It’s really impossible to overstate the worry I heard in people’s voices today. In our meeting an Elder named Billy Bird spoke briefly before lunch and reminded the group just what had been lost – the salmon runs, the crab and prawns, the seaweed beds, the clam gardens. The Namgis people and their relatives on Gilford Island, Kingcombe Inlet and Oweekeno are ocean people. Their life is on the ocean and without access to the ocean the fear is that they are no longer a people at all. For thousands of years these people have lived in …
Alert Bay, BC Not a bad place to blog from eh? This is the kitchen counter I am sitting at in a wonderful house in Alert Bay overlooking the bay itself and looking up the channel towards Port McNeil. I am staying at a place called “Above the Bay,” owned by a lovely couple, Dave and Maureen who also have a spot right down on the water called “On the Beach.” This is going to turn into a shameless plug for their place, because the sun just set behind the Vancouver Island mountains and the beauty is astonishing and its …
Port McNeil, BC THis was an insane idea, but that is the nature of my travel schedule these days. It’s late – almost 2 in the morning – and I’m awake because I’m still a little buzzed from having driven this trip tonight. It’s bad enough to drive have the length of Vancouver Island, but crazier still to do it with a six hour flu and starting the whole trip at sundown. For whatever reason this afternoon I developed a pounding headache in the middle of a little Open Space meeting I was facilitating for our learning community …
Harvest is alive. A new voice to me, that of Stuart Scott, talks about the limitations of the metaphor and what harvesting could really be: read Bringing In the Sheaves.
Interesting report from a group I hadn’t heard of before, the Centre for Innovative and Entrepreneurial Leadership. THey have just released a publication called “Coping with Growth and Change: The state of leadership in rural BC.” I have an interest in this given that I teach and facilitate collaborative leadership and I live ina rural community in BC. The report’s authors write: “Many people see leadership development assisting with issues like change, economic diversification, youth attraction, innovation and collaboration, key ingredients to 21st Century success for rural communities.” Many communities reported that youth are moving away and young families are …