving an area that stretches from Cortes Island south to Powell River and up Desolation Sound. Turner also mentioned trips to Campbell River. The trips to Cortes Island were charter runs, in which the water taxi was rented out for $300 per hour. Some of his regular customers were from the Klahoose First Nation in Squirrel Cove. The water taxi services contractors working on Hernando Island. There has been a lot of passengers, contractors and supplies coming out of Gorge Harbour. During the past three months, the water taxi made 52 runs between Cortes Island and Lund. It carried anywhere from 2 to 12 passengers on a trip. “We've also had the opportunity to get into Cortes Bay to drop off a lot of day trippers, as well as people looking to do biking programs throughout Quadra, Cortes and of course Campbell River,” said Turner. “We've had a lot of interest from customers and businesses on Cortes to open up that hub to the Sunshine Coast.” The Finn Bay Group's decision to offer regular passenger service to Cortes arose out of their success with a similar service to and from Savary Island. On Fridays, Turner also offers a shopping service in Powell River. “Everyone calls in and preorders in the stores and then we bring it out and deliver,” he explained. “A big hub for us is all the online shopping. We have everything from furniture to golf carts, ladders and equipment coming here with customers names on it.” They have a large walk-in-fridge and almost as large walk-in-freezer, at Finn Bay, which holds food destined for restaurants, resorts and other customers within their service area.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - UBC marine ecologist Dr. Chris Harley initially told the media that more than a billion mussels, clams, sea stars and other invertebrates may have cooked to death in the area between Campbell River and Washington state. That was a ‘back of the envelope' estimate, based on his observations among the Lower Mainland's mussel population and some preliminary reports. Harley has done a great deal more research since then. He now guesstimates that, conservatively speaking, the number of marine fatalities during last June's heat wave is closer to 10 billion. In the attached podcast, he describes the new temperature records being set throughout British Columbia. “Unfortunately for marine life, those really hot days coincided with very low tides. So things that aren't normally out of the water for very long, were left high and dry during extreme hot weather,” explained Harley. “That combination resulted in dead sea stars, and dead clams, and dead mussels, and dead barnacles - the list just goes on and on.” While it is easy to spot dead mussels because their shells open, this isn't as easy with some other species. Harley says that for the first few weeks, there is very little to distinguish between live and dead barnacles. As the geographic extent of the disaster, numbers of species involved, and numbers of individual animals became clear - Harley gave up on the attempt to make an exact count. In the Campbell River -Discovery Islands area While there is not much information about the marine impacts, Harley said “the north end of the Straight of Georgia is one of the places that got the hottest for coastal communities.” Visiting the area south of Comox, on Vancouver Island, Harley said, “There were certainly still a lot of dead barnacles in evidence as of a few weeks ago.” There were die-offs on Quadra and Calvert Island, as well as Desolation Sound. A number of reports came from Cortes Island, and on July 10th Cortes Currents emailed Harley a series of photos of dead mussels at Smelt Bay. There appeared to be thousands. Snails were attached to some of the shells. Harley responded, “Yes, you do have some snails in your photo. Those guys are apparently pretty tough - I've seen them on other beaches where other species didn't make it through the heat wave. One of them in the upper-middle part of the second photo has glued itself on edge to a mussel shell with a little blob of mucus. They do that so that as little as possible touches a hot surface, which keeps them cooler.” He suggested returning to the site to do a series of plots and put a metre stick in the images to indicate the scale. Most of the dead mussels had washed away by the time Cortes Currents returned to take 10 ‘plots' on July 14th, but there were also what appeared to be thousands of dead sand dollars. ‘Wow!' emailed Harley, looking through the subsequent images from 20 sand dollar plots. Local biologist Deb Cowper reported that some sand dollars survived in the more sheltered waters of Mansons Lagoon, but Smelt Bay is more exposed. There do not appear to be any survivors in the images taken by Cortes Currents. Most of the sand dollars were white, which Harley suggested meant they are ‘recently dead.” There were also some, ‘greenish ones have been dead long enough to acquire some algal growth.' Image credit: Dr. Chris Harley at Kits Beach, with downtown Vancouver in the background. Photo by Chris Harley

Roy L Hales/ CKTZ News - Close to a billion marine creatures may have perished in BC's recent heat wave. What happened? “We had some of the hottest weather we've ever had and it happened to be on days with very low, low tides and that combination was pretty lethal for a lot of things,” explained Dr Chris Harley, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia. He said the one billion death estimate was obtained through calculations of mussel populations. “The numbers are really large because there were a lot of mussels to start with,” he said. Harley has been receiving numerous reports of marine life die-offs in the 650 kilometres of coastline, as the crow flies, between Klemtu, BC, and the Hood Canal, in northern Washington. For many Cortes Island residents, the first they heard of these deaths may have been when local shellfish grower Erik Lyon was interviewed by the CBC. He reported losses of between 5% and 20% on a comparatively wet site in Desolation Sound, but expected to see higher mortality rates elsewhere. There also appear to have been an abnormally high number of shellfish deaths at least two sites on Cortes Island. Ricky Belanger, from the Discovery Passage Aquarium in Campbell River, reported seeing high numbers of dead cockles. Harley said that mussels in the shade, or on a north facing surface, were probably okay. So were the oysters grown on rafts. Large numbers clams, cockles and mussels perished on beaches. Photo credit: Heat camera photo of mussels at 42 degrees celsius photo courtesy Dr Chris Harley

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Refuge Cove general store should soon be reopening. This is the Desolation Sound's only grocery store in a deep-water harbour and is normally open from June until September. According to the website, “During the summer, the store is well stocked with block and cube (best on the coast) ice, groceries, marine hardware, souvenirs, local books, fuel, tackle, and ice cream novelties and cones!” The associated fuel dock serves customers on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM, through-out the winter months. Lucy Robertson emailed Cortes Currents that the store was impacted by the pandemic last summer, “We did notice a downturn in sales and traffic as a fair number of our customers are from the USA. It was a quieter summer in Refuge Cove as a number of families who have second homes here were not able to make the trip.” “I did have the impression that there was an increase in the number of new Canadian boaters last summer and that people were spending more time out on the water in general. Many customers were making an extra effort to resupply locally and support the smaller places. We also had a lot of support in the form of kind words and deeds from our local community and from visitors.”

Did you ever feel that you needed to prove yourself as an artist?  To your parents?  Teachers? Directors? Castmates? Critics? You are not alone! Joining the conversation on Cue To Cue this week is Producer/Writer/Performer Duff MacDonald who will take us on a journey on how his “umbilical cord” was severed when he lost his parents and how it lead to an epiphany that he was doing everything to prove his worth to his parents. When the magic carpet is pulled under you, Duff reminds us that you have the magic and the skillset to survive and grow as an artist. Is there a project you’ve been wanting to start or a skill you’ve always to learn; but you’re worried that there’s a ton of technical things that you don’t know yet? Don’t devalue yourself! You don’t have to be an expert; you have to be willing to learn the things that you don’t know as you go. As long as you have the fundamentals, you can do it. In this episode: How the pandemic induced his creative juice and lead him to paint How an unexpected contract lead to a life-shifting experience in Scotland The influence of his mom’s creativity to his own journey towards discovering his own artistry The Connection between creativity and confidence and how to find your confidence if you are struggling   A little about Duff: Hailing from the wide open prairies of Saskatchewan, Duff has been singing and songwriting since the age of seven. He picked up the guitar at age fourteen and went on to win the Saskatchewan Search For the Stars at age 16. He also was a finalist in the Music City Song Festival in Nashville for his song “Dreamin” early in his career. He has performed venues all across Canada and the USA from coffee houses to large theatres and stadiums.  His first professional recording came on a CD Compilation entitled “Desolation Sound” . Off his first recording, Duff received airplay for “If I Only Had the Time” and “In the Night” on CBC Radio Canada.  His new country folk album NAKED is currently digitally available online within Apple Music, iTunes, Google Play and Amazon as well as many other sites. Material inspired by some major life events like the sudden passing of his parents, his brother and the end of a relationship. Veteran musicians Peter Bleakney (Anne Murray’s bass player of 25 years), Adam Warner (Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards, Sarah Slean, Royal Wood) and Mark Stewartson (Classic Albums Live) are the backing band on the album. Featuring Duncan Scott on Mandolin/Fiddle, Fred Smith on Banjo/Dobro and Michael Lerner on Keys and Synth. Produced by Duff and Michael Lerner. Featured on the album is a haunting duet of the celtic traditional song “The Skye Boat Song” with Juno Award nominated singer songwriter WENDY LANDS. His new country single PENNIES, NICKELS & DIMES can be heard on radio stations and streamed on iTunes as well. Mr. MacDonald is a seasoned performer of the stage, radio and television, acting in over 30 musicals and plays across Canada and the USA. He has also appeared in several national and international commercials.  You are sure to have seen him in film and television roles like the recent CARTER (CTV Drama Channel), GOOD WITCH, TITANS (NetFlix), CLAWS OF THE RED DRAGON, Incorporated (SyFy), Tru Love (Winner of 35 Worldwide Film Fest Awards), Cinderella Man, Foolproof, The Music Man and most recently in the nation-wide spot for BOSTON PIZZA as the gold Professional Sports Trophy Model. Extremely popular during the 2015 World Baseball Series.   Get Your Tickets to the Duff Show!  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-duff-show-tickets-131683949237?fbclid=IwAR1DqpeNOcwZfwygi_UvZgMfVzGJvm3LaL_6QcYvdlek1A6Z1aFOn4-CS1U   Follow Duff! Facebook: Duff MacDonald Twitter: @duffmacdonald Instagram: @duffmacdonald YouTube: Duff MacDonald W: https://duffmacdonald.com/

Roy L Hales / Cortes Currents - There have been a number of new revelations about Jeff Levine and the proposed Bliss Landing wood waste landfill. Levine withdrew his proposal on December 15th and a Ministry of Environment spokesperson informed the quathet Regional District the same day. "People have threatened me, verbally abused me, threatened my family. It's not worth it, it's absolutely not worth it. And it's all because this person called it toxic waste — and it's not," he told CBC news. Levine added, “If you don't agree with the industrialization of an area, that's one thing to disagree with, but don't try to turn someone into [an] environmental monster that's going to dump hazardous waste on land and ocean and negatively affect people, because those are two different things.... I was guided by the Ministry of Environment by this process, and I followed the process.” Variations of Levine's story appeared in Cortes Currents, The Squamish Chief, and Powell River Peak. He claims to have already lost $400,000 through the venture. 1.25 Much of the opposition came through a Change.org petition called “Major Vancouver developer planning on dumping toxic waste into Desolation Sound.” The ‘developer' in question was not Levine, but rather a Vancouver based company which he hoped would use his services. Levine has repeatedly said he does not have a contract with Bosa Properties, the owners of the Squamish old site, and will also be seeking wood waste from sites throughout the Fraser Valley. The Squamish Chief reported that District of Squamish staff informed them that, “the District is not banning wood waste from being disposed of in town, but determined in 2017 that municipal land would no longer be leased for wood waste disposal, and that wood waste landfill on District property will be phased out by 2022. As a result, Levine created a company and offered up land that he bought in Desolation Sound as a dumping spot for local businesses seeking to get rid of their wood waste. He said he was hoping to attract the business of the SEAandSKY Bosa-Kingswood project on the Waterfront, which has been looking for a contractor to take the wood waste, as the area was previously the old Interfor mill site. However, Levine hadn't signed a deal with the company, as the province had yet to approve his project.” A spokesperson for Boas Properties confirmed that no contract has been signed. The report which Vancouver based Keystone Environmental prepared for Levine states, “The material to be landfilled will originate from several wood processing locations such as sawmills, dry land sorts and former sawmills where the saw dust, wood chips and bark was previously buried.” Image taken from the from WATERFRONT LANDING SUB AREA PLAN, Squamish Community plan (2017)

Grant Lawrence is  a Writer, Broadcaster, Storyteller and former Musician. I got a chance to sit down with Grant back in January  before all the craziness of COVID-19. We chat about everything from The Smugglers to his writing and broadcasting career. We also touch on his time in Desolation Sound, British Columbia. You can find out more about Grant by visiting: http://grantlawrence.ca Like this episode? Visit https://www.djspencer.ca/podcast  

For a few years, I hosted a podcast called The Sherlock Conversations. We dealt with all things Sherlock Holmes (and a side of Doctor Who when the moment was right). During that time I had the interview Fraser Heston, the son of the great Charlton Heston. He directed his father in "The Crucifer of Blood", a retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Sign of the Four." We discuss Sherlock Holmes, directing his father, and Fraser's murder mystery book "Desolation Sound" which he wrote with Heather McAdams! Also check out his page at Agamemnon Films! Take a trip back to the far away past of 2016 and listen in! Enjoy! ________ Don't forget to visit "Conversations of the Strange" at our website here and on our Facebook page here. _______ New theme credit - "Extinction Level Event" by Jingle Punks

RadioFree Olga continues with a Podcast featuring the music created and recorded by local musicians living in the San Juan Islands....And also visiting musicians to the San Juans...This week we’re playing some old and new favs...Hear tunes from Desolation Sound (pictured), Bob Olson and Don Stalter, The Solar Siblings, Stormy Hildrith, Tovio, JP & The OK Rhythm Boys, John Reischman & John Miller, S. Arlo Woodard, Sea Stars, Hazel Moe, Phil Paige, Carlos Camblor, Mamatamba, John Barnes, Norm Flint, Pat Melvin, and Joules Graves...Enjoy!

RadioFree Olga continues with a Podcast featuring the music created and recorded by local musicians living in the San Juan Islands....And also visiting musicians to the San Juans...This week we’re playing some old and new favs...Hear tunes from David Densmore (pictured), Caleb Klauder, Dr. Dirty And The Band Du Jour, Philana Goodrich, Desolation Sound, Music From the Heart, Peggy Lee, Waldron Sings, The Olga Symphony, Susan Osborn, Matt Helms, Bloodshot, Reed Goodrich, Pete Moe, The Play-Rite Boys, Brandon Vance and Mark Minkler, and Taj Mahal....Enjoy!!

When Wayne orders Linda to leave the cabin to allow him with to deal with his illness, she finds herself alone against the wilderness facing an uncertain future in Desolation Sound. 

Over the past few months, Grant Lawrence has been on North By Northwest with his series Wild Pick: the true life story and adventures of Desolation Sound oyster farmer Linda Sims and her partner Wayne. He's been bringing us tales of Linda's adventures sailing across the Pacific Ocean in a dilapidated boat, homesteading from scratch in Desolation Sound, and her lifelong career as an oyster farmer. Here are all 16 chapter's of Grant's story in one place.

Over the past few weeks on North by Northwest, Grant Lawrence has been bringing you the true life story and adventures of Desolation Sound oyster farmer Linda Sims and her husband Wayne. The title of Wild Pick is both a reference to oyster farming, and many of Linda's life choices. Here are the first 14 chapters, all in one place.

Here are the first eleven chapters of Grant Lawrence’s latest story-telling podcast, "Wild Pick." This is the true tale of the life and adventures of Linda Syms, oyster farmer of Desolation Sound. It's another of Grant's epic wilderness adventures, chronicling Linda’s wild life. At a very young age, she fell in love with an older man who completely changed her life. She eventually became a modern day homesteader and oyster farmer, which led her on a 40 year love story, which, in Linda’s words, eventually “ended with a BANG.”

Get away to Desolation Sound and the surrounding area. Desolation Sound offers a cruising area that is like no other. Mother Nature surrounds you with extraordinary beauty and stunning coves to anchor in. Explore other close-by destinations, usually within a day from Desolation Sound. A must-see destination for cruisers.Whether a seasoned sailor or new to boating, there is always something to learn, so let's talk about the resources and classes that Waggoner Seminars offers.

Destination Cruises:5:45 Visit Anacortes, a waterfront community, which has so much to offer boaters; world class restaurants, great shops, a Post Office, Live Music, fun activities and events year round. Listen to Stephanie Hamilton from the Anacortes Chamber of Commerce and Dan Worra from the Port of Anacortes. With 16,000 boaters nights and more, Anacortes has a many amenities and a strong Marine Trades all in one place. 12:35 - Explore Teakerne ArmTeakern Arm, located north of Prideaux Haven in Desolation Sound, is a deep inlet with a lovely dual waterfall. Anchorage can be taken in front of the falls, or you can use several rings set in the rock on either side of the dinghy dock. Visitors often use the dinghy dock to access the trail above the falls, which leads to Cassel Lake. The lake water is warm in the summer and offers a great place for a swim. Teakern Arm is just a short detour off Lewis Channel, just north of Refuge Cove and Squirrel Cove but feels very remote.18:49 - One of our managing editors favorite spots - The Octopus Islands.The Octopus Islands group offers cozy anchorages and are ideal for exploring by dinghy or kayak. You can run a stern-tie to shore in one of several coves nestled among the islands, or find ample anchorage in Waiatt Bay. At the head of Waiatt Bay, you’ll find a trail that leads across the neck of Quadra Island to Small Inlet and Kanish Bay. This trail connects the Octopus Islands Marine Provincial Park, located off of Okisollo Channel, with Small Inlet Marine Provincial Park, located off Discovery Passage. The Octopus Islands are very scenic, with a backdrop of impressive mountains to the north.

In the early 1980s, host Grant Lawrence's family attended a nude potluck in the hippie wilds of Desolation Sound, BC, during which the conservative family refused to grin and bear it. The potluck was co-hosted by a woman and her husband, a modern day homesteading couple living in a cabin just beyond the beach of the potluck. That woman was Linda Syms. This is her story.

Wild Pick: the life and adventures of Linda Syms, oyster farmer of Desolation Sound, is the latest podcast series from Grant Lawrence. Get set for another epic wilderness adventure that chronicles Linda's wild life. At a very young age, she fell in love with an older man who completely changed her life. She eventually became a modern day homesteader and oyster farmer, which led her on a 40 year love story, eventually ending in tragedy. 

Wild Pick: the life and adventures of Linda Syms, oyster farmer of Desolation Sound, is the latest true story podcast series from Grant Lawrence. Get set for another epic wilderness adventure that chronicles Linda's wild life. At a very young age, she fell in love with an older man who completely changed her life. She eventually became a modern day homesteader and oyster farmer, which led her on a 40 year love story, eventually ending in tragedy.

In this special addendum chapter to the series, Grant Lawrence details the shocking death of Russell Letawsky. 

Hermit of Desolation Sound is Grant Lawrence's latest true life adventure series, starring Russell Letawsky, the hermit philosopher who lived off the grid in a dank shack on West Coast of Canada for over a decade. 

Hermit of Desolation Sound is Grant Lawrence's latest true life adventure series, starring Russell Letawsky, the hermit philosopher who lived off the grid in a dank shack on West Coast of Canada for over a decade. 

Hermit of Desolation Sound is Grant Lawrence's latest true life adventure series, starring Russell Letawsky, the hermit philosopher who lived off the grid in a dank shack on West Coast of Canada for over a decade. 

Russell Letawsky and his girlfriend Audrey embark on an epic hike of a lifetime, with the goal of crossing the jagged Coast Mountain Range, from the interior of BC to the ocean, using only a map and a compass, and without the help of any roads or trails – straight up, through the bush, into an area infamous for its landslides and seismic instability. 

The hermit’s shack that had stood at the edge of the woods in the cove for twenty years is finally torn down in the early 2000s by a new Desolation Sound neighbour nicknamed Bernard the German.

After more than a decade of living way off the grid, the hermit Russell Letawsky returns to civilization.

Russell gets into a vicious fight in the notorious Lund Pub at the end of the road, the closest watering hole to Desolation Sound.

The Hermit Russell Letawsky constructed a tiny one room cabin to live in permanently along the shore of Desolation Sound with no modern conveniences, running water, or electricity.

Russell settled in a little cove beside host Grant Lawrence's family cabin. Russell would become an unlikely friend of Grant's staunchly conservative father. 

Russell and Audrey hitched a ride on a barge from Toba Inlet, getting off on a beach in Desolation Sound that was recently purchased by Audrey’s sister. The area would change Russell's life.

After a month of following only a map and compass from BC’s interior, Russell Letawsky and his girlfriend Audrey manage to cross the Coast Mountain Range, which was an incredible accomplishment, but it was still a long way down to the ocean, and they were out of food and starving.

The hermit would become intertwined in the Lawrence family's life one more time in an unpredictable way. 

A series of events in the late 1960s and early 70s began to change Russell Letawsky from businessman to bushman. 

Something snapped in Russell Letawsky in downtown Toronto. He felt compelled to get out of the rat race, which led him on a winding road trip to the west. 

Long before the future West Coast bushman found Desolation Sound, he grew up a farm boy in a small prairie town in Northern Alberta, surrounded siblings. He became a junvenile delinquent and car thief before leaving town to find his fortune. 

Host Grant Lawrence was only 11-years-old when he and his family came face to face with the Hermit of Desolation Sound. Little did any of them know how much of an impact this grizzled bushman would have on their family.

Söngkonan Abbey Lincoln flytur lögin That's Him, Whe A Woman Loves A Man, Don't Explain, Strong Man, Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe, Porgy og I Must Have That Man. Kvartett Charles Lloyd flytur lögin The Water Is Wide, Go Down Moses, La Llorna, Mirror, Desolation Sound, Monk's Mood og Ruby My Dear. Tríó John Taylor leikur lögin Tramonto, The Bowl Song, Between Moons og Rosslyn.

Hermit of Desolation Sound is Grant Lawrence's latest true life adventure series, starring Russell Letawsky, the hermit philosopher who lived off the grid in a dank shack on West Coast of Canada for over a decade. 

Bernard the German is viciously attacked by several of the creatures that roam the dense woods behind his Desolation Sound cabin. 

After a tense stand off at the Okeover government wharf, host Grant Lawrence and his friends thought they had left the menacing Bernard the German behind, until the huge man shows up uninvited in his boat in front of the Lawrence cabin in the wilds of Desolation Sound.

After a serious health scare, Bernard the German decides to sell his hand-built eagle's nest of a cabin in Desolation Sound to follow his second dream: sailing around the world. 

Bernard the German rushes to help a Desolation Sound neighbour whose cabin has erupted into flames. 

Host Grant Lawrence meets Bernard the German for the first time at the Okeover government wharf at the edge of the BC wilderness near Desolation Sound. The German's towering presence is instantly intimidating and leaves Lawrence and his friends cowering. 

Bernard the German shook the Alberta dust once and for all and moved his young family to the West Coast where he took up work at the docks, always possessed to own a waterfront cabin in the wilderness. A one-line ad in the newspaper led him to Desolation Sound, BC.

Bernard the German is the tragic tale of the giant of Desolation Sound, a true story of an ox of a man who died just as he lived- very remarkably, while following his dreams right to his grave. This 10-part series will take you on an adventure around the world, from the war-torn rubble of post-war Germany, to the coastal wilderness of Desolation Sound, B.C., to the dangerous but alluring tropical climes of the South Seas. Told in a fast-paced serialized format, this epic tragedy will appeal to anyone with a thirst for wanderlust. 

Amanda and Jenn discuss rich people problems, pregnant protagonists, book-slump busters, and more in this week's episode of Get Booked. This episode is sponsored by Book Riot Insiders, Love Letters to Jane’s World by Paige Braddock, and How Are You Going to Save Yourself by JM Holmes.   Feedback Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound by Grant Lawrence   Questions   1. Good morning, I'm going on a trip to France (Paris/Strasbourg) in November and looking for book recs for the summer, preferably historical fiction or mystery. We'll be visiting several palaces, so books related to the monarchy would be great. I'm pretty well-read on British/Scottish history but pretty ignorant on French history. (Totally on board for rich people problems :) Recent faves are the Lytton trilogy (Penny Vincenzi), Life After Life (Kate Atkinson), The Diviners series (Libba Bray), Rules of Civility (Amor Towles), Flight of Gemma Hardy (Margaret Livesey), anything by Tana French. I've checked off Atonement/the Nightingale/Everyone Brave is Forgiven. Thanks so much! Love the show! --Brittney   2. Hi Ladies! Like Amanda I really love the rich people problems types of books, from YA books like the Map of Fates series and Gossip Girl to The Vacationers, Rich and Pretty, The Nest, and most recently the Kevin Kwan series Crazy Rich Asians (amazing on audio). I love the fashion and luxury and over the top feel of these books, they’re just... fun and a nice escape from reality. Can you provide me with some recommendations (preferably contemporary settings)? --Jenn   3. Hey y'all! I love the podcast. This year I decided to read more and I love getting deep cut recs that I'd have never found on my own. I'm writing to ask about audiobook recommendations, specifically audiobooks with full cast productions such as American Gods, His Dark Materials, and Lincoln in the Bardo. I find that full cast productions are especially engrossing! Please no abridgments or dramatizations. I'm also not a huge fan of sci fi, I'm just not into space! Thank you so much :) --Bess   4. Greetings, magical unicorns! I am interested in books with pregnant protagonists. The kind where they are doing something badass. Not necessarily fighting crime or saving humanity, but living their lives and being kickass while also growing a human. Some examples that comes to mind are "The Fireman," "Persons Unknown," or even the latest Spider-Woman comic where Jessica Drew was a badass pregnant superhero. These ladies are not sitting around on fainting couches because they feel fragile. They're taking life by the horns and not letting a little thing like the miracle of life stop them. --Emily   5. Hi Jenn and Amanda! I moved recently and joined a new book group full of smart, engaged women in their thirties and early forties. All of us have full-time jobs and some of the members have young kids (one of the women has a full-time job, an 18-month old, AND is getting her MBA!) Needless to say, everyone has good intentions to read the books each month, but with everyone's busy schedules, sometimes only one or two of us actually finds the time to actually do it. I am hoping you can provide a couple of suggestions for books that will entice the entire group to read the whole book. We read fiction and nonfiction, although the group seems to prefer fiction, and nothing too long would help the cause. One of the group's absolutely favorite reads was A Man Called Ove and we recently read Three Junes by Julia Glass which the people who read it really enjoyed but some of the members tried to start it and couldn't get into it. Thanks for any suggestions you have! --Halle   6. I am an avid reader but, unfortunately, have not been able to read for the past few months. It's getting harder for me to get back to reading. I started with Beloved, but I found it heavy and not very engaging. My favorites include To Kill a Mockingbird and Eat, Pray, Love. Hoping that you can help :) --Shivani   7. Hi Amanda and Jenn, First, love the podcast! I recently finished The Magicians Trilogy and absolutely loved it! Could you please recommend more fantasy books like this series? I was originally drawn to the series because I had heard it was “Harry Potter for grown-ups” but what I really liked about these books was that they were moody and gritty in addition to whimsical, and the characters flawed and complex. If it helps, I also loved the Abhorsen books by Garth Nix and the Night Circus, and I disliked The Paper Magician and The Book of Lost Things. No YA please, and bonus points for a female protagonist. Thank you! --Heather   Books Discussed My Own Devices by Dessa (out Sept. 8) Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich (WIT: http://biblibio.blogspot.com/) Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran Versailles by Kathryn Davis Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea, translated by Marilyn Booth People Like Us by Dominick Dunne (his Recommended episode) A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (26 hours, have fun!) Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner (audio rec’d by Nita Basu, 11 hours), trigger warning for suicidal ideation Heartless by Gail Carriger Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng The Wangs vs. The World by Jade Chang Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse The Poppy War by RF Kuang (tw: war crimes, rape, mandated sterilization, child abuse)

  Did you grow up in a place that you didn't appreciate until later in life? A place that your father chose, a place you didn't understand, a place you couldn't wait to escape from, only to find, many years later, that you too love that place, and your father was right all along? Yes me too. Canada turns 150 on July 1st. To honour this day, Episode 18 celebrates both the east and west coasts of Canada with Grant Lawrence - music journalist, musician, writer and story teller.  Grant shares stories from Desolation Sound, a small inlet on the Coast of British Columbia, a place he once loved, then hate