the league published a fantastic program<\/a> which covers the history of the league and pays tribute to the life of one of its founders, Eddie “The Yeti” Weismiller, who died earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt the end of the month, the weekend before Labour Day, our annual Bowfest Festival returns. The day begins with a parade down Government Road from the Community Centre to the ferry dock. Island kids line the curbs with bags ready to scoop up the candy that is traditionally scattered from the floats. From there we all gather in the Bowfest field for a day of local music, slug races, a community tug o war (kids vs parents) and whatever other activities are scheduled to take up the day. When we had young children, it was a busy day. Nowadays we mostly sit in the sun listening to the music, having the odd dance, and greeting old-timers that come by. It’s harder and harder to recognize faces every year as the island changes all the time. We’ve been here 25 years now, raised kids and sent them into the world, watched our Elders cash out and move away or die and leave behind another little piece of emptiness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These events remind our little community of who we are, and, for many of us, who we were. These are markers in our community life that have stayed the same through multiple generations. That stability offers us the chance to see what is changing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not all change is bad. There are some amazing new people that arrived on the island in recent years, many of whom I count amongst my best friends and with whom I spend time, make music and share a coffee or a beer. But last year I found myself in a small circle of really old friends, most of whom were already living here when we moved here in 2001 and we had little to say to each other beyond just silently dancing together and appreciating the long standing connections we have, the stories we share, the struggles we’ve witnessed in each other’s lives and the implicit celebration that we are still here. Our kids have fledged, our health is good, and we are astonished by the new faces and activity all around us, sharing perhaps a slightly melancholic sense that the community is passing us by. And yet, if someone asks us if we’d like to run for Council or be on this or that committee, we demur. Nope. We’ve done that. Done our time. It’s time for others to find their own contribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For us, it’s all about those moments of listening to the band echo up the valley, hearing the ping of an aluminum bat smashing a softball into the blackberry bushes over the left centrefield fence , standing aside as kids rush to the chocolate that has fallen at your feet during the parade, or just lying in bed, revelling in the darkness, the stillness, and the quiet, and perking up from the edge of sleep when a humpback whale surfaces out in the bay. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
August has arrived and while we seem to be still waiting for truly hot and dry weather to arrive on the south coast of British Columbia, the community calendar moves on. This is the season in which three particular community events happen. This August long weekend is a popular one for visitors to our island and that means traffic snarls in the Cove as people try to figure out our mysterious ferry marshalling procedures and village layout. The Cove is packed and bustling during the day but grows quiet and still at night. So still that as we lay in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"\nThe summer weeks unfold and an island community reflects on itself. \n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2","category-bowen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_1149-scaled.jpeg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-5qY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20894,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892\/revisions\/20894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}