COMMUNITY

Have you ever heard someone say, “if you want something done, ask the busiest person you know?” I have, and one of my people is Courtney Baker.

I was once sitting in the Chamber board room with a group of people, trying to figure out how to get more people downtown during the summer months (yes, this used to be a struggle!). The focus was on shutting down main street to traffic to develop Sunday Socials, which would encourage pedestrian traffic. While this was great, I mentioned being interested in a mid-week evening concert series… and let me tell you, Courtney was the first person to get behind it. Quickly, we developed a team (with Vanessa from the Fix and Dawn from the Mountain Market) and the Wednesday Socials were born.

Through the experience of running these socials, I learned something new about Courtney, whom I have known most of my life. She is dedicated to our community.

Courtney was actually born in Seattle, moving to Spokane before settling in Fernie in 1985. “My mom met a Fernie local and we moved here,” she shares with me. “I went to school for a whole week in Jaffray before attending Ridgemont Elementary School.” The conversation takes a little detour, chatting about what it was like back then. “It was super easy to grow up here,” she says, and I agree. “It really was the childhood of when the street lights came on you had to get home, and our parents never knew where we were.” Memories of the sprint home to avoid persecution make us laugh.

Then, we discuss how we both moved back to Fernie as it was not anticipated. “I never thought I would end up back here, not that I gave it much thought,” she says. After graduating from high school, Courtney travelled and then attended the University of Victoria. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I took Sociology and Political Science with a minor in English Literature and came back here for a ‘stop over.’ I started working and doing random jobs and when the assistant job at the Arts Station came up, I started there.” And she never left.

This was Courtney’s first administrative community work, and it was something she really enjoyed. After a few years the current Executive Director retired, and Courtney applied for and was awarded the position. She continued there, until 2016 when she took a position with the Fernie Senior Citizens Society as their Administrator. As this is not full time… (and Courtney gets things done) she also worked with Wildsight for a few years and works with the Fernie Pride Society.

In addition to these positions and her involvement in the Wednesday Socials, Courtney has volunteered with many events and organizations including the Fernie Pets Society, the Role and Sole Festival, The Dumpster Project, Stag Leap

Courtney Baker

by KRISTA TURCASSO

Vince Mo Photo

Running Co., Fernie Live Music Society, as well as a committee member with the RMI Advisory Group and the Eirin Amundsen Memorial Pavillion.

Through all of her work with non-profit and community organizations, Courtney saw that many were in need of advisement, as well as grant writing, and decided to start her own consulting company, SWELL nonprofit support. Through SWELL, Courtney has been able to help people set up non-profits, source grant opportunities, write grants and also to help them to understand process, procedures and responsibilities as NPs.

What Courtney enjoys most about this work is the ability to contribute to the community in an ongoing way. “I’m doing a lot of different things and working across vaster swatches of the community vs. one aspect. It helps you to feel like you are making a difference,” she tells me.

“So much in Fernie is community-group led, and I’m a sucker for offering advice as am just happy to see things happening.”

Courtney recognizes that these organizations are the drivers of community. “It’s a pleasure to be a part of that driver. In a town like Fernie, so much of what we enjoy is put forth by community groups and primarily volunteer efforts,” and we agree it’s important for us all to understand and appreciate these efforts.

So, how does Courtney recommend you get involved?

“Just reach out! Approach someone outside of your comfort zone and your community groups, and you could bring new ideas and skills and could really help out more than you know. Volunteer burnout is a real thing. Even if you can donate an hour a month, it’s a massive amount of help.”

Thank you, Courtney. Your efforts are appreciated, and apologies if you get asked for even more support now that the community knows to ask the busy people!

1. When did you first arrive in Elk Valley and what brought you here?

October 1985, and my mother married a local.

2. Who did you first meet?

Crystal Cerny in Mrs. Corrigan’s grade 1 class.

3. Do you remember your first general impression of the Elk Valley?

It was quiet.

4. What keeps you here?

Community.

5. Do you have a favourite pastime?

Community! And probably reading, I read a lot.

6. What time of the year do you love most and why?

Probably winter. It changes. Now that Henry is old enough to be fun to ski with, it makes a difference.

7. Where do you see or hope to see the Elk Valley in five years.

Really embracing inclusion, appreciating the level of community support we do have and what gets contributed, and actively tackling issues like housing. Building up and not out! A three-story building is not the end of the world.

8. How do you start your day or what is one of your daily rituals?

At this point in time, with wordle, then quordle and heardle.

9. Tell us something people might be surprised to learn about you.

I have a vast and very highly useful knowledge of pop culture. I would be excellent on any sort of trivia team.

10. Quote to live by: Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

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Did you know?

The Feathered Community

by SYLVIA AYERS, illustrated by SARAH PULLEN

Stickers on your windows will warn us not to fly into them.

Birds are a bustling community. We know we are an important part of the ecosystem and having lots of birds tells you our environment is healthy. But since 1970, North America has lost 3 billion birds! That means more than 1 in 4 birds have disappeared.

More than 90% of them are the most common friends at your feeder: sparrows, finches, blackbirds, juncos and warblers. Colourful collars will warn us if your cat is around!

Please don’t spray pesticides on your lawn – how about planting more pollinating plants for our bee friends too?

Why is this happening?

• We are losing habitat in a very big way – especially wetlands and forests. • Cats kill billions of us every year (Yes, billions!). • We crash into windows • Pesticides that you spray on your lawn will kill us.

Get to know our community! Watch us! Get a birdfeeder! Listen to our songs! There are lots of great apps like iBird, Merlin, and Nestwatch to make it easy and fun. Indoor cats live longer, healthier lives. You might think they can’t live without prowling around, but they really can. If you have to let them out, don’t do so at dawn or twilight when we are busiest looking for food for our babies.

birdsbesafe.com vitalratesofnorthamericanlandbirds.org birds.cornell.edu/home FERNIEFIX.COM 29

The Science of Race and Racism

by FRED GIETZ

Warning: if you have problems with the theory of evolution you may find this article disturbing.

I’m sure we all agree, the last two years have been “interesting.” Social interactions, jobs and how and where we work, travel (or the lack thereof) and of course politics in general have all been anything but boring. As a bit of a science nerd, I’ve been fascinated by the range of “expert” opinions on vaccines, finances, climate change, energy production/consumption and a whole host of other topics. Given how the experts present their opinions with facts, figures and statistics, it’s of little wonder why so many people feel confused with all the information given.

One topic in particular has caught my attention of late – that of race discrimination and critical race theory. Historically humankind has not treated each other very nicely; however, watching the evening news will leave little doubt that our modern society has not learned the lessons from the past and continues to treat many groups unequally – all too often under the accusation of “racism.” My question, is there a scientific basis for racist theories?

The creation and spreading of myths surrounding so-called “human races” – often used as evidence of the superiority or inferiority of individuals, groups, or nations – has occurred throughout human history. Biased researchers and bad science methodology have shaped those myths for centuries, and in more recent years Hollywood and social media have also had a hand. It is fascinating to read some old scientific studies that claimed that you could classify humans and their potential by measuring the size of their forehead or by categorizing people by the shape of their noses! Although most people continue to think of races as physically distinct populations, scientific advances in the 20th century demonstrated that human physical variations do not fit a “racial” model. Instead, human physical variations tend to overlap. There are no genes that can identify distinct groups that accord with the conventional race categories. In fact, DNA analyses have proved that all humans have much more in common, genetically, than they have differences. The genetic difference between any two humans is less than one percent.

So, if all humans essentially have the same DNA, why the differences in skin colour (and sadly one of the most common ways of making racial distinctions)? Well, if poor science can be blamed for promoting racial discrimination, perhaps good science can help explain why skin colour can be different within the human race.

The reason for skin colour is based in human biology. Vitamin D is produced in people’s skin, using UV light that shines from the sun. More UV means more vitamin D, and too much can be a bad thing too as evidenced by having a bad sunburn. One way to protect against too much UV light is having hair, and our early ancestors were fairly hairy beasts, more similar in looks to our chimpanzee cousins than our modern-day humans (fun fact: Humans and chimps share a surprising 98.8 percent of their DNA). Unfortunately having a thick layer of hair would interfere with our ancestor’s best tactic for survival - running. Imagine trying to outrun a predator while wearing a fur coat! As a result, as we slowly evolved away from our early cousins, we also slowly lost that layer of protection, which had to be replaced with a different way of protecting against UV light – and that was skin colour. UV light varies depending on where you are on the planet, and so will a person’s skin colour. As a result, we find that people had lighter skin colour the further away from the equator they were or at what elevation they lived (humans that evolved in high mountainous areas like the Andes or Himalayas had less atmosphere to filter UV light and thus also have darker skin to help protect themselves).

Good science and technology can contribute to a longer and healthier life, monitors our health, provides medicine to cure our diseases, alleviates aches and pains, helps us to provide water for our basic needs – including our food, provides energy and makes life more fun, including sports, music, entertainment etc. Unfortunately, we can also find many examples of how poor science and poor science understanding can have a negative impact within society and our communities. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could use science in such a way to treat each other better and more fairly and find commonalities between us all rather than differences?

commons.wikimedia.org

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could use science in such a way to treat each other better and more fairly and find commonalities between us all rather than differences?”