Menu

Life at the edges

May 8, 2022 By Being, Bowen, Featured, Flow, Practice 3 Comments

A Stellar's seal lion is sitting up straight while three others rest beside it on a dock.

My favourite places to walk are along coastal paths, preferably along cliff tops or wild shorelines. On my home island we have very few places where one can take an extended stroll along such a place as most of the shoreline is privatized and even though in Casnada all shore up to the high water mark is public right of way, much of the Nex?wlélex?wm/Bowen Island coast line is steep and rocky and access to the intertidal zone is restricted.

But there is a glorious walk along the shoreline at Cape Roger Curtis and it is my favourite place on the island. For about a kilometer and a half, the trail winds along the shoreline, part of it even crossing a cantilevered boardwalk, pinned into a sliff side maybe 20 meters about the rocky shore below. From that trail, it is common to see marine mammals such as seals and sea lions, and I have spotted harbour porpoises, killer whales and even a humpback whale from the trail.

in living systems the most important and interesting zones are the ecotones, the place where two ecosystems meet. This tends to be where the most life is. Where the forest meets the sea is a rich area of nutrition and growth. And Cape Roger Curtis is doubly special and edgy becasue it is the point where Atl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound meets the Strait of Georgia which makes up the half of the main body of water that is the Salish Sea. It is here that currents swirl and meet, with the salty ocean water meeting the fresher water that flows from the glacier and streams that rise above our inlet. The coastla trail winds down the west side of the island, around the Cape and along the south shore, which in the Squamish language is called Ni7cháy?ch Nex?wlélex?wm, a name which captures the edges of the forest and the sea, which is also the edge of Squamish territory. From here on out is the big wide world.

Today that churning seas with its 4 meter tides is nurturing schools of anchovy and herring which have draw sea lions back for their annual feed. They have been hauling out in large number on one of the unused docks at the Cape over the past several years. At times there are as many as thirty around – especially when the Biggs Killer Whales are out hunting them – but today there where only four or five. Offshore there was a large raft of surf scoters, number 5-600, and gulls and cormorants were similarly hunting and diving into schools of these rich feed fish. In the nearby forest townsend warblers and song sparrows were calling, while in the skies above a battle was raging between a pair of ravens and an eagle. It appeared as if the eagle’s appetite had disrupted the ravens’ family plans and they were angry.

Much of my spiritual practice comes through a tradition of monastic and contemplative practice that was formed in places like this, on the edges of continents, on the edges of territories, on the ecotones between the known world and the mysterious beyond. It is a place where the heart is awakened and the senses sharpened, and the power of the natural world is so strong that it overwhelms the temporary intrusion of a human.

What Do You Say to a Thinking Forest?

May 8, 2022 By Being, Bowen, Complexity

For Mother’s Day, have a read of Crawford Killian’s new piece in The Tyee about fungi and forests as he charts his learning about mushrooms, trees, and fungal networks through disbelief to reverent awe.

Our common mother is so much more than we can ever understand.

Read: Why fungi are more sophisticated than we can imagine thetyee.ca/Culture/2022/05/06/What-Do-You-Say-To-Thinking-Forest/

Consulting in times of COVID

May 6, 2022 By Being, Featured, Travel 3 Comments

Conronavirus images superimposed on a map of the world used as an illustration

We are going to be living with this virus for the rest of our lives I think. So for a person like me who works with people in groups and has traditionally travelled globally to deliver workshops, I have to start thinking about considerations related to the health on me and my colleagues and team members and the adherence of public health measures around the world. We know we can do good work online, so that is always an option. But for work in which clients expect me to travel and become exposed to COVID 19, I am considering using language like this in all our contracts:

All work planned with your organization needs to be flexible in delivery taking into account public health measures, and consultant health.  For in-person events where travel is involved and quarantine required, your organization is responsible for all costs relating to national public health regulations. Our team members will always adhere to all national, local and commercial COVID-19 safety protocols and will meet or exceed expected standards of protection while travelling for this work. Should our team members contract COVID-19 in the course of their duties, your organization is responsible for costs relating to quarantine and travel plan changes and any health expenses falling outside of our corporate travel insurance.  We will develop at least two options for any work to be delivered in person that includes a back-up online contingency plan and a cancellation plan.

I want to be able to do work with people, but I don’t want to put our team members at undue risk or under undue hardship, nor do I want to be creating in-person events that are unsafe or inaccessible. The language above seems fair and relational, given that we are a small company. What do you think? This is a tender new world and despite vaccination which lowers the risk of death, COVID 19 is a very dangerous virus that spreads rapidly and can create long term health risks that may impact my ability or my colleague’s ability to do their work.

I welcome your thoughts. How are you negotiating potential costs and client needs related to COVID in a world that is desperation to pretend that we are back in November 2019?

Music on Bowen Island tonight

May 6, 2022 By Bowen, Featured, Music

There are two musical offerings on Bowen Island tonight. At 7pm, The Ladies Madrigal Singers (“The Mads”) will be singing a program of choral arrangements of Irish songs and other pieces for spring including Deer Song, from the oratorio “Considering Matthew Shepard.” I’ll be joining the choir on Irish flute tonight, the first time I have played feadóg mhór with an ensemble in performance for literally years. The event is at Cates Hill Chapel, and tickets are $15 at the door.

The Mads are a Bowen Institution, a women’s ensemble that is the beloved project of my friend Lynn Williams who has led the group since she arrived on Bowen 20 or so years ago.

Also tonight from 6-9, the Bowen Island Pub features its monthly jazz night, with guitarists John Stiver and Steve Fisk, Steve Smith on bass and Canadian jazz legend Buff Allen on drums. Expect a set of standards and blues rendered by unbelievable talents. As an aspiring jazz guitarist I simply dream of being able to play at this level of mastery. I’ll probably sneak in after the Mads concert to catch their last set.

These kinds of evenings are really important in a little community like ours. These musicians are community members, friends, neighbours, people who might do some work for you or who you meet out and about. On an island like ours, where the last ferry comes home from the city at 10pm, if you want entertainment, you make it yourself. We are blessed to have incredible musicians here (we have three Juno winners living here who regularly perform). And we are blessed that they lend their talents to creating moments of togetherness that are essential in a world that relates increasingly through bytes, bits and outrage.

Change the face of policy and governance

May 5, 2022 By Democracy, Featured, First Nations, Leadership, Power 2 Comments

There is no really easy way to write this, so perhaps its just best to be polemical about it.

I am no longer going to be supporting cishet white men who are running for office. Basically guys that look like me. We’ve had our run, we have propagated genocide, mass destruction and murder, war, criminal economic inequality and the destruction of the life support systems of the planet we live on and now I think it is time to stop. Of course folks will “not all…” me on this, but just stop. Our role now is to support different people than us. Because what happens when we feel the MEREREST slipping away of power and influence is that we do ridiculous things like driving hundreds of trucks into the middle of Ottawa and demanding that the unelected Senate assist us in the overthrow of the government. Or worse. Much worse.

We do shit like this:

Just read the replies on that thread. I’m not going to tell you how bad it is.

Policy making matters. The people who make policy matter. Our job now is to use our power, money and influence to get behind different decision makers and support their election to office, or their appointment to the judiciary. because we need different decisions and we need to change the face and experience base of those making those decisions.

Three years ago the Canadian inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls concluded – quite rightly – that what has happened and continues to happen to Indigenous people in Canada constitutes genocide. And what continues to happen to women, non-binary, and trans folks is a good indicator of a country’s character and perspective. In Louisiana if this law goes through, any woman who terminates a pregnancy because it is ectopic and life threatening is a murderer. A women who has an unimplanted fertilized egg that flows out with her period is technically a murderer. And a judge that seeks to stay the charges is to be automatically impeached.

Let us stop being outraged and surprised at this continued pursuit of genocidal policies and fascist radical Christian extremism, for none of this is new. Let us instead change the game by changing the people with their hands of power. Make laws not blog posts.