Smelhmelhélch (Passage Island) at the mouth of Átl’ka7tsem (Howe Sound) before the snows came earlier this week. Some notes on 2023 while I have a moment to review them. The year began with the death of my father and is ending with worries about the serious and lingering health issues of other senior family members and so in a lot of ways this year has been split between personal grief during the first part of the year, and the waiting, supporting and attending in the second part of the year. Several times during the year, I haven’t found myself at …
It feels like a day of transitions. The weather is clear today, and a strong westerly pummeled Vancouver overnight. It is sunny now, but the cold air and sea level snow that is a hallmark of an El Niña winter is upon us for later in the week. So time to chop some more wood and harvest the last of my salad greens from the garden. Canada’s men’s national soccer team lost to Croatia this morning our Alphonso Davies scored the first goal for Canada’s men’s team in world cup history and it was a beauty. The above photo is …
George Zawadzki, photo from Bowen Island Undercurrent Every community has larger than life characters and it seems like the smaller the community the larger these characters loom. I live on a small island of just under 5000 people and last week, on November 16, we lost a lion-hearted beauty. George Zawadzki was probably the biggest man on Bowen Island. He stood at least 6’5″ and was a BIG man. He used to drive a small car around that had a permanent lean to the left. The first time my kids met him, he was coming up the driveway with a …
My shoes are covered in dust. The entire island is dry and crackly underfoot. We have had no significant rainfall since July 8 here ibn Atl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound which is highly unusual for us. After a very wet fall and spring last year, we had a lovely summer but it is as if someone left hom without unplugging it and a persistent ridge of high pressure offshore has ensured that any low pressure systems trundling across the North Pacific have been diverted north. This is our rainy season here on the west coast. By now we typically would have a fairly …
A couple of years ago i posted this on our local facebook page. There was something happening that caused me to reflect on how one’s approach to conflict changes the longer you live in a place. As we have turned over our population by more than 50% in the past five or six years, I was trying to give folks a helpful road map. I daresay this is pretty much consistent in every small community anywhere. For folks experiencing their first Bowen Island conflict, here’s generally what happens next. Years 1-3. You move to Bowen and fall in love with …