Gabriolan.ca

The CBC reports that the Kitsilano coast guard station will be closed in DFO layoffs. Oh my. You’ve probably seen their hovercraft go past now and again when they’ve been on their way to rescue somebody. There was that time at Whalebone a few years ago and… and…. Well, no more.

Boaters had best take extra care.

Tags: Coast Guard

This caterpillar decided to hang out on one of our windows, which must have been a request to be photographed.

The Gabriola Museum opens for the season this weekend, on Saturday, May 19th. (10 am to 3pm.) Their events page introduces the new exhibit:

More Than Just Clay and Mortar: The story of the Gabriola Brickyard and the workers and their families

For more than five decades until the early 1950s, the Gabriola Brickyard was the biggest industry on the island. Millions of bricks were manufactured and exported annually to Vancouver, Victoria and New Westminster where they were mortared into roads and buildings, may of which still stand today.

But the Brickyard was more than just shale and clay. It was [continue]

If you’re interested in growing things on Gabriola, or in agroforestry, there’s a blog you’ll want to read. It’s Just Another Weed Patch. The about page explains:

We’re ‘Just Another Weed Patch Farm’ located Gabriola Island, in British Columbia Canada.

Starting in April 2012 we began a 19 month agroforestry adventure to transform our 2 acre pasture into a productive demonstration site of 250 nut trees surrounded by alley food and flower crops interspersed with happy laying hens, troublesome sheep and buzzing bees. That’s our plan!

This web site will document the good, the bad, and the ugly for your web browsing pleasures.

The project has a target completion date of all trees in the ground and cultivated alley crop rows established by November 2013 so the clock is ticking. Stay tuned for weekly updates via text, photos and video postings showcasing our progress and learning curve. [continue]

Just Another Weed Patch posts interesting and well-written stuff, so I’ll be following this blog.

Tags: agroforestry, blog

From the Nanaimo Bulletin: Entrance Island Lighthouse nominated for heritage designation.

For nearly 140 years the Entrance Island Lighthouse has been a beacon shining across the waters of Georgia Strait to guide seafarers and aviators safely to their destination.

The lighthouse, which has been manned since its construction in the mid-1870s, is located off the northeast tip of Gabriola Island.

It’s one of 28 B.C. lighthouses currently nominated for designation under the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act, intended to protect the heritage character of lighthouses. Lighthouses are nominated for protection under the act through a public petition process, which comes to a close May 29. [continue]

Tags: Entrance Island, lighthouse

I rowed around an island, once. It was not my idea, against my better judgement, and I’ll never do it again. It was a smaller island than Gabriola, too, so I sure won’t be doing anything of the sort here.

But serious rowers do circumnavigate islands. Jordan Hanssen and Greg Spooner recently rowed around Vancouver Island. The News Tribune has the details, including:

As repetitive as rowing is, the crew is propelled by knowledge that the more strokes they take the more they discover. For all their journeys, the Salish Sea showed Hanssen and Spooner plenty they’d never seen.

The northern lights. Whale spouts. A skinny-dipping gold medalist. A chance to play basketball in an isolated First Nations community. A near miss with a tugboat.

It was a pretty amazing experience, Hanssen said. But we still have a lot of things to get right. [continue]

We’ve heard so much about proposals for a bus service on Gabriola. There’ve been surveys, articles, and meetings.

Howard Houle, our RDN rep, has posted this very sensible thing on his website:

Lately there has been talk about a bus service on Gabriola. I would love to see that happen when the community is ready.

When I read the feasibility studies however, and yes, more than one has been conducted, they do not ask the most critical question, which is: Are you as a property owner willing to pay an increase in your taxes for a bus service? [continue]

Howard adds:

While I am at it, the Gabriola Radio Society would like to receive some of your property taxes as well. They are thinking about a tax request of $60,000 per year for seven years that will run about $24 for a $300,000 property. [continue]

What do you think? Would you be willing to pay more taxes to have a bus service? To support the Gabriola Radio Society?

Tags: bus service, Gabriola Radio, Howard Houle, property tax

Well, this is insane. Stan and Nancy from The Gym at Twin Beaches have organized a running event called The Brickyard Beast. It’s a 10k road race that starts at Tait and Ferne, heads down to Brickyard, goes up Brickyard Hill, and then along South Road, Lochinvar, and North Road to Gabriola Elementary School. And this on August 5th, which is likely to be a hot day.

Runners apparently do this kind of thing voluntarily.

Would you run up Brickyard Hill?

Tags: Ferne Road, insanity, Lockinvar Lane, North Road, race, running, South Road, Tait Road

The Daily News has a story about the lighthouse we see from Berry Point: Lighthouse keeper will remain in place at facility on Entrance Island.

The Entrance Island lighthouse, just one of approximately 50 manned lighthouses left in Canada, and its keepers will continue to provide services for the local marine community.

Gabriola boaters, and others concerned with marine safety, are sure to be relieved.

But lighthouse keepers fear that the federal government’s recent decision to halt plans to destaff all the remaining manned lighthouses in the country is just a temporary measure that may soon be revisited. [continue]

Sigh.

Tags: Entrance Island, lighthouse

Thinking of building a little boat to paddle at Descanso or Drumbeg? Here’s news of unusual canoes that might inspire, or at least boggle: canoes made out of concrete.

I know you’ll want one.

Now that we’ve got a bear on Gabriola (seen on Ferne Road today), some of us will be a lot more alert in the forest. This list is from Backpacker Magazine’s article, Rip and Live: Learn to Survive a Bear Attack.

Here is when and where you’re most likely to see them:

• Dawn and dusk. Although bears are active at all times of the day, this is when you’re most likely to see them out and about.
• In the fall. This is when they gorge themselves silly—called hyperphagia—to store fat for hibernation from October through March. But don’t assume all bears are hibernating. Some emerge to dig under the snow for food, and in the South, black bears stay out year-round.
• Food-rich areas. Since bears are ruled by their stomachs, you’ll find them at nature’s buffet tables: berry patches, forests laden with hazelnuts, beechnuts, or acorns, clamming areas, near carrion, and salmonspawning areas.
• Avalanche chutes and trails. Bears enjoy easy travel just like us.
• In the silence. Bears probably will hear or smell you before they see you. To help avoid surprising one (especially if you’re downwind), make noise: Talk, clap, sing, jingle bells (in some areas, bears have learned to associate metallic sounds with people). [continue]

The list above is from page 3 of the article.

(By the way, you’ve just got to see the classic bear warning sign.)

I’m not sure if North Road Sports sells bear bells, but outdoor stores in Nanaimo certainly do. (Check at Valhalla Pure Outfitters or Alberni Outpost.) And of course you can order them online from Mountain Equipment Co-op.

Tags: bear

Last spring a mystery plant appeared in my garden. It grew some leaves, then sets of delicate white flowers, and then dark berries. I knew it wasn’t any of the berry plants native to Gabriola, but what could it be? I meant to find out, especially because I thought about eating those berries. But I didn’t find out, so oh well.

Summer went, the plant died. On cold winter nights I puttered about on the web instead of in the garden.

Now, in the winter I spend too much time on a certain seed company’s website, and I order more from them than I should. When the garden was under snow, the description of a plant called sunberry seemed particularly appealing: a thornless plant, with berries vaguely similar to blueberries or huckleberries. Sounded like a fun thing to try, so click click, order, done.

I started those sunberry seeds indoors, and planted them out into the garden today. And you know? They’ve just developed sets of delicate white flowers. It’s the very same plant I wondered about all last summer.

So are you growing sunberry plants on Gabriola? Because the seed that grew last year’s sunberry plant had to have come on the wind, or through a local bird. Was it a seed from your plant that somehow made it over here?

Sunberry, by the way, is one of the plants Luther Burbank claimed to have developed. See sunberry page at Vegetables of Interest for more details.

From the Daily News: Ferry users guarded over impact of recent changes.

Amendments made to the Coastal Ferry Act this week were greeted with enthusiasm Thursday by local stakeholders, while the conspicuous absence of other suggested measures, such as restraints on fare increases, were largely treated with guarded optimism. [continue]

The article quotes three Gabriola residents you probably know:

• Sheila Malcolmson, Gabriola’s Islands Trust representative, and Islands Trust Council chairwoman
• John Hodgkins, chairman of the Gabriola Ferry Advisory Committee
• Phillip Vannini, a Royal Roads University professor who wrote Ferry Tales

Tags: Coastal Ferry Act, John Hodgkins, Phillip Vannini, Sheila Malcolmson

By now you’ve probably heard of Phillip Vannini, who lives on Gabriola, teaches in Victoria, and wrote Ferry Tales: Mobility, Place, and Time on Canada’s West Coast.

Today the Bowen Island Undercurrent has an article on Philip and his work: Mind the gap (or not). It includes this bit:

Vannini inquired about the various signs about the line-up and ended up including a chapter in his book entitled Mind the Gap. There is a significance in the gaps, he said. And I compared Bowen to Gabriola and Sointura. On Bowen, if you go and join the ferry line-up and lineup hasn’t stretched beyond overload sign, you can fill the spaces at the bottom of the hill. On Gabriola, you don’t do that ever. [continue]

Well. Who knew Bowen had different rules?

The article also mentions that Philip has a website to go along with the book. It’s FerryResearch.ca, and of course there’s a Gabriola Island section.

Tags: Ferry Tales, Phillip Vannini

A friend’s son has been setting snares to catch rabbits. (No, not on Gabriola.) She knows it’s probably illegal where they live, but doesn’t care. Being a boy is illegal these days, she told me. It’s illegal to give your kid a normal childhood. So she says nothing about the boy’s attempts to catch dinner in the woods near their house, and life goes on. Maybe one day they’ll have a rabbit in the dinner-pot, and maybe not. In the meanwhile, the kid dreams and spends hours in the forest.

Ah, flagrant disregard of Rules Deemed Stupid. My friend would fit right in on our island, don’t you think?

Meanwhile, here is a thought-provoking article from OutsideOnline.com: Breaking the Rules: Doing Right Means Sometimes Ignoring the Law.

MY LIFE IS A SERIES of mildly illegal acts. I have jumped where jumping is not allowed. Slept where sleeping is verboten. Swum forbidden rivers cascading from the French Alps. Skied untracked powder where I should not have skied untracked powder. Hopped many a fence for apples, views, trails, or just because I felt I had the right to do so. [continue]

Are you a breaker of rules, too?

For years now, groups of volunteers have been working to eradicate broom on Gabriola. They hold broom-yanking parties at Drumbeg and other spots, and often seem to use something called an extractagator to pull broom out of the ground.

I happened to be over at a Comox Valley website this morning, and found mention of a different approach there:

Now that the broom is beginning to shows it yellow flowers, it is time to cut it. If broom is cut at ground level while in bloom, the plant will die in the summer’s dry heat – and it will not form more seeds.

Is that right, broom eradication experts?

Here’s a reminder of what life was like on our coast before Europeans arrived: Cooking in a Bentwood Box.

Prior to the trade of steel cookware on the Pacific Northwest, the Native Americans prepared many foods in wooden cooking boxes. Instead of putting the box on a heat source, red hot rocks were placed inside of the cooking box to cook food. As you can imagine, some knowledge and specialized equipment are needed to safely heat cooking rocks and build a cooking box that doesn’t leak. [continue]

Oh my. Here’s the latest from BC Ferries:

Sailing Cancellation – M.V. Quinsam

Please be advised that due to mechanical issues the M.V. Quinsam is currently holding in dock at Nanaimo Harbour until further notice.

So I imagine we are back to foot-passenger-only watertaxi service, which is what usually happens when the ferry’s ill.

UPDATES: see comments below.

Tags: BC Ferries, Quinsam