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Alert Bay road trip day 2: Not a bad place to blog from

January 29, 2007 By Facilitation, First Nations, Travel 4 Comments

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 not like Dave and Maureen had anything to with that, except the genius of the picture window in front of me is that they invite the whole bay to a part of the house. This place is great…two bedrooms, woodstoves, a nice open kitchen and a great deck which must rock in the summer with a big fat salmon on the barbeque after a day of whale watching. This is not the typical view in January, but if you are ever up here, this is the place to stay. And free wireless.

I left this morning on the 8:45 ferry from Port McNeil bound for the Namgis First Nation on Cormorant Island. The trip is 45 minutes down towards the mouth of the Broughton Archipelago, a massive tangle of islands that stretches from here down to Campbell River between Vancouver Island and mainland. I’m here to work with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans as they talk with First Nations from this area. On the ferry ride across I had a deep sense of the pattern of this place as I watched the cormorants and grebes, auks, seals and ducks scurry around beside the ferry. The pattern of here is that there are two worlds: the world of the surface where everything comes to rest, and the world of the deep where everyone goes to get nourished. Alert Bay and Namgis share Cormorant Island, and cormorants are birds that fly both above and below water.

People here rely on the ocean for their natural food. Several times today in the meeting, Namgis leaders and Elders talked about the ocean as their garden. There is a famous saying from this part of the world – when the tide is out the table is set. Clam beds, seaweed, salmon, and other creatures and plants formed the staple diet of these people and that natural diet is important today as diabetes and other nutrition related diseases ripple through First Nations. The pattern is calm at the surface, nourishment in the depths.

And so we had a good meeting today, beginning with that acknowledgement and extending into hearing what people were saying at their depths, what pain lay behind the calm exteriors. To have access to a traditional food source at your doorstep restricted by the effects of fish farms, government policy and commercial priorities is devastating, and these people, significant cultural and political forces here on the north Island, are tired of it. Hearing that opens things up though and we had some good conversations about collaboration despite it all. We ate clam chowder and salmon salad sandwiches, the local natural foods of this place and we looked into that private voice of possiblilty that lay behind the cynicism, but that nourishes hope.

So I’m definitely ensconced in here for the night, enjoying some quiet time, a pot of tea, some leftover salmon sandwiches and watching Venus grow brighter above the mountain in the darkening western sky. Travelling is sometimes weary, but this is one of those days when I count myself a lucky guy to get to do what I do.

Road Trip

January 29, 2007 By Travel 2 Comments

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 on Bowen Island.   I got a little healing from my friend Roq and popped an advil before lining up for the 5:00pm ferry from Bowen to the mainland.   On the ferry ride over, I could barely gape in awe at the colours of the sky because my stomach joined in the fun.   It was most comfortable for me to stand leaning against the wall with my belly, in a state of half sleep.

Once I reached the other side, I turned around and lined up for the ferry to Vancouver Island, grabbed a shot of espresso from Blenz in Horseshoe Bay (meh) and then borded the 7pm boat to Nanaimo.   On that trip whatever it was that was bundled up inside seemed to just dissipate, and I was clear and calm and quite concentrated actually.   I did a little work on the ferry, resigned myself to a super of apples and oranges and had a cup of tea.

When we arrived in Nanaimo, I put Carmina Burana in the CD player, crancked it and headed up island.   I was completely in flow and stayed alert for the whole 3.5 hours it took me to rocket through the mountains to Port McNeil.   There was hardly anyone on the road at all – I passed probably less than 12 cars between Campbell River and Port, and I was lucky enough to see an elk meandering along the side of the road.   Lucky too that he was on the OTHER side of the road.   Halfway through the trip I switched disks and cranked my friend Moritz Behm’s CD called “Beauty” which is one of my all time favourite road CDs.   It never leaves the road trip case.

I pulled in to the Black Bear Resort (it’s a motel on the edge of town, but comfy enough and the young woman at the counter stayed up past her 11:00 closing just for me, so yay to them for great service) at 12:30 feeling clear and refreshed, as if I had been meditating for the past 7 hours, and indeed I had.   So under good conditions, even at night with patches of fog but a three quarters moon illuminating the snowy clearcuts, it’s 1:30 to Campbell River from Nanaimo and 1:50 to Port McNeil from there.   And that’s good time, within the legal speed limit…mostly.

Later this morning, I’ll be up early to catch a ferry to Alert Bay, where more adventures await.   Amazed though tonight at how solid everything is.   Maybe that guy Roq was working more than just a little headache healing…

[tags] Vancouver Island, Port McNeil[/tags]

Bringing In the Sheaves

January 29, 2007 By Art of Harvesting, Learning

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.

Collaborative leadership and rural communities

January 27, 2007 By Collaboration, Leadership, Organization 2 Comments

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 not moving in. “Young people between the ages of 25 and 34 are the ones who typically start families and businesses, critical issues for communities,” says report co-author Mike Stolte, President-Elect of the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation (CRRF).

“The theme of youth leadership came up time and time again,” stated report co-author Stacy Barter, of CIEL. “Communities say they don’t know how to engage younger people. The established leaders are getting older and many of them are feeling burned out.”

One of the things that is exhausting community leaders, according to the study, is the increasing challenge of creating dialogue and communication between groups. “Many communities told us they want to work together, but they just don’t know how,” said Barter. “They want to learn how to practice collaborative leadership.”

The report shows that many communities are caught in a bind. “If special care is not taken to conserve the qualities fostering our community’s distinctive character, critical dimensions of its image and identity may be lost.” “These issues are dividing communities,” said Barter.

“The kind of leadership training they are asking for, collaborative leadership, involves the skills of leading a community through these differences. Without a new kind of leadership, they are telling us, the differences will continue to divide people, and the rate of growth will continue to overwhelm them.”

It seems there is an appetite everywhere for this kind of leadership. Yesterday talking with a friend involved in the biodeisal energy he was speculating that the shift in leadership models to something ore dialogic and less top down is a generational one. He was remarking that it seemed as if the current generation of 35-55 year olds were assuming th emantle of leadership and were altering by flattening structures that concentrate power. Of course my friend Jon Husband has been predicting this for a long time. He calls the idea wirearchy, informed as it is by the ways in which networked structures change power systems and leadership lenses. This report is encouraging to me, as it says that more and more people in governance systems (who tend to cling to the status quo) are finally loosening the kinds of leadership styles that characterize local government, and they are looking for some other way to deal with the stresses of the work they have to do.

[tags]local government, british columbia, rural communities, wirearchy[/tags]

More good eats in Victoria

January 27, 2007 By Travel

Victoria BC

Wrapping up my week’s worth of work here in Victoria. Three good meals have been had in the past few days:

  • Yesterday we ordered in lunch as we were really humming on the work. One of the staff went took orders for The Noodle Box. They only have 12 or so items on their menu, and eight different ways of spicing it. Go for the Spicy Peanut Noodle Box spiced medium plus. Yummy.
  • Two days ago lunch at the down to earth Cafe Mulatta in James Bay, where the jerk chicken comes with a nice concoction of rice, beans and coconut.
  • And dinner tonight with my friend Patricia Galaczy at my favourite Victoria restaurant, reBar. It isn’t the best food in town but it’s healthy, largely local and organic and the place has a nice vibe. They treat food like it should be treated – as nourishment and sustenance. They have a phenomenal juice bar, with a special juice everyday (strawberry kiwi fennel, tonight) and the specials are always good. Tonight I stuck with the tried and true Monk’s Curry bowl, which is basically a veggie stir fry on a bed of noodles with a great coconut curry sauce.

Tonight is absolutely still. I made a podcast of the quiet on the harbour tonight but I have some problem with my USB cable for my voice recorder so it ill have to wait.

[tags]victoria, rebar, cafe mullata, the noodle box[/tags]