Denman Island Community Education Society (DICES) Annual General Meeting
Denman Island Community Education Society (DICES) Annual General Meeting
The Board of Directors of DICES invites you to the Annual General Meeting on October 15th, 2024 at 2:45 in the Hub.
We’ll be serving tea, coffee, and snacks for your enjoyment. Come and find out what we are up to and how to get involved!
DICES provides a variety of educational and recreational services to children, youth, families, and adults in the community.
Our programs include After School, School Lunch and support, Teen Night, Growing Up Denman, Summer and Spring Camps, Food Bank, Holiday Hampers, Farmers Market Coupons as well as health and wellness education, continuing education for life-long learning, and recreational programs.
See you on Tuesday, October 15th in the Hub (food bank location)!
KNEEJERK to play Denman & Hornby Islands
Vancouver/ Denman Island drummer Kenton Loewen brings an all star Vancouver lineup in the incredible band, KneeJerk. Formed in 2021 with Bassist Karlis Silins and Pianist Brian Horswill, the trio put out their critically acclaimed debut record Blind Painter in 2023. With the addition of guitar player Cole Schmidt the quartet embark on a fall Islands tour before heading in to the studio to capture their sophomore recording. Think of an entire pallet for colour and feeling experienced through the lens of experimental music that blurs the line between composition & improvisation. Opening up their Hornby Island show is local guitar legend Tony Wilson.
Denman Island
Tues Oct 15th Back Hall 8pm
Tickets at Abraxes Books and at the door
Hornby Island
Wed Oct 16th New Horizons 8pm
Tickets at the door
Denman Island Garden Society (DIGS)
Denman Island Garden Society (DIGS)
The next meeting of the Denman Island Garden Society will be held on Wednesday, October 16th from 1 to 3 pm at the Gathering Place at the United Church. The program will be a members’ discussion of what worked in the garden this year, and what did not. Denman Island gardeners possess a wealth of garden knowledge and experience, and they are generous in sharing what they know with fellow gardeners. This is your opportunity to bring your questions and share your own triumphs and foibles.
This is the time of year when many gardeners are dividing perennials or getting rid of plants they no longer want in their gardens. We will have a plant exchange before the meeting (space will be set up outside for 12:30 pm), so please bring along plants, seeds or bulbs that you would like to share. No invasive species, please, and it helps if plants are labeled.
Film Review: YINTAH, A Documentary On A Decade of Wet’suwet’en Resistance
Film Review: YINTAH, A Documentary On A Decade Of Wet’suwet’en Resistance
An astonishing achievement in filmmaking, evoking a rollercoaster of emotions, from laughter to anger, love and solidarity to deep heartache, our community was treated to a well attended showing of masterful storytelling that chronicles the continuing resistance waged in a growing indigenous occupation and restoration of their hereditary community and traditions on their Yintah (lands.) The filmmakers sang and spoke and answered questions following the 125min screening at Denman Community Hall, on Sunday, Oct.6.
Spanning more than a decade, YINTAH follows Howilhkat Freda Huson and Sleydo’ Molly Wickham as their nation reoccupies and protects their ancestral lands from the Canadian government and several of the largest fossil fuel companies on earth.
The Wet’suwet’en nation have lived on and governed their territories for thousands of years. They have never signed treaties or sold their land to Canada. In 1997, Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs joined with Gitxsan Hereditary Chiefs and won the landmark Delgamuukw-Gidsaywa Supreme Court of Canada case. The court recognized that the Wet’suwet’en people have never given up title to 22,000 km2 (8500mi2) of land in northern British Columbia.
Despite these rulings, the governments of Canada and British Columbia continue to assert jurisdiction over this territory and have issued permits for resource projects without the consent of the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs. Wet’suwet’en people upholding decisions made in accordance with Wet’suwet’en law have been criminalized by the Canadian state, and have repeatedly been arrested for occupying and controlling access to their “house” territories.
(Spoiler Alert) While the Coastal Gas Link pipeline has been built, we are reminded that this act of resistance has not ended, and is not only about a pipeline and indigenous rights, but a movement that involves all of us, indigenous and non-indigenous, in the battle against the corrupt regimes of settler governments and the multinational corporations that control them. As it has been throughout the history of the settler Crown, the RCMP play a central and violent role in the enforcement of policies intended to erase indigenous people and their culture, and their relationship with their Yintah.
Whether you missed this local presentation, or you wish to see it again, you’re in luck, as you can watch it at home. Rating: Brilliant. A cinematic masterpiece!
Streaming now on CBC Gem (88 minute version)
Streaming on NETFLIX October 18 (Theatrical version)
Thank you from the Charity Auction
Thanks to the generosity of the Denman Community both as donors and buyers, the 3rd Charity Auction and Garage Sale was a fantastic success. After expenses we raised over $24,000! We had over 200 bidders and 100 of them took something home. The garage sale at the activity centre had a long line waiting outside well before the opening bell.
The recipients are the United Church and Gathering Place, Farm to Family, the QTNR animal sanctuary, the Denman Youth Group, and the Denman Health Centre.
Our heartfelt appreciation goes out to the large cast of volunteers who worked on the event. As Sandy Kennedy says, “Volunteers are the lifeblood of a community”. Our large cast of volunteers loaded and unloaded table saws, furniture, and china cabinets. They packed and unpacked and then sorted dozens of boxes of donations. They folded clothes, arranged china and power tools, negotiated prices and fetched and carried for over a week. We depend entirely on their help and once again they came through for their community.
Thank you all so much
Roxanna Mandryk, Evan Penner, Angela Robinson, Stirling Fraser,
Jo-Anne McLean, Gloria Michin, Caryn Rea
Shucking Oysters: Secret Pleasure Palaces
Shucking Oysters: Secret Pleasure Palaces
By Alex Allen
Have you tried to stop watching online and failed? Did you notice severe withdrawal symptoms? Do you experience intense cravings when you have no access for several days? Is viewing the images and videos the most exciting thing in your life? You may very well be an addict. Full disclosure, I’ve been an addict for over ten years. It’s insidious, one day, you’re innocently dipping your toes in the shallow end and the next day, you’re up to your eyeballs in the deep end.
I’m talking porn. Real estate porn. There’s a lot of us secretly cruising real estate listings online, at all hours, whether we actually plan to buy a home or not. And yes, it does feel good. In a world where technology is at our fingertips and curiosity knows no bounds, the allure of real estate porn, from castles to private islands, seems to be an ever-present temptation. Our digital landscape is teeming with sensual distractions. From accidental stumbles into Engel and Völkers to regular visits to Castleist, there’s a surprising number of individuals indulging in real estate porn.
The largest real estate website, Zillow, had 57 million visitors in 2023. For comparison, the world’s top three porn sites, Pornhub, XVideos, and XNXX, had a combined total of over 5.81 billion site visits PER MONTH. Today, Zillow’s net worth (revenue primarily from selling leads to real estate agents) is an astounding $15.35B. While Montreal-based Pornhub, acquired by an Ottawa private equity firm, Ethical Capital Partners in 2023, was worth only $1.5Bin 2021. For the curious, Ethical Capital Partners is led by cannabis entrepreneur Rocco Meliambro, criminal lawyer Fady Mansour, and Derek Ogden, a retired chief superintendent of the RCMP.
These staggering statistics not only reveal the voracious appetite for real estate porn but also raises questions about the priorities and values of our society. Perhaps, behind the numbers lies a deeper reflection of human desires and the intricacies of a secret world that continues to thrive in the shadows.
As Nicole Johnson admitted, “With websites such as Realtor, Zillow, Trulia, and Redfin, I can zip from a Miami penthouse to a mountain retreat in Vail without even leaving my own abode.”
An Omnis survey showed that Zillow porn provides the perfect digital escape. This isn’t an occasional escape – 44% of survey respondents spent time on Zillow weekly, and for 12% it’s a daily habit. The average amount of time spent looking at properties is two hours, and 17% spend even longer salivating over European villas and California ranches. According to PornHub, an average site visit lasts only 10 minutes. Fun fact: Americans in Wyoming spend the longest average amount of time – 11 minutes and 3 seconds. (Of course, people can visit more than once a day, so chronic users do rack up the hours.)
Sixty percent of respondents like to Zillow surf in bed before they go to sleep. Oddly, 8% said they Zillow surf in the car (hopefully, not behind the wheel). Naturally, a lot of people also do it at work (61%), and 23% admitted they’d been caught looking at real estate listings by their managers. The downside, real estate porn could also be destroying your relationship, as 28% say they have ignored a partner while on Zillow, and 26% have turned down “intimacy or sex” in favour of Zillow.
Why has online house-hunting morphed into a role play activity? “My take is that people want to experience vicariously what they doubt they may ever have,” says Edie Weinstein, a licensed social worker in Pennsylvania. She says it’s the same reason people watch home renovation, decor, and DIY shows.
When we browse property websites, we’re engaging in “a form of escapism that taps into the brain’s reward systems,” says Louisa Dunbar, the founder of OrangeGrove, a UK research agency that uses behavioural science to improve business websites. “Visualizing ourselves in these desirable homes triggers the dopamine system, giving us a sense of pleasure, even if we’re not planning to buy. It’s a chance to mentally step into a better life.” Nicole Johnson explained, “unlike actual home ownership, your dose of dopamine isn’t followed by the existential nausea of staring down a 30-year mortgage.”
As with any addiction we need to do a wellness check every now and then. Is my indulgence in real estate porn doing more harm than good? What’s my motivation for property scrolling? Am I unhappy with some aspect of my own life? Am I trying to compare myself to others? Why does that 56-acre property on the West Coast, with stunning timbers, giant ferns, and sandy beaches, give me shivers? Why am I lusting over a charming 19th-century country house on the edge of a French village hamlet? Is it wrong to be drooling over detached studios and saunas?
So next time you’re wondering what everyone’s up to online, just remember, there’s a good chance that many are getting very aroused on real estate porn, with unadulterated pleasure.
Giving Thanks
Giving Thanks Sally Campbell
Thanksgiving has always been one of my favourite holidays of the year (full disclosure: my birthday happens to fall during Thanksgiving). I love the gathering of people together for a special meal, the homey feeling of it, the celebration of the harvest, the crisp smell of fall in the air or the welcome rain. I love that the present part of it is people’s presence, and the gifts are the many aspects of abundance all around us. For me it’s a time to putter around, make applesauce and tomato sauce for the freezer, get wood in, retire those summer clothes and remember how cozy my winter sweaters are – all the little pleasures. Things are slowing down on the islands, more time to read, to walk the empty beaches, practice my T’ai Chi, and listen to the ravens. Each of us can find our own simple sources of comfort and contentment.
I do find as I age that my tolerance for the complaining of privileged people such as we are, is waning. When I’m having trouble bringing empathy and patience to someone’s ongoing story of how beleaguered they are, I have to remind myself that the habit of complaining is often a manifestation of a person’s anxiety. When we have peace of mind, we don’t have to give so much attention to the negative. Of course it may be there, but it’s not driving the conversation. This does not mean we must only focus on the positive and therefore ought to close our eyes to real suffering and injustice. Attunement to the universe in fact is what we need to use our powers of observation and analysis for! It means that if we continually feel beleaguered, we may benefit from asking ourselves: is this complaint of mine life-threatening? Why is it so important to me right now? How is it serving me to dwell on it? What else may be going on, either internally or externally, that I’d rather not explore (and am too “busy” to look at, because my attention is all gathered up with this issue)? As Thoreau said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I often find my petty irritations are blocking something else much more important that I could explore if only I clear the way. And then I might actually learn something and be able to recalibrate. I think we give away a lot of our power by becoming captive to our thoughts, so many of which are negative and fear-based. I love that expression ”Don’t believe everything you think!” If we can examine those thoughts and how they are helping/hindering us, we take back our personal power.
The fall is a time of descent, of going inward, as we inexorably move with the seasons toward Winter Solstice. For me, Thanksgiving is a clear marker that we have entered the time of that descent. The nights are longer, soon we’ll be off daylight savings time, and the darkness will become more enveloping. There is actually no point in fighting this natural inevitability; we might as well embrace it and take the lessons it has to offer us. This is an in-gathering time, a time for reflection, quiet and rest, a time for preparing our nests for winter, as well as a time for being with friends & family and savouring the abundance all around us.
To that end, here is my Cranberry-Date biscotti recipe, for those lazy fall mornings with good conversation and coffee.
Cranberry-Date Biscotti
(makes 2 ½ to 3 dozen)
2/3 C. butter ¼ C. organic brown sugar 1 C. Palestinian dates, pitted & chopped
1 C. organic dried cranberries 3 C. organic whole-wheat flour
2 t. baking powder ½ t. salt
1 T. cinnamon 2 t. cloves
1 T. vanilla 4 eggs
Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper; preheat oven to 350.
Soften and cream butter with the sugar, then add eggs and vanilla and mix it all together. I use a hand-held mixer. Then add the liquid mixture to the bowl. Stir everything together and then shape the doughy mix into 4 rounded logs. Place each log in turn on a baking sheet (2 per sheet) and shape it into a roll about 1.5 inches wide and a foot long. Then flatten the log with your hand. This can take some practice but you’ll get it. If your hands are too sticky, flour them. Try not to overmix, just enough to get the form.
Bake for 30 minutes or until a light golden brown.
Transfer from baking sheet to a rack, and cool for 5 minutes.
Place on a cutting board and diagonally slice at about a 45 degree angle. Make each one about
½-1 inch thick, depending on your preference. Lay the slices upright back on the baking sheet and return to oven for 10 minutes.
Let them cool on a rack and store in a tightly covered container. If they seem too soft, place them in a paper bag and they’ll get harder and drier. There are dozens of variations on this basic recipe, so have fun exploring. People from 4 to 84 seem to love biscotti! A little “6-pack” makes a great gift, and biscotti freezes really well. Enjoy and give thanks!
Green Wizardries: Some Good News
All manner of horrible things are being indulged in these days (war in Europe, war in the Middle East, prices rising steadily and incomes not) so I am delighted to be able to write about this excellent news.
Two exotic species have been sighted on Denman Island. One is Jimsonweed. This popped up in the garden of a friend of mine. She didn’t know what it was so she corralled it off from her animals and watched. It turned into a plant with leaves similar to the nightshade family and then grew trumpet-shaped flowers that were white with purple lips. The flowers are fragrant and they bloom mostly at night. The flowers do not last long.
It picked up the name, Jimsonweed, during a rebellion in 1676 in Jamestown Virginia, Bacon’s Rebellion. Some English soldiers ate the spiky apples that are the seed pods of this plant and had a very nasty time of it. They were described as being in an altered state for eleven days but they survived.
The whole plant is toxic and we are warned to wear gloves while weeding it out. Eating it leads to hallucinations, tachycardia (very rapid heartbeat) and even seizures. It’s other names include thornapple and Devil’s trumpet.
Every year, some young people try to eat it for its hallucinatory effects but the symptoms often land them in hospital. The mnemonic for this poisoning is, “blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, mad as a hatter and hot as a hare.” This does not sound like a good time to me.
Jimsonweed is native to Central America where it is used in traditional medicine for lots of different ailments. Hint: these people have had thousands of years to experiment with this very toxic plant. We have lots of safe herbs to make medicines from.
My friend thought a bird must have brought the seed in but it may have already been there as the seeds can lie dormant in the soil for years before some disturbance brings them to the surface and they sprout, kind of like broom.
Pretty flowers aside, you may not think the appearance of Jimsonweed among us is a good thing but it certainly led to something amazing. My friend though she had night-flying hummingbirds around her Jimsonweed flowers but they were moths.
Huge, beautiful Sphinx moths. I have long wished to see such a moth as they are very large, about the size of hummingbirds. Their bodies are pretty heavy for a moth so they have to beat their wings very fast to stay up. They can hover while feeding and zip off sideways, just like a hummingbird. I had no idea they could be found on our islands!
She had four of these beauties hovering around her Jimsonweed. The toxins in the flowers do not affect moths. One of the moths blundered into her house and she was able to coax it outside but got this photo of it first.
Had I but known we had such moths, I would have spent evenings on my porch, waiting for them to come to my Angel’s Trumpets. These plants have huge, showy, trumpet-shaped blooms that are scented at night to attract just such moths as the Sphinx moth.
All the different species of Angel’s Trumpets come from South America and they too are really toxic. Eat any part of the Angel’s Trumpet and you are looking at hallucinations, paralysis, tachycardia and even death.
Still, they are very pretty plants and are widely cultivated for their blooms. A friend gave me some cuttings one autumn and I stuck them in a pot of earth on the windowsill of my office and they were fine there until it was warm enough to pot them up and put them in the greenhouse. Once it was warm enough, in the late spring, I put them in larger pots on the deck and gave them lots of liquid fertilizer.
I had trouble with some critter eating the leaves but could find no caterpillars and finally just sprayed the leaves with a mixture of water and Ivory soap. That settled the hash of whoever had been dining on the leaves and I soon had a really good show of trumpets.
So, if you would like to have some Sphinx moths zipping around your garden next year, you will need to grow some large trumpet-shaped flowers for them. Denman Island’s Garden Club, now with some Hornby members, will meet at the United Church Hall at 1 pm on October 16. I will bring some Angel’s Trumpet cuttings as raffle prizes.
Beaufort Watershed Stewards: A Salmonid Primer
Beaufort Watershed Stewards
I am allergic to fish. My Norwegian grandfather found this confusing. He didn’t understand how anyone could live without eating fish. My father used to take me salmon fishing in his little boat, out in the sound, but I never caught anything other than dogfish. I think the salmon knew I wouldn’t be able to eat them anyway.
BWS is not a fish-centric organization. Fanny Bay Salmonid Enhancement Society has that realm covered admirably. We are focussed on water quality and quantity. We are, of course, fully aware of the overlap between fish-sustaining water and human-sustaining water. But given that I spend a lot of time dangling probes in fish-bearing creeks, it’s not surprising that I get asked questions about fish. And my friends are surprised when I have no answers.
So, I decided to educate myself. Maybe some of you will also appreciate a quick primer on local salmonids. First, there are trout and there are salmon and they are both salmonids. In general, trout spend their entire lives in fresh water. Salmon spend much of their lives in salt water but need to return to fresh water to spawn. Spawning is the term used for how fish procreate. Spawning involves the female building a nest (called a redd) by thrashing around on the stream bottom until she has mounded up a pile of stones and gravel. Cozy! Then she releases eggs into the water above the redd and goes off to contemplate her life, soon to be eaten by a bear, mink, otter, or eagle. The male, meanwhile, releases sperm in the general vicinity of the redd and then goes off to a similar fate. So, they manage to reproduce without actually touching. Perhaps this is the origin of the term “cold fish” when referring to a passionless person.
Now, the fertilized eggs tucked safely in the crevasses of their rock nest spend the winter developing. In the spring they hatch becoming alevins. These are baby fish with the yolk of the egg still attached. As they grow the yolk sac is absorbed. When they have used up this reservoir of nutrients, they swim to the surface where they fill their swim bladder with air and begin to feed. They are now called fry.
If the fry are Pinks or Chum (two distinct species of salmon), they point their noses upstream and let the current take them, tail-first, downstream. They don’t hang around. On the other hand, Coho, another salmon species, may stay in fresh water for over a year. If you see small fish swimming around in our creeks, they’re almost certainly Coho.
We only see full-grown fish in late summer or fall. Pinks head up the creeks as soon as there is enough water. The timing depends on seasonal rainfall. They spend eighteen months in the ocean, no more, no less. The larger Chum arrive around the same time but they spend as many as five years in the briny sea. Like the Pinks, the Coho spend around eighteen months in the ocean but they leave later so they arrive later. It’s easy to know when the Coho are here because Little Bay is suddenly filled with people in small boats or chest waders wielding fly rods.
When we’re out and about in the fall, when the creeks are full of returning salmon, this is the time we are the most vigilant about bears. Bears depend on the oily, nutritious salmon flesh to get them through the winter. They prowl the banks scooping out live fish and scavenging dead fish. We make lots of noise approaching a stream to announce our presence. It may be exciting to see a bear on the opposite bank but clearly, we prefer not to get too close. And since I’m allergic to salmon, I’m not inclined to argue with a bear over its freshly caught fish.
Mike Mesford
Director.tech@beaufortwater.org
250.702.5900