FOLKLIFE Volume 6

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

—Henry David Thoreau

PHOTO BY SYD WOODWARD/NIAMH STUDIO

FOLKLIFE

Tjokorda, Samantha Watkins, Mairi Welman, Syd Woodward.

Charles Hart, Lena McKenzie, Monica Maile, Patrick Belanger, Mary Ann Richards, Syd Woodward, Joan Harrison, Virginia Hayes, Amanda Lemay, Gary Holmes, Allie Picketts, Matthew Ens, Willow Mae Ens, Rory Holland, Lina Jokubaityte, Claire Majors, Dirk Huysman, Deserai Brierley, Katrina Rain, Annie Holmes, Government of Canada.

COVER PHOTO BY JENNIFER ARMSTRONG FEATURING KEVIN PEACOCK

PHOTO BY JASPER GARRATT

Readers respond

FOLKLIFE

I just want to say how beautiful and inspiring Volume 5 is. I am ready to forage for seaweed, post those poems on my wall (except that I won’t really, because FOLKLIFE is too gorgeous to take pages out of), harvest sea salt, and I’m definitely making that amazing-looking pancake recipe on my birthday later this month!

SOOKE,

I was so excited (as always!) to see the folded brown envelope sticking out of my mailbox today! I sit in my nearly completely empty suite, cracking the cover, touched as always by the handwritten note. Soaking in the first pages, I feel the emotions rise. The heart warmth of all us readers who share similar sentiments about FOLKLIFE. Feeling connected as I read about the fairy tale salt story—one that has always stuck with me—the power of salt. My own journey with salt, learning about cooking. I’ll savour this issue as I leave home and transition to a place I hope will feel like home too.

To my eye Volume 5 is the best yet . . . and the magazine’s focus and voice continue to gain force and clarity! I say to my eye, first and foremost, because through that slim aperture the casual browser is first beguiled, enchanted, entranced, and, shepherded into taking that first vital step of buying the mag. The design of this issue is so crisp I wanted to head to Gabbie’s for a cold one forthwith from Bell’s Landing, where I had parked and vanished into its pages, drifting, front to back. Balance and modular excellence in the layout. A pause and peace descending as I sank in. Deeper. Here and there rereading stories, with glowing pleasure.

CHARLES HART, GABRIOLA ISLAND, CANADA

I came across your magazine in our local bookstore. It was really inspiring to read through a few of the stories. It reminds me of growing up in the Seattle music scene where people made zines drenched with their truths. I appreciate you folk-humans. Thank you for what you’re doing, with your energy.

STEVEN LUCAS, ORCAS ISLAND, USA

I just wanted to thank you for inspiring me in my own creative life. I have had the joy of seeing something I’ve commented on being printed not once, but twice in your magazine, and what a thrill it was to see something I shared be shared in this way. It inspired me to get the courage to write a short story about an experience I had as a teenager and I submitted it to my other favourite magazine and it’s actually getting published! It’s amazing what a bit of encouragement can do for a person’s creativity. I just wanted to thank you for giving me that boost to try something different, creatively speaking. Who knows, writing may become something fruitful for me.

ALISSA SUSAN DEMERS, VICTORIA, CANADA

I love FOLKLIFE. I’ve just bought a subscription and am delighted with the content. It’s pure medicine for the quiet, meaningful places of thinking, full of inspiration and connection. Nourishment that my whole soul needs.

RACHEL BOULT, SAYWARD, CANADA

After reading Volume 2, I fell madly in love with this magazine. It’s been a long time since I’ve picked up a magazine (or any reading material for that matter) and read it cover to cover. I couldn’t put it down, as though a spell had been cast. I related to almost every story, which were all beautifully written. It filled my soul with a sense of peace and hope. I want to dive deep into every copy that I’ve missed and the ones to come.

TYLER PARR, TORONTO, CANADA

EMILY JENKINS, POWELL RIVER, CANADA

SAY THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE

At around eight years old, I was at a folk festival with my parents. They said I could have $5 a day of spending money. (I guess it must have been more back then, or else they were just pretty cheap.) I couldn’t find much for $5, but I did come across a man making little jewellery pieces out of FIMO clay. These were a bit more than five bucks, but they were close, so in exchange for my piddly pocket money, I tried to coax the cheapest one out of him—an eyeball on a necklace.

I’d go back each day of the festival to watch him make his art and try to talk him into selling me the eyeball. After three days, my mother reminded me that I now had $15 to spend rather than just $5. It turned out I could afford that eyeball after all. The jeweller and I were both pleased and that was that.

I tell this story because it’s the earliest memory I have of learning something about money. That if I chose not to spend what little money I had, I could amass more of it and get more of what I really wanted. Money soon fascinated me. I loved talking about it, learning about it, and figuring out how to save it. Assessing others by what they did (or didn’t do) with their stash, I noted that talk

about money was often avoided—even taboo. Few people divulged how much money they had or how much they made or how much things really cost. It seemed strange, because even as a kid I sensed how pivotal the dollar was in our lives.

I also eventually came to realize that money is the great divider—an invented, invisible medium of exchange imposed on cultures and societies by colonizers. Money determines whether we can or can’t attain our goals, visibly representing our privilege. Our basic needs—a place to live, food to eat, and, in some places, even water to drink, the very essence of life itself—have all been turned into a numerical value.

People’s money stories can be fascinating. Folks who know how to invest; folks who buy big toys; folks who are always buying things for others; folks who spend the money they get as soon as they have it like it’s burning a hole in their wallet. Folks who earn enough just to get by or who, unfortunately, do not. Our use of money displays what we individually value, perhaps reflecting how we were raised or what we were taught. It quietly (or loudly) tells our stories.

I am grateful for my own money story, as a middleclass white woman in Canada who was shown how to earn and save money—based, of course, on privileges my family and I did not earn (property, education, safety, health, etc.). I have always seen money as a way to pursue my own perceived freedom, most of the time by way of low-paying (but important) jobs, a scarcity complex, and very little need for material things. In short, having my freedom has meant having enough for basic needs and feeling that I could do what I want, when I wanted.

Money can be a very real pain in people’s lives: the lack of it, the abundance of it, the insatiable desire for more of it, even for those already in the top 1%. In contrast, the FOLKLIFE ethos is about valuing something less tangible, something harder to commodify.

In this sixth volume, we explore the very idea of money: the act of getting rid of that high-paying job, for instance, in exchange for something more in line with our core values; or living on the edges of society just because we can’t afford not to; coming together to figure out how we can all have a place to live; setting up businesses that matter even when they don’t make any money (ahem); trading, bartering, gifting, rather than just buying and selling.

Because you’re reading this, there’s a chance that some of your values about money are similar to ours. Perhaps you place value on art and artists, and understand the importance of bringing people together to tell their stories. Perhaps you also value supporting local businesses, as we try hard to do, working with every local writer, editor, designer, photographer, printer, and like-minded business we can find.

Like us, you are privileged. Yes, you. Privileged to be able to afford a $20 magazine, or be gifted one, or be standing safely in a store somewhere reading this.

FOLKLIFE’s money story is about keeping on keeping on, no matter the money—this ain’t a break-even business. And even though this volume revolves around money, it’s not really about the money. Our journey in FOLKLIFE Volume 6 is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to money stories, so we appreciate you spending your own hard-earned coin to read them.

Let’s talk money, then, and maybe in the process, demystify it a little so we can find a way forward.

In abundance,

ALINA CERMINARA, FOLKLIFE CREATOR & PUBLISHER

a Light

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BY PHOEBE GILDAY

It’s 13°C in the loft as the first morning light filters in through the south window. I pull the duvet up to my chin and work my toes into the warmth of our dog, who, at some point as the night cooled, crept in under the covers. These moments are among my favourites. They seem a reflection of the life we’ve created for ourselves on this small, off-grid island. We’ve spent the last four years learning how happy we are with a pocket of warmth and good company.

Soon I’ll slip out my side of the bed, carefully tucking the warmth in around the love I’m departing. Our dog will look up briefly before burying his nose back into the warm fur that my toes are now leaving behind.

With a last thought to present comfort, I head out into the day. The ladder creaks. But we overbuilt it, so the sounds are more of a morning greeting than anything of concern.

Crouched by the cast-iron stove, I arrange two pieces of split wood with kindling, and a small waxy fire starter tucked in between—four years of experimentation in our little stove has proven this arrangement is most likely to catch. The flames crackle into the dry cedar and lap against the not-quitedry fir. I close the stove door slowly, watching to ensure that the flickering flames are steady and reaching up the draft.

We insulated the cabin’s floor last year, but the cold still burns up through the soles of my feet in these first acts of the day. I fill the copper kettle with rainwater and light our Coleman stove, opening the window a crack because we know a camp stove shouldn’t be used inside—we have yet to find a better solution for this tiny space.

I pull on a plaid flannel that isn’t mine and bright green Crocs that are mine (a Valentine’s Day present that made me laugh at the time but has proven amazingly useful since) and make my way to the outhouse. Milk from the shed comes up to the house in a silver pitcher covered in roses, manufactured in Canada in the early 1900s, purchased from a thrift store, and polished to a shine. A glance at the flame reflected in a prism shows that our Coleman gas hasn’t run out, and the ancient propane fridge is also still going strong.

We’ve spent the last four years learning how happy we are with a pocket of warmth and good company.

Next, I seek out the tin of Earl Grey tea, fresh from the shop in town where the proprietor always slips me little silver pouches with samples of something new. I reach for my sturdy mug, handmade by a friend placed beyond daily connection by my move to the island, but who is in my thoughts each morning as I lift her creation. Maybe this morning I’ll pull down the old, cracked coffee grinder—the wood polished dark from decades of coffee oils—and measure out three scoops of coffee to hand-grind for the French press.

Or maybe I’ll pull the fleece blanket tighter around my knees and sip my tea as the fire pushes warmth through the morning . . . he can make his own when he awakens and creaks down the ladder. He’ll slip his chilly toes under the blanket, too, and drink his coffee as we muse about the day, the world, or how much seed the birds are eating.

Slowly, we’ll unfurl, as the heat rises and drives us out from under our blanket. The dog will stretch loudly and then want to be lifted down from the loft. All small moments stirring the day awake. Soon it will be time for me to move out of our shared warmth and make it on my own.

But not quite yet.

KATRINA RAIN

PHOTO BY NORM EDWARDS

BY CATHERINE HART

My mother never had her own bank account. She’d never needed one. She knew all the girls at the bank. She knew their mothers, fathers, brothers, husbands. Some of them had babysat for her when her own girls were young. She’d watched them grow up, have boyfriends, marry, start their own families.

Every month for years, for decades in fact, Mom would take her government-issued cheques to the bank where the tellers would cash them and put the individual amounts of each one into small separate envelopes. Into her purse they went, waiting to be doled out for bills, groceries, raffle tickets, birthday gifts for the grandkids, coffees and lunches, bingo cards, and hairdressers.

Times, however, were changing, and so were banking regulations. Protocol and procedure were overriding the ease of doing business . . . even in this small paper-mill town, on a freshwater lake so cold and wild and vast that you would swear it was an ocean. So much space—to breathe, to play, to grow up in. A place so familiar that kids knew all the street names and all the people who lived in all the houses. A place where roots ran deep and memories were long. A place that certainly knew my mother and knew her well. She’d lived there her entire life.

Inevitably, about ten years ago, there came a point when Mom took ill and couldn’t easily manage her usual errands. Friends and family chipped in, groceries were delivered, mail was collected. For a while, she continued to sign her monthly cheques, and one of us would take them to the only bank in town to be cashed. Eventually the day came when I was told that from here on in, my mother would need to open a bank account before any more cheques would be processed for her. So I made an appointment to bring Mom in, meet the new bank manager, and get an account set up. No problem, I thought, a minor inconvenience, a blip.

But Mom was having none of it. Imagine! After all these years! “To what end?” she wanted to know. The bank staff all knew who she was, didn’t they? Absolutely ridiculous! What on earth did she need a bank account for? It took some persuading, to say the least, and it was never going to be easy, but Mom and I eventually set off for the appointment together, my role simply as driver and dispenser of moral support.

When we got to the bank, Mom took a seat (strategically closest to the door in case she decided to bolt) while I went up to the teller window. I looked back to check on her, and to my great dismay, I saw a frail elderly woman clutching her purse, sniffling into her Kleenex, confused, forlorn, and frightened. This bank was no longer a place of friends and greetings and chats. It was now an unknown territory, a hostile “establishment.” All bluster and bravado had drained out of her.

Oh, but you had to admire the way she rallied! By the time we were settled in the bank manager’s office, she was her old self again: lipstick reapplied, ready to do battle. I sat back and waited. This was going to be interesting, if not downright fun. “We’ll start with some ID,” says the BM.

“ID?” my mom replies.

“Yes, we’ll need to see your driver’s license.”

“Oh, I don’t have a driver’s license. No, no, but I certainly know how to drive. I used to practise on the back roads, back in ’49. In case of an emergency, you never know . . .”

“Okay, well then, your birth certificate will do.”

“Hmm, now I do recall that Momma mentioned she had one for me, but no, I haven’t seen that since I was a girl.”

“Perhaps a passport?”

“Good heavens, what on earth would I need a passport for? Where would I be going?”

“Marriage certificate?”

Mom shakes her head. “Well, I was married in ’53, but my husband has been gone for almost 30 years, so Lord knows where I’d look for that.”

“So no identification? To prove you are who you are?”

“Prove who I am? Everyone in this bank knows who I am, except you, of course. Ask anyone. And why do I need a bank account anyway?”

“Well, to keep your money safe.”

“My money is always safe. The girls put it all in envelopes for me, and I keep it in my purse.” Mom pats her purse on her lap.

“Or you could use the ATM, when the bank is closed and you need cash for something,” says the BM.

“Why in heaven’s name would I do that? I’ve just told you, my money is right here.” Mom pats her purse again and glances at me as if to say this person is an idiot.

“You can pay all your bills right from your account,” the BM ventures.

“My bills? The landlord stops by every month. He’s very kind. And everything’s included, even my television channels. And the ladies at the post office, they’re wonderful. They always write me up a money order for the phone, or you know, if I’ve ordered something from Sears for the grandkids. Birthdays, Christmas, that sort of thing. And I always, always stop by the grocery store and put a little on my account each month, never miss.”

The bank manager is flummoxed, nowhere to go now. One last shot. “Once you open your account, you can earn interest on your savings.”

“Savings?” “Yes, the remaining balance in your account each month.”

Mom now looks over at me, not comprehending. Isn’t that why the girls put her money in separate envelopes each month? So she can make sure how much to spend each week? Until the cheques come in again? Her look says it all: this person, this bank manager, obviously has no idea how to manage money.

It became apparent at this point that the meeting was over. The bank manager told me I’d be hearing from them once a decision had been reached. My mother was already out the door, happy all this nonsense had been settled. Bank account, indeed!

A few weeks later, I received a call from the bank. It had been decided, just this once, that I could open a joint account with my mother, no further identification required from her. Now that she had an account, she could continue to sign and cash her cheques as was her custom.

I never bothered to give her the bank card. Bank account balance: $0.

Why do I need a bank account anyway?

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Reconnect and Rewild

Sharing

BY LENA MCKENZIE PHOTOS BY SYD WOODWARD/NIAMH STUDIO

Here is a garden where mandarins, finger limes, and bergamot hang covertly from trees, where bright kumquats and plump avocados peek through the prolific greenery. A warm pool sits enshrouded in vines while a whistling kettle signals to visitors that boiling water is about to be poured over locally picked tea leaves.

This space evokes a tropical paradise, but it lies thousands of miles away from any warm sea. It’s an oasis through these dark winters—a 6,000 sq. ft. greenhouse fuelled by sustainable energy and the powerful force of horticulturist Jane Squier’s curiosity.

Jane’s waking hours are spent measuring a long list of plant properties, from CO2 levels to soil temperature and from humidity to fungal bacterial ratio. “It’s a beautiful thing to be observing nature’s proliferation at this microscopic level,” she says eagerly.

While Jane works primarily on her own, she cannot hide from her community. She is known as the citrus magician, and renowned chefs from near and far sail across the Salish Sea to savour a taste of her produce.

With more than four decades of educational and professional experience, Jane’s career has taken her from the plains of Alberta to the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. She is retired now, but she is not nearly done learning. “I have a lot of curiosity that I want to pursue on my own,” she says. Perhaps her love of knowledge is innate, or perhaps her ceaseless search for answers can be traced back to her early experiences in the South Pacific, where she served as the district horticulturist for a development project in an isolated region of Papua New Guinea.

Jane recalls being greeted by scores of Papuans dressed in traditional garments as she stepped off the narrow steps of a single-propeller plane. “We were doing really progressive work back in 1980,” Jane recalls. “But it didn’t take long to realize the deep knowledge inherent in their people. They understood what was required to deal with their increasing exposure to the Western world. They knew what they needed.” She talks about how this experience informed her future work, instilling a heightened sense of humility.

When Jane returned to Canada, she and her thenpartner decided to start a hydroponics farm in Alberta. To their surprise, the business became immensely successful and the farm was soon regarded as one of the pioneers in its industry. But

after a decade of operation, Jane grew weary of the continual pressures to keep expanding. So they sold their operation turnkey and moved to the Gulf Islands, where Jane continues to focus on growing her own understanding.

“This project here is essentially a retirement project,” she says, pointing to the exotic kaffir limes that have begun sprouting. “I’m taking my life’s learnings and saying: Okay, I’ve got this beautiful asset, this greenhouse—how am I going to turn it into a productive space that grows the food that I don’t like buying in the grocery store?” She recently decided to switch from hydroponic growing to organic soil cover, in what has become a never-ending pursuit of greater possibilities. Forty years on, Jane is still refining her methods.

Today, her main focus is citrus plants. This is due in part to her affinity for this family of trees and shrubs and in part to her reservations about the way these crops are grown commercially. “I’m aware of what they do to citrus to keep it alive,” Jane says, describing the onslaught of hazardous chemicals used on citrus trees to ward off pests and disease. She believes a better system can be created, and in just a few years she’s proven that it can be done right here in the Gulf Islands.

Since her garden’s inception, Jane has grown more than 35 varieties of citrus plants and a handful of avocado varieties. She grows her crops year round, without a drop of fossil fuel or a spritz of chemical spray. She experiments with multiple techniques to harness heat sustainably, including the use of large pools as thermal mass storage. Currently, she is in the throes of a multi-year study, working with Innovations Ashfield Canada. This self-initiated project is an investigation into leaf sap analysis, aimed at identifying nutritional deficiencies in plants that might be addressed using targeted foliar applications.

How am I going to turn it into a productive space that grows the food that I don’t like buying in the grocery store?

One thing is certain: Jane refuses to settle into the comfort of her expertise. Her life is a quest for improved food quality and greater self-sufficiency, and it’s a journey that seems to know no bounds. “You die trying,” she says with a grin.

“We are dealing with big issues coming up with supply chains, and this is scary to me,” she says.

“What I’m hoping is that what I learn is easily transferable to anybody.” As society confronts depleted plant nutrient quality, climate change, and threatened food security, Jane’s garden serves as the testing ground for the solutions we need. She is currently synthesizing her research with the hope of, one day, sharing her findings with the community.

Yet despite the looming threats of global events, she is optimistic for the future of the food industry. “It’s a very exciting time in agriculture,” Jane says. Around the world, severed supply chains are putting a strain on agricultural chemical deliveries. This means that farms both large and small must, like Jane, turn to sustainable and regenerative agriculture solutions to continue operating.

Gourmands from across the islands often talk of the sweet, buttery texture of Jane’s avocados and the delectable juice of the oranges she grows. But it’s clear that her garden’s treasures are far richer than the exotic fruits that thrive here. They offer a trove of invaluable information, delivering hope in a time of uncertainty.

In the long winters of our northern lands, Jane proves that we, too, can grow our own citrus trees.

“I want to understand this stuff,” she says, gesturing to her trees and alluding to her sweeping body of knowledge that keeps on growing. “Curiosity is the most important thing.”

Standing underneath the enchanted canopy of her life’s work, it is impossible to disagree.

BY ALLIE QUELCH

PHOTO BY JENNIFER ARMSTRONG

I don’t remember which one of us said it first: “Let’s put the Airstream on top of a bus.”

It must have been one of the late nights when we were half-dressed, sprawled out on dirty bed sheets with the woodstove burning too hot, musing about our future, and giggling at the absurdity of the present.

We were a couple of semi-feral newlyweds—a boy covered in tattoos and hay, and a girl with a backpack—who fell in love on the beach and wanted to live happily ever after in a funky cabin in the woods, where we’d grow old together making strange art and working an unruly garden.

For several years, we’d been on an allconsuming quest to buy a little piece of our chosen rock in the Salish Sea so we could

live that dream. We both worked full time, somehow piecing together a combined $75 k annual income, one $50 odd-job at a time. We did everything we could to keep our costs low.

We lived in our old Airstream trailer—a single room where everything was always on top of everything else—parked on a muddy piece of land that we rented for a couple of hundred bucks a month and heated with firewood salvaged from the beaches. My partner, Kevin, had a workshop out in the yard, made from scrap metal and tarps, in which he was always working on one thing or another—a vehicle, a chainsaw, a woodstove—often fabricating parts in his homemade forge or welding bits of scrap metal into whatever it was we needed.

We were a couple of semi-feral newlyweds.

I learned to stretch the grocery budget like a housewife from the Great Depression, trading frozen dinners for sacks of flour and bushels of seasonal produce. We wore our clothing until it was more holes than fabric. Instead of going out, we’d get dressed up, make blackberry pie, and dance in the kitchen.

Our original goal was a $300–350 k mortgage. When we started saving, for that price we could have had our pick of charming cabins. But in the years it took us to get there, the world changed. Even undeveloped half acres are being listed for upwards of half a million dollars now.

With no more comforts in our life to sacrifice and our one dream lying dead in a puddle, we needed a new plan badly. That’s where the bus came in. The idea was clearly crazy. You can’t just stack hippie dream houses, can you? But the more we thought about it, the more sense it made. The Airstream, although special to us, was on her last legs. The frame and floor were so rotten, we weren’t sure they’d survive another move, but the shell was still in excellent condition. We always said we wouldn’t need much more than 500 sq. ft. to be happy in forever, and a 40 ft. bus plus our 23 ft. trailer (at 8 ft. wide) would give us just that.

One morning in late March, a big yellow school bus backed its way down our long, winding driveway.

You can’t just stack hippie dream houses, can you?

Instead of running to the hardware store, we looked around. We pulled a kitchen counter out of the dumpster. Appliances needing only a few repairs were sourced for free on social media. A friend milled us some cedar from his property, and we mounted the boards as shelves using old horseshoes as brackets. Pieces of the old island jail cell became stud walls, and seats from the bus itself were cut and welded into furniture. Whatever we had lying around found a way into the build.

In early summer, with a handful of friends, we hoisted the Airstream skyward using pulleys strung from cedar trees. We backed the bus in underneath it, where a frame welded together from old bed frames was waiting.

We are still in the thick of the process. The Airstream needs to be attached and sealed properly, and we have yet to cut any access points to the upstairs. But we’ll get there before the rain returns.

Come next winter, there will be rose hips and laundry drying above the fire. There will be a pot of soup simmering on the stove and bread in the oven. Ferments will bubble away on the countertops, by shelves filled with books, bones, and potted plants. There will be a couch big enough to gather with friends, and a warm bed waiting for us upstairs after they’re gone.

It won’t be perfect, but it will be ours and it will be enough.

HOW TO WRITE POETRY FOR YOUR ADULT SELF

BY CARLIE BLUME

Insert lacy platitudes, trim all loose strings, flex questions, and contemplate,

Focus in on the fruit that spits juice onto the counter, Pepper open Word documents with the twinkling mica of word play and pain, Mop guts off the floor, while you stitch it all together with the sinew and scraps found in the grainy plains of the internet,

Find a long, bloviating word that only exists in German, or even Swedish, describing that particular agony of the need for description and transcription on top of a mountain, in the horse’s ass of summer with a sexy dog named Jill,

Carve and round it, Schnitzel-pound it,

Bread it lightly in the crystal crumbs of your sluttiest nights,

Remove telling details of former lovers and shitty family members through ablation and ablution, paint them only with the finest of diluted acids

(Never full strength, because it’s hard to bleed onto a page burnt all the way through.)

Ignite Your Senses with

Next-Level Sauna

Christmas

BY JOANNE WILL

I’d never heard of a “Blue Christmas” service until I found myself attending one on a rainy winter day at Salt Spring Island United Church. I hadn’t been inside the building for 44 years, since my baptism there as an infant. My parents separated soon after, and I grew up in Saskatchewan. I have a close relationship with my father, a retired master mariner, who continues to live on the West Coast.

PHOTO BY

I didn’t feel blue the day I stepped back into the church. I had unwittingly walked into the service—which supports and comforts those experiencing grief, loss, or sadness during the holiday season—because I’d long wanted to revisit the building and the date coincided with my trip. The homecoming turned out to be so much more than I expected.

From the moment I entered the warm sanctuary, I was overwhelmed by the gestures of kindness from strangers. One woman said hello before I sat down. Another waved from across the aisle and walked over, smiling and singing as she handed me a hymnbook, open to the song that had already begun. Soon, a third parishioner urged me to choose a stone from the basket in her hand for the upcoming ceremony.

As the service progressed, my mind drifted to the image of my young parents on the day of my baptism, with me as a newborn in their arms. I thought about what their lives had been like up until that moment, what they’ve been like since, why they made the choices they made, and what experiences in their own past drove them in those directions.

I saw them as human, and the warmth of compassion poured over me. I fought hard against the unexpected upwelling of emotion, but it was soon impossible to hold back tears.

I was gaining a new understanding of my parents and releasing unresolved feelings that I had rarely ever acknowledged.

As my mind meandered, I began counting the blessings I’ve received as a result of their divorce. My mom and dad each remarried and stayed friends. They each had three more children, providing me with six wonderful siblings.

Lost in these thoughts, I suddenly realized I was the last to rise during the stone ceremony. I jumped up and went to lay my stone in the urn on the altar and place a candle in the tray alongside the many others. The minister invited everyone to share what the stone they were leaving behind represented. I didn’t speak up, but if I had, this essay is what I would have said.

The minister moved on to give the benediction and spoke about being filled with light in the darkness and going forth and sharing light with others. “Blessed are you who bear the light in unbearable times,” she said, “who testify to its endurance amid the unendurable, who bear witness to its persistence when everything seems in shadow and grief. Blessed are you in whom the light lives!”

By the end of the Blue Christmas service, a light had switched on inside of me. May it keep shining.

SECRET

When It’s Time for A Deeper Magic

We all want our holidays to be joyous, but sometimes a revelation about a certain jolly character brings heartbreak instead. Secret Society of Saint Nicholas is the antidote for that moment. This book will help you take a tricky parenting dilemma and turn it into a rite of passage, welcoming your beloveds into a deeper magic made of courage, kindness, and generosity. That’s what prompted Katherine North, author and mother of five, to write this book—she still believes in real magic, you see.

Available online or order at your local bookstore.

secretsocietyofsaintnicholas.com

BY STASIA

Not so long ago, the ultimate dream was to be a millionaire. The power of having a million dollars seemed limitless—you could have a mansion and fix all of the world’s problems! Sure, the word has retained some of its prestige, but given inflation and the complexity of global challenges, seven figures alone isn’t going to deliver either boundless consumerism or the monumental systems change that so many crave. And 5 million?

Struggling just to survive in the Anthropocene, up against capitalism, colonialism, and climate change, most folks’ million-dollar wishes are decidedly down-to-earth. Start small. Go slow.

As basic as they are, food and shelter are some of the first needs that pop into people’s minds when they ponder the possibility of coming into a chunk of change. Once those necessities are taken care of, minds become free to imagine exploring our beautiful planet and taking care of the well-being of fellow earthlings—human, plant, and animal.

So, with what we’ll call a modest sum of 5 million, FOLKLIFERS are thinking close to home. Now, imagine if the billionaires would just park their rockets and do the same.

Hands down: buy a modest home. Get out of the rental market and stop relying on others to house our family long term. Then some well-thought-out donations to organizations doing good for this world.

LARISA SARMA BOTHMA GABRIOLA ISLAND, CANADA

Buy some land and create an animal sanctuary.

TANYA HAYES CALGARY, CANADA

Share it with my family and friends. Make sure family is debt-free with a lifetime of security. Spoil everyone rotten. Give to all the wonderful organizations on Gabriola. Build a tiny home village with affordable living. So much could be done.

LISA REY NANAIMO, CANADA

I would do exactly what I am doing, only I would just think even bigger and make more happen for food and culture in this province. I would create spaces and places for youth and elders and disadvantaged people to be able to learn food preservation techniques. A safe space for people to come alive in their soul.

LORI McCARTHY MOBILE, CANADA

Housing security for my family and some friends. And make sure I put some aside for Suzanne Campbell’s philanthropic work in Nicaragua, bringing education to underprivileged kids. Oh, and of course I would buy a lifetime subscription to FOLKLIFE!

HEATHER MACLEOD GABRIOLA ISLAND, CANADA

folks tell us what they would do

Give to family, friends, and donate. Open a long-term care home and help build an animal rescue before I got moneycrazy like most of the world.

Pay out the mortgage so my son has the home his dad worked so hard to give him. Buy myself my dream vehicle and then breathe. Just breathe while the weight lifts . . .

HALEY MCDONALD PRINCE GEORGE, CANADA

Build a complex of year-round Chinese-style greenhouses on my farm and start pumping out vegetables for my communist collective. Probably upgrade my whole family on the farm to solar/renewables with battery systems, then buy an electric car that I can charge off it. And a fleet of electric vehicles for delivering produce. Then probably invest whatever’s left into . . . leftist propaganda.

KENNETH JORDAN NAPANEE, CANADA

We would invest in some sort of business or real estate because, let’s be honest, having that kind of money won’t last unless you invest.

DESERAI BRIERLEY DUNCAN, CANADA

SHERI MOLOUGHNEY POWELL RIVER, CANADA

Buy a bigger boat.

JEREMY HANMAN VICTORIA, CANADA

Help our three sons with purchasing homes. We are retired and live a simple lifestyle. To help our sons get started with their first home would be so heartwarming.

JOANNE RETALLICK GABRIOLA ISLAND, CANADA

I’d make so many dreams come true. Establish a fruit and nut orchard, build some cabins and creative spaces to host artist retreats, collaborate with local and global charities to put a lot of those dollars to work to help solve big issues, retire and go full-in on building the nature fibre farm and mill of my dreams. I think there would be some wonderful trips, greenhouses, and adventures. I would do some investing, some donating, and some business building. Would absolutely have a lot of fun and make a whole lot of impact.

WILLOW DAVIDSON, EPEKWITK, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, CANADA

I’d travel the world.

SHANNON KAY DENMAN ISLAND, CANADA

HANMAN

Five million isn’t really enough to have a serious impact on the issues we are currently facing as a species, so philanthropy would have to be local. Even then, $5 MM isn’t enough to buy serious chunks of land. I might try to buy up all the BC/Alberta wolf hunting licenses because that issue just pisses me off. Or maybe I would build a rentcontrolled artists’ residence here on Salty. But first I’d spend a year travelling to see the places that must be seen.

MAIRI WELMAN SALT SPRING ISLAND, CANADA

I’d pay off all the mortgages and debts of family members, buy property, build a little house, and go back to school. Aaaand go to Europe.

NORA DAWN QUADRA ISLAND/CUMBERLAND, CANADA

I’d buy off a critical parcel of an old-growth watershed from a major Vancouver Island logging company and place it in trust with the local First Nations.

SONJA ZUPANEC GABRIOLA ISLAND, CANADA

Use it to fund a photography project

epic proportions that supports lowincome people

communities.

First, I’d pay off my student debt and my family and friends’ debt. Then, I’ve always had this idea to create a community rental space that could be used not just to hold events but also as a hangout place and resource centre with the ability to host pop-up markets.

SARA HOLMES NANAIMO, CANADA

Invest every cent. Not answer the phone

a

to avoid having to finance

and

DON MANCHA HONEYMOON BAY, CANADA

Patch up an old farm, upgrade it to run

solar and wind, rescue some animals, plant a few gardens, maybe get some

and then reach out to organizations

support marginalized folks to invite them to spend time there. Basically, a non-profit

Share it. There are a lot of people who need a lot of love, emotionally and financially.

MICHAEL PASCHE VANCOUVER, CANADA

about environmental stewardship. I would probably blow through the 5 mill and need to start writing grant proposals. Or maybe give the money to someone who’s already doing this and ask them if I can hang out and pet goats and plant flowers.

farm that provides a community

folks who want to learn

LAINE GUSTAFSON OTTAWA, CANADA

PHOTO BY STEPHEN ELLIS

Buy remote land, build off-grid dream property, buy my family members each a home, put a large chunk away to help live off interest, invest some in green business, donate a lot, start the nonprofit I want to. Phew! Is that it?

MISTY WHITTAKER SALT SPRING ISLAND, CANADA

Allow my true gifts to unfold, have family close, and continue to serve my community. Beautiful healing centre where others can come to find their innate human potential to grow from the inside out.

NATALIE SWARTZ MAPLE RIDGE, CANADA

Use the majority to buy land and put it in a reserve for public use and to preserve it for future generations and to help protect the environment. The rest I would donate to various SickKids’ hospitals.

NANCY CERVENKO GABRIOLA ISLAND, CANADA

Oh gosh, I would buy a property to live on and build the most spectacular workshop with all the tools. Invest more in my business . . . and maybe buy a horse or two.

CAITLYN CHAPMAN VICTORIA, CANADA

I would buy a minimum of ten acres with an old fixer-upper farmhouse near a small town of similar homesteads somewhere cheap and off the beaten path. I’d buy llamas, goats, and a couple cows, plus expand my chicken flock. Learn to make cheese and soap, plant a massive garden, DIY fix and build the farm, and mind my own business. Hopefully there’s money left to help the kids with school and travel modestly with the hubby.

LISA JORY NANAIMO, CANADA

I would share it with a lot of people! And build a sweet communal pottery studio in the Comox Valley.

BARBARA SEDUN COMOX VALLEY, CANADA

RESTHOUSE

Sleep Saved Us

Finding the body pillow changed everything for Resthouse co-owner Chris. Now, in the bedding industry for over 25 years, he takes the connection of sleep health and weaves it in intuitively when connecting with customers on their needs, challenging preconceived notions of how sleep is supposed to be.

After years of restless nights, co-owner Olga’s nervous system was stretched thin. Finding the perfect mattress and pillows, customized for optimal support, instantly relieved her mind and body, which paved the way for many restorative and restful slumbers.

Building Flourishing Communities Night by Night

FREE STORES

BY LAURA BUSHEIKIN

A free store is just what it sounds like: a store where everything is free.

It’s not a thrift shop or a shop-by-donation venue. Nor is it a glorified dumpster where you can sift through piles of discarded personal effects. It’s a proper store, usually with a change room and various departments—housewares, children’s clothes, adult clothes, shoes, books, office supplies, hair products, and more.

Free stores are rooted deep in island culture. You can find one on several islands around these parts. For many residents, they exemplify the personal and community values that drew them to the islands.

“Our free store gives us an opportunity to truly recycle so many things,” says Jan Kennedy, who helps run the Hornby Free Store. “And it offers a different paradigm: it releases us from the world of purchasing. Instead, this is about sharing and trading.”

Jan remembers talking to a possible funder when the Hornby Recycling Depot, which houses the free store, was looking for financial support. “They suggested we could have a nominal charge for people getting things at the free store. I kept my face straight and nodded and smiled and said that’s an interesting suggestion,” she recalls. But she was just being polite. A “nominal charge” would change the whole paradigm.

PHOTO BY KATRINA

“Having it actually free changes our mindset. We have so many visitors to Hornby, and they come to the free store and they can’t believe they can just take things. It gives them a glimpse of another way of doing things. That’s the beauty of it.”

Free stores tend to be organized and staffed by volunteers and housed in buildings owned by non-profit community groups or local governments. A bit of fundraising covers basic costs like electricity.

Many people remark on the inexplicable but reliable magic of the free store: you focus your mind on what you are looking for, and soon, it appears. A bread maker. A dozen goodquality washable diapers. A specific book. A unicorn costume for a six-year-old. A set of martini glasses for an upcoming dinner party.

And there are the surprise finds. I brought home a cute little wooden box, thinking I could store jewellery in it. When I opened it, I found a pair of earrings—tiny portraits of Frida Kahlo painted on the front of Corona beer bottle caps, adorned with beads. I wear them whenever I want to conjure up bold creative energy.

But those earrings don’t top the story a friend from Lasqueti Island told me. Around 20 years ago, someone found $3,000 in a jacket pocket, he said. No one ever found out whose jacket it was. He also had a story about a bag of, um, “locally grown herbs” in the pocket of some free store jeans. No one found the owner of that either.

A chance find in the kitchen section led to business success for Yogi and Bronwynne, owners of Ima’s Bakery on Denman Island. “It changed our life!” says Yogi. “We had started up the bakery. It was doing well, but it’s labour intensive. One day at the free store I was looking at the small appliances and noticed this beige metal box. It looked like something

from my mother’s kitchen. You know that old beige appliance look? I was just standing there gazing at it, and one of the free store volunteers said, ‘It’s an ice-cream maker. It’s got a built-in freezer. You should take it.’”

Yogi did. They started making vegan ice cream, and it took off. “We used that machine for a whole year before deciding to get a commercial ice-cream maker,” says Bronwynne. Now their ice-cream products are their biggest seller, giving them the financial stability they need for a sustainable family life. “It started at the free store,” says Yogi. And that original beige machine? They gave it to a local family that’s still using it.

These little oases in the desert of capitalism can also inspire fun fashion choices, nudging people to create their own unique looks based on the serendipity of chance finds, rather than the uniformity of off-the-rack purchases. Several islands have held free store fashion shows as fundraisers or just for the joy of it. Like Paris . . . but different. More alt couture than haute couture

Like any store, free stores occasionally have products that aren’t popular. One has a “hall of shame” online, with photos of inappropriate things left there for “sale”: a jar of urine, a full vacuum bag, a book called How to Build a Large Successful Multi-Level Marketing Organization (on a remote island? Really?), and more.

But mostly, free stores are full of good stuff. For people facing economic challenges, they provide practical help. You can equip your kitchen, keep yourself and your kids clothed, and ensure you have entertainment in the form of books, games, and jigsaw puzzles, all without spending a cent.

Unlike charitable or government support initiatives, free stores are for everyone. This neutralizes any potential for shame or stigma connected to getting things for free. In those fun moments when you’re wearing your new free store duds and you run into the person who gave them away, no one feels awkward. Instead, you both feel enriched. Your clothes connect you to someone else in your community.

Free stores invite us to see the world as abundant. They help us understand that we don’t always have to purchase things to have enough, that we can circulate the things we need and want in a way that is free from both the obligations of gift-giving and the transactional nature of trade. It might be a new paradigm for many people, but it’s an established tradition in many island communities.

PHOTO BY BILLOW (LEFT), KATRINA RAIN PHOTOGRAPHY (RIGHT)

On islands blessed with a free store, almost everyone has a favourite anecdote or two about them:

“After my dad died, my mom donated his clothes to the free store, hoping that someone could make good use of them. Several weeks later, when the grandkids were visiting on a stormy day, we realized that one of the boys neglected to bring a coat or boots. We sent him to the free store, hoping he’d find something so we could go clamming. Lo and behold he did—he came back with his grandfather Jack’s boots and coat! Seems they weren’t ready to leave the household.”

— JEAN CLARK

“I love the game of ‘What is this?’ Usually I can figure out an object. However, one time I was really stumped and had to do a web search on the item. It turned out to be a pig castrator. It would neatly apply rubber bands in just the right way to do the job.”

“My daughter came home from school one day and declared she needed, absolutely needed, a pair of Dr. Martens. But they’re expensive! The very next Saturday, we found a pair in her exact size, still in their original packaging.”

“When our kids were young, we were renting and moving a lot. The free store acted like a baby library and storage facility in terms of having all the large baby items like highchairs, exersaucers, pack n’ plays, portable cribs, and baby baths that you need for just a little while. Once we were done with them, we’d take the items back to be ‘stored’ until the next baby came along. It was great to not have to repeatedly move them and find space for them.”

— MEREDITH MCEVOY

— MICHAEL RAPATI

— ANONYMOUS

PHOTO BY SAMAN REZAPOUR

KIYA FAITH

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY KATRINA RAIN

Licorice fern—one of my daughter’s favourite wild plants.

She knows where patches of it are in almost all the places we’ve lived or visited and loves to harvest a small piece to chew on while we walk.

Or, if we’re on a well-organized adventure (that is, carrying a knife), she will rub the root clean, chop it into small pieces, and pocket them, ready to be made into tea when we get home. A piece of bark works well for an impromptu cutting board.

Once home, she’ll bring water to a boil on the woodstove, pour it over the sweet and astringent roots, and then let it steep for 20 minutes or so. Just enough time to hang up all of the clothes wet from the rain or to stoke the woodstove and visit with the cats before we sit and have tea.

My mom once told me that every time she passes the licorice fern patch on her hill, she thinks of her granddaughter. This fills my heart with so much joy, knowing my mama is out walking, passing plants, and thinking of my daughter. I can feel the connections like a warm tonic flowing through me. Much like the feeling of the licorice root tea my daughter hands me, warming me up on this beautiful West Coast day.

I can feel the connections like a warm tonic flowing through me.

Creative Builders for Modern Living

From

Kelly Robinson, Richard Egli, Simon Fyall, Geordie Flanagan, Chris Massot

THE WORTH OF A SONG

With Lauren Mann, Sierra Lundy, Jack Garton, Gary Fjellgaard, Phöenix Lazare & Hownd, Sarah Osborne, and Raven Wells.

PHOTO BY RACHEL PICK (LEFT), GLYN LEWIS (RIGHT)

PHOTOS BY (FROM TOP LEFT TO RIGHT): DALE BAILEY, @EYE_PICTURE_YOU, SYD WOODWARD, STASIA GARRAWAY, HAILEY KRAKANA, SYD WOODWARD

When I headed out in my parents’ minivan on my first self-booked tour at age 19, my financial system reflected my carefree nature: a zip-up pencil case that held all my earnings and the few gas receipts I remembered to keep. I have no record of the money I made, or more likely lost, but the memories and relationships I forged inspired me to spend the next ten years touring North America.

Like many artists, I’ve always had a tenuous relationship with money, ever vigilant not to let it overtake the integrity of my art. As a young musician, I remember thinking that having a song in a commercial would be selling out. These days, however, licensing songs for film, television, and commercials is a necessary revenue stream to carve out a living. Times have changed, and I think our ideologies toward money and music are shifting as well.

When I took a step back from full-time touring, I started an “exclusive content project,” where fans could pay for a monthly subscription. Around that time, platforms such as Patreon and Bandcamp began offering similar services, and Kickstarter campaigns were becoming a popular way to raise money for recording. These platforms offered an alternative to CD sales and touring, and I was able to get to know many of the folks who signed up on a deeper level than the average listener. Not only did the project help me earn a consistent monthly income, it motivated me to continue writing and sharing my art.

A few years ago, I made another shift in the relationship between my income and my art: I found a rewarding day job. Granted, it put restrictions on touring, but I now had the stability of living in my island community. A steady income released me from the pressure of having to hustle a living solely from my music and enabled me to pursue other opportunities without always thinking of balancing the books. The job also helped me make the most of the time I did have for music. I realized I’d lost some of the passion I had when I started out, and I began to fall back in love with the art of songwriting and with playing music alone and with others.

If I had been concerned about my pencilcase bank account, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to put my music out into the world. But don’t some of the greatest moments in life involve an element of risk?

Looking back, I’m grateful for all the bumps in the road that brought me full circle.

Lauren Mann

Don’t some of the greatest moments in life involve an element of risk?

Pencil Case

Changing a Life with Song

I never thought music-making and moneymaking would ever end up on the same line in my story of being an artist. In fact, when my partner, Jon, and I first started playing as a duo called Ocie Elliott, it took me a long time to grasp the concept of getting paid for doing something I enjoyed to such an extent.

Jon was much more weathered in this field from experience performing with his well-known band Jon and Roy, but he still had to start from the beginning with me—playing to audiences of one and sometimes none. But it was free practice and usually came with a complimentary beer or two, which was more than all right by both of us.

Since then, we’ve come a long way from our initial rejections. We’ve been picked up by agencies, had songs land in big TV shows, toured internationally with audiences of much more than one, and received a JUNO nomination. And, most bewildering for me, we haven’t been dependent on other jobs for income.

“Worth” is something I feel when I play to an audience that is captivated and soaking in the sound.

In all of this, though, earning money is not why I make music. “Worth” is something I feel when I play to an audience that is captivated and soaking in the sound, or when I hear a heartfelt story about a life that a song has changed or saved.

Sierra Lundy

Redefining Success

When I began to play music professionally, fronting a band and writing songs, I harboured a hope that my life story might be similar to the musical stars I looked up to as a kid—all variations on the American dream. You know, poor kid works hard, is discovered, becomes famous. The story often has a deal with the devil aspect to it (gets exploited, dies young, sad, and alone). To become famous, skillful, and rich, a vital trade-off is necessary.

But why was I drawn to that? Is it true that any measure of musical success has to extract something essential? I was consumed by the idea of success as something scarce. Only a few are chosen. Will I have what it takes? Am I enough?

As I continued making music for a living— during a 15-year period that has seen a massive increase in the cost of living and an equal decline in the average musician’s income—it seemed like a deal with the devil was necessary. Not to become famous, but just to struggle along. I took workshops to “treat my music like a business.” Some were well intentioned, but some merely preyed on my allegiance to the myth of musical success, meaning money and fame.

When the pandemic hit, I was busy trying to fit my music into this business mould. In the preceding five years, I’d played the most gigs to the most people and sold the most albums of my life. But after paying for fuel, album production and manufacturing, accommodation, instruments, etc., every year I still only barely broke even—or worse. I still believed that if I just worked harder, pulled on those bootstraps a bit more, it would get easier.

Musicians need to redefine success for ourselves. I want a new myth to replace the American dream, one that doesn’t require artists to give up their soul or get exploited. Success is not scarce. It can come in many forms. What does your heart want to do? What type of work inspires you? How would you know for yourself that you did a good job? Who do you want to do that work with? These questions form a tendril searching in the dark, timid at first, but they will find others out in the world, joining to form a new kind of network. A network of the heart.

When we make art from a place of curiosity, generosity, and hospitality, there is enough. You are enough. In the end, the relationships you build are worth more than whatever cash or fame might come your way.

Musicians need to redefine success for ourselves. I want a new myth to replace the American dream.

Jack Garton

A 50-Year Concert Career

It was always about the song. Making a living in the music business for over 50 years would not have been possible without a support system.

My wife took care of a lot of the business end of things so I could concentrate on writing, performing, and driving. Being

inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame was a highlight. I can honestly say that I had a concert career and still believe that it was always about the song.

Gary Fjellgaard

Our transition into the professional world after studying at the Berklee College of Music found us working various jobs—not exactly the lavish life of an artist that’s often portrayed. We moved to Nashville, craving a community of artists and opportunity. To make ends meet, Phöenix worked for an independent record label, and Justin as a guitar technician in a music shop. This provided some stability between writing, recording, releasing, booking shows, and looking for any chance to make money by playing music.

We accepted every invitation to perform, including playing to empty rooms and rowdy sports bars just for the exposure— not even a complimentary drink. In 2019, we released our debut recording, Balancing Act, as Fawkes & Hownd. We saved every penny we had (about $700) and toured the US. When we played at a local bar in Santa Barbara, it was one of the highest-paying shows of the tour—a whole $300—but it still didn’t cover our costs to be there.

We played for three hours to a half-full room of locals who clearly just wanted us to leave so they could watch the game and enjoy a beer. At the end of the show, we took our cash and left with heavy hearts. It wasn’t nearly worth that lingering feeling of insignificance.

Berklee instilled in us the importance of recognizing our worth as professional musicians and all that we’ve dedicated to our craft, but it’s easier said than done to truly value yourself as an artist. In today’s music industry, artists and bands have no choice but to manage themselves as a business, sharing not only their songs, but also highlighting the intrinsic worth and the hard work that goes into their craft—the education, investment, energy, studio time, rehearsals, marketing and promotional costs, distribution . . . the list goes on. Without audiences that recognize and appreciate this, we would be stuck. At the end of the day, as a musician, your worth is only the value you place on yourself.

Phöenix Lazare & Hownd

It’s easier said than done to truly value yourself as an artist.

PHOTO BY STASIA GARRAWAY (TOP), SYD WOODWARD/NIAMH

Balancing Act

Sword

I’ve been a working musician for ten-plus years now, and though I enjoy the variety and stimulation that the business aspects bring to my career, I find it very difficult to put a monetary value on music. I believe making music is simply part of being human. At my level, a career in music is about wearing many hats and only really getting paid for one of them.

When you break down how much work and investment goes into songwriting, recording, rehearsing, and travelling, often we are making less than minimum wage or are even paying to play. I think there needs to be more transparency and awareness of the emotional, financial, and time investment that goes into sustaining a music career. For instance, the cost to record one song (before promotion, printing, and distribution) is on average $1,000.

I think we’re in a very interesting time as creators right now. We have this wonderfully large pool of musicians because of our access to more affordable means of recording and self-promotion, as well as the platforms to share our work. We have the ability to connect with, collaborate with, and discover other artists like never before. It’s a double-edged sword, though, as it may also mean that more musicians are willing to work for less.

Over the years, I’ve begun to place more and more value on my work and have become better at the art of negotiation. A musician friend said to me recently, “It’s not the performance we get paid for, but all the work we do leading up to it.”

I have been a musician barely surviving, and one flourishing in their craft. I long for a sustainable, lifelong career, where fans tell their friends about me and I can keep

writing and putting my work out to be heard. Where I can show up in random little towns all over the world, play a show, and put some money in the bank. I believe that

succeeding as a musician takes community, determination, talent, being a good person to work with, and a little bit of luck.

How can we do our best work with what we have right here and now? I believe it’s up to the artists to represent the times we are in and not simply wait for better days to come.

BY HAILEY KRAKANA

I believe making music is simply part of being human.

Sarah Osborne

Truth Raining Down

Music has always been a lifelong obsession, to the point where I’d alienate myself from the rest of the world at times to obtain a playing status acceptable to my picky needs. I was a cook for 12 years, on and off, to keep a roof over my head—I would make $90 a day in kitchens five years ago. When I quit and turned to busking shortly after, I was making $130 for four hours of doing what I love.

When I play, I have an automatic smile, and when I sing, my heart and emotions explode out of me and my truth rains down for all to hear. Music became a part of my needs for survival, but the money has never been why I do what I do.

The busking experience itself can be very rewarding, to the soul and the pocketbook, if you play your cards right. I go out there trying to satisfy souls, and I always try to have a message. With continued effort, people will see this, and you will find those who begin to support you and believe in what you do. I find that if you can relate with people, they’ll relate with you and treat you like a positive small business of sorts.

I go out there trying to satisfy souls, and I always try to have a message.

There will be times when things are a little less busy in the fall and winter, but if you keep showing your face and playing things you and others enjoy, and if you spend wisely, you can make a happy living from it.

Aim for the stars, perhaps, and write the song that changes it all.

PHOTO

WOODWARD/NIAMH

Raven Wells

Inspired by her love of gardening,

and handcrafted

Connecting You to Nature

Olver uses foraged plants and silver to create one-of-a-kind botanically

that

hands in the dirt, the brush

connection to the natural world. The calm that comes from

ferns as

walk through the forest, and the smell of ripe berries in the

when you wear Umlaut

BY ROB WEST

Eyes closed on our patio, I hear only the song of swallows as they carve mobius strips above our garden. It’s a quarter acre of vegetables, ring-fenced by a food forest of hazelnuts, apples, pears, figs, and perennial berries. An island in a forest on an island in the Salish Sea.

Atop a rock wall herb garden is our house, built with our bare hands over five years from clay and timbers. With foot-and-a-half-thick walls and cool earthen floors, it’s a monastery against the howling madness of the world. A bulwark against climate change as much as hopelessness.

It’s a life of dirt under the fingernails and heavy lifting, an attempt at yearned-for rootedness when the majority of your days are in the rear-view mirror. We weren’t always “living the dream” and it didn’t come easy, but then the easy path is not one we know or would desire. Without a stitch in your side and the bile rising, what’s the point of striving toward your own mental summit?

In what seems like another life, I was a book publisher in London, England, groaning under the weight of a catalogue of titles, hundreds of authors, revenue targets, demanding hockey-stick growth curves, and an ever-expanding staff. What started as the job of a lifetime had, over the years, morphed into a mental and emotional gulag. The relentless bloodletting of the soul via 6 a.m. alarms, dark, damp, winter mornings, that thousandth, packed, peakhour tube, and yet one more team meeting, had begun to take its toll.

What started as the job of a lifetime had, over the years, morphed into a mental and emotional gulag.

I staggered across the bleak tundra of endless, unforgiving mental toil. An overflowing inbox, fingers that couldn’t type fast enough, sleepless, boozy nights with a cacophony of authors, contracts, and hundreds of unanswered emails scrambling my addled brain. Weekends filled with thoughts of work, the threat of work, or pub sessions to drown out work. I was ground down, greying, ragged. The wheel was turning ever faster, my legs ever slower, the coal face ever harder. My bare hands black and bleeding, I was being steamrolled by modernity and I needed out. I needed out fast.

Three months later, my wife and I were free. A year and a half on the run would follow as we fled London to travel the world and find a different life. Somewhere along the way, the weight of work slipped from our shoulders, lost overboard in the Andaman Sea. Our time horizon shrank to languid hours, sunsets, breaths, mountain summits, and the rocking of sailboats on warm waves. No bills, no boss, no alarms, no worries.

It wasn’t always like this. In 2002, when we left Vancouver to seek adventure and work overseas, I was desperately looking for a rat race to join. A halfdozen years of clawing my way from one early ’90s recessionary temp job or freelance gig to another —to make rent and student loan payments—had left me foaming at the mouth for a real chance at a real career with a real income. As so often happens when you make the jump, though, one year abroad turned into a decade—and a brilliant time it was. Pubs, European holidays, friends from across the globe, work trips around the world, engaging authors, and needle-moving books. But then, ever so slowly, the scales started to tip. Real responsibility reared its head, and the mind-forged manacles started to take shape on the anvil.

Fortunately, there was a way out. For years, we’d methodically been doing the spade work on a financial escape tunnel. Our tools were few but immensely powerful: minimalist living—light on stuff but rich in experience—two very average incomes but a high savings rate, and self-taught DIY investing know-how.

Cost-cutting as a couple included living most of our 30s in a flat shared with two other adults, one toilet, a single shelf in the fridge, possessions reduced to what would fit in a bedroom, and no car. Not everyone’s cup of tea, for sure, but there’s a price to freedom.

I built a spreadsheet to track our monthly progress, the goal being to save at least 50% of our combined incomes. We sheltered our growing pile of loot in tax-free Individual Savings Accounts, similar to a Canadian TFSA. We set these up as trading accounts so our savings could be invested in dividend-paying exchange traded funds (ETFs), stocks, bonds, and commodity ETFs. Every bit of money we invested generated more income, compounding over time completely tax-free.

BY LUCAS DAVIES

I was being steamrolled by modernity and I needed out.

The mantra was, and always has been, to build an investment portfolio and squeeze our living expenses below what the investments could earn to achieve freedom. These days, it’s called “FIRE”—Financial Independence, Retire Early—but I’d first encountered this idea in the ’90s in Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin. I lapped up the concept but, at the time, lacked the means. Then, at age 32, with my first real career paycheque in hand, I made it my business to devour every book, magazine, and newsletter about investing that I could get my hands on and figure out how to dig that tunnel as fast as possible.

By the summer of 2009, we’d paid off tens of thousands in student loans and other debt and for years saved and invested well over half our total income. So, on the eve of our jailbreak, as we teetered under the weight of work, the sacrifices had been made and our escape plans were ready for execution.

Thirteen years later, though much has changed and we aren’t rich by conventional standards, we’ve still managed to elude the bloodhounds of the system and chart our own course. Along the way, we set up a kettle popcorn stall in the street markets of London, lived a winter in Mexico, and left the UK for island life on the West Coast of Canada. We’ve become parents, built a low-energy house, and are developing resilient food systems. We’re both working again—for as long as it’s interesting while we continue to add to the freedom stash and build multiple income streams—although these days we are more likely to be found in the garden or nut orchard, preparing for a very different future, than touring the tapas bars of Seville.

Ultimately, life on the lam is about learning to see what others don’t and building a financial escape plan. It’s about looking at society and noticing the fleeting gaps in conventional wisdom, through which you can slip into the rich country of experience, meaning, and freedom beyond.

Find your shovel and start digging.

HOT ON THE TRAIL OF EL DINERO

A

What’s

In

MEGAN SIMPSON

GWEN

PHOTO BY ANNIE SPRATT

CARSON (BOTTOM)

PAM MCCARTNEY

BRITT

THE INTERWOVEN ROOTS OF BASKETRY

BY LAURA BUSHEIKIN

At some point in the distant past, early humans managed without containers. Not just without Tupperware or travel mugs—without containers of any kind. Before pottery, before metal, and way before plastic.

Imagine, then, how revolutionary it was when someone somewhere figured out how to weave natural materials into a basket. People could go gather wild foods, collect enough for a week, and carry it all back to home base. They could keep stores of food, medicines, and seeds. They could travel from place to place with their belongings. A good basket could be the difference between plenty and not enough, between life and death.

These days, the world has perhaps too many containers—from giant shipping containers big enough to live in to storage totes to toothpaste tubes to cellphone cases to tin cans to nuclear waste canisters—we can contain just about anything. Our landfills are full of discarded containers, and we’re so overrun with plastic bags we’re now making them illegal. We have hit peak container.

A good basket could be the difference between plenty and not enough, between life and death.

At the same time, the basket, the ever-humble basket, has never gone out of style. Handwoven out of natural materials grown from the earth, using time-honoured techniques passed down from person to person, generation to generation, this simple object straddles art and utility, holds culture and history, and has stories to tell.

The Salish Sea islands are home to many folks who create baskets and use basketry in creative ways. Their artistic processes are shaped by, and actively shape, their relationship to the land and to community.

PHOTO

We interviewed four basketry artists from the northern edge of the Salish Sea. All these artists have much in common, particularly in how their work connects them to the land and the seasons. But there are also significant differences. For Indigenous artists, weaving reconnects them to the age-old traditions of their people, traditions that were decimated by colonization.

Thus, basketry is a powerful act of cultural reclamation and revitalization. The context is different for artists of settler descent, who each find their own way into the art form. This diversity is woven into the stories that follow.

A weaver of hats, baskets, rattles, and mats, Isabel Rorick is also a weaver of culture.

Isabel comes from a long line of Haida weavers on both sides of her family. In Haida tradition, these skills are passed down from mother to daughter along the maternal line, generation after generation. This lineage was ripped apart by colonization, and as a result, Isabel’s own mother did not learn from her mother and in turn could not teach Isabel. To mend the torn thread in her lineage, Isabel chose to break with tradition and learn from her paternal grandmother.

Isabel didn’t initially set out to be a basketmaker. In her late teens, she wanted to be a carver—a more prestigious role than weaver in Haida culture and in the settler world. Haida carving is recognized internationally, featuring big names like Bill Reid and Robert Davidson.

Isabel was studying carving with the men, working under the supervision of Davidson on poles for a longhouse, when her paternal grandmother, Nonny Selina, visited the site and pointedly asked her what she wanted to do—carve or weave? Isabel ultimately chose weaving, in part because she realized that with so few weavers left, the art form was in danger of dying out.

Now 66, Isabel is an established artist who has achieved international recognition. She has had many exhibitions of her work in both private and public galleries, including the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Seattle Art Gallery. In 2009, she won the British Columbia Creative Achievement Award for Aboriginal Art. Her success has helped raise the profile of Haida weaving and Indigenous women’s art in general.

Every piece Isabel makes has its origins in the majestic forests of Haida Gwaii.

Each year, Isabel and her husband travel to this remote island archipelago to spend a week gathering roots. A day of gathering starts in the mossy forest, finding a suitable Sitka spruce and digging to find long, straight, thin roots, some of them up to 30 ft. long. “I love going into the forest—the smells, the feel of the earth, the feel of the roots,” says Isabel. “They can’t be any bigger than my little finger. I bundle them as I dig them out of the ground.”

“When we are done, we go to the beach, gather wood, and start a fire. Then we roast the roots in the fire. With the big ones, we pull them through a split stick to get the bark off. After that we put them in a plastic bag to keep moist and then go home and have dinner. After dinner I’ll sort and split the roots, and then bundle again,” Isabel explains.

Gathering is done with care and reverence. “When I go into the forest, I say prayers to the trees, the soil, the birds, the insects, the animals, and all elementals. I thank them and promise to disrupt them as little as possible. I thank the fire and offer it prayers.”

“Where I gather roots is where my ancestors gathered roots. I’m connected with the spirits that are involved in the whole process,” says Isabel. “My art—the whole process— connects me to past and future.”

When I go into the forest, I say prayers to the trees, the soil, the birds, the insects, the animals, and all elementals.

There are more than 2,000 willows growing on Glen Krashaur’s acreage. At a quick glance, they are pretty enough but hardly showy. Someone walking by might even describe them as monochromatic. But if you look closely, you’ll see an exquisite array of colours: golds, browns, pinks, peaches, reds, greens, and yellows.

These variations show up in Glen’s baskets as patterns of colour, tone, and texture that delight the eye. There’s an intimate link between what he grows and what he can make, between source and product.

“Willow is truly a magical plant,” says Glen. “It grows so fast—in a year it’s taller than me. It’s so beautiful, it smells great, and it’s medicinal. If I get a headache, I can chew on it.” But perhaps the most powerful magic is the willow’s combination of strength and flexibility, which makes it perfect for weaving. “It can twist and flex and bend like no other material.”

Glen’s baskets tend to be large—big enough for a child to hide in or to serve as a blanket chest—and strong. “The big ones will carry me, and I’m over 200 lb.,” he says.

As well as making baskets for practical and decorative use around the home, Glen weaves willow caskets for human burials, a much-appreciated item on Denman Island, which has a green cemetery that allows only fully biodegradable materials.

Glen’s baskets are the end result of a physically demanding 18-month process.

Glen’s baskets are the end result of a physically demanding 18-month process. The willows grow throughout the summer and need weeding, a challenging job that involves pushing through the narrow aisles between the trees.

Harvesting is done in December and January. “I’m on my knees, cutting each shoot at its base with little loppers,” he says. “It takes a week to cut.”

Glen Krashaur

Next, he spends another week sorting and bundling the shoots according to width, then laying them out on a drying rack suspended from the roof of his garage. Drying takes six months. After that, the shoots are kept in a dark storage room, but they still need tending—rotating regularly to ensure airflow.

When Glen is ready to weave, he reorganizes the bundles more precisely and puts them in a tank to soak. Then he’s finally ready to start creating, either on his own or with students at one of his workshops. Willow weaving is hard work but can bring on a state of bliss once the work starts to flow. “I’ve seen this in my workshop students. They struggle the first day and sometimes go home wondering why they signed up. And then on the second day, as the walls start to go up, it’s like a birthing process, and euphoria comes over every single student. It just rises.”

Glen gets huge satisfaction from teaching and practising the art of basketry. “You can start off in the morning with a pile of sticks beside you, and then at the end of the day, potentially, you have something that’s going to outlast you and still be used. That really inspires me. I’ll keep weaving till my hands can’t do it anymore.”

Willow weaving is hard work but can bring on a state of bliss once the work starts to flow.

Cynthia Minden

For Cynthia Minden, basketry is about much more than baskets. “My work has evolved from vessels to sculpture. It is mostly about imagination rather than a utilitarian piece to carry your eggs in,” she says. “I love to work with metaphor—the idea of container, containment, boundaries, inner spaces, and outer spaces.”

Cynthia discovered basketry in 1987 when she signed up for a workshop in twining, the technique of twisting natural fibre to make cord. “It felt like my hands knew what to do. It was like coming home.” Since then, she has studied with many mentors and teachers and developed a diverse body

of work. Her art has been featured in dozens of shows at galleries in Canada and the United States.

The list of materials Cynthia uses reads like a poetic tribute to the life that flourishes around her: brambles, willow, vines, twigs, leaves, seaweed, bark, driftwood, sticks, stones, wasp nest paper, feathers, bones, and donkey hair.

It felt like my hands knew what to do. It was like coming home.

Working with natural materials increases our capacity for sensing the natural world and invites us into deeper relation with the cycles of the seasons, she says. “I work a lot with long leaves from flowers like daffodils and irises. There’s a time of year for those. You wait for the bulb to finish flowering and then wait for the leaves to die back. At that point, the leaves are no longer feeding energy into the bulb, so the bulb is ready to regenerate next year. Then you can harvest the leaves and make them into cordage.”

In Cynthia’s hands, every material has its own personality. “To be successful with a pile of twigs or a pile of vines, you have to take the time to get to know the material. You have to pick it up, hold it in your hands, and just get the feel of it. Is it prickly, is it slippery, is it coarse? What are the limits of its flexibility? Where will it snap?”

Practising basketry involves “an ever-deepening appreciation for the gifts the land gives us,” Cynthia says. “It sometimes feels like there is an offering. For instance, in the fall, the cedars drop these small limbs. I used to teach a basketry workshop every fall using those limbs. It wouldn’t be the time to make that basket midsummer, but in the fall, this is what is being offered. It’s like the tree is saying, ‘Hey, take this.’ I love that relationship!”

To be successful with a pile of twigs or a pile of vines, you have to take the time to get to know the material.

David Eugster

Encircling the Lasqueti Island Community Hall is a fence that is alive: hundreds of willow trees grow side by side, their branches woven together so that over time they have formed an intricately patterned entity. It’s earthy and yet otherworldly, as befits this off-grid island, accessible only by a small passenger ferry or by private boat.

Live willow fences are one example of an art form known as living sculpture. “You can do anything with it,” says David Eugster, the Swiss-born Lasquetian who created the fence. “You can grow gazebos, grow a tunnel, grow a chair, even grow a small house if you have 75 years to wait.”

David identifies primarily as a basketmaker, but he doesn’t shy away from innovation. He’s also the creator of a woven willow dome behind the Lasqueti Hall, which locals call the “Funion” because it looks like an onion and is, well, a place for fun. “People go in there to play music, smoke weed, or just hang out. Kids play inside. Whenever there’s an event in the hall, there’s someone in it,” says David.

David’s vocation as a willow weaver provides him with exactly the kind of life he wants to lead. “I’m not the kind of person who can work a regular job. I need to be creative. My clock ticks differently. Having a homestead is different than buying a finished house or having a summer home. It’s a lot more work, and it’s really rough, hard work. But I also have more time. I have my own hydro and solar power system. I’m my own boss. For me, it’s more about enjoying the process than the goal. It’s my life that matters, not what I finish.”

For me, it’s more about enjoying the process than the goal. It’s my life that matters, not what I finish.

Willow weaving is often just one part of a labour of love that includes planting, weeding, harvesting, sorting, and processing. David enjoys every step of it. “The nice thing is you are always outside. I propagate my willows on a friend’s field. It’s so beautiful to see the colours of the willows, even in the winter when there are no leaves. Peaches and cream, browns and deep red, and then the colours change in spring. And the way it moves in the wind like a field of reeds beside a lake! You can work outside. You don’t need a shop or lots of tools. I just use a few awls and clippers. All the materials are directly from the land.”

The community hall fence is the ultimate green structure. No plants were killed, no materials were manufactured. Nothing was transported, other than some bundles of 10 ft. willow whips from a field down the road. The whole thing grew—and is growing and will continue to grow— from the earth, forming an enchanted circle around the place where Lasquetians celebrate, debate, and share song, dance, and stories.

All the materials are directly from the land.

THE RICH ROAD TO RECOVERY

BY TARYN STRONG, PHOTOS BY SYD WOODWARD/NIAMH STUDIO

For many years, I carried heavy feelings of unworthiness around money. Whenever I found myself with cash overflow, I felt an urgency to give it away or spend it quickly, just to relieve myself from the responsibility of holding onto it.

Money felt like power to me, and I didn’t know how to stand in my power back then.

As soon as I cashed a paycheque (remember those days?), I’d find a way to dissolve any form of savings. Almost instantly, I’d feel a sense of relief, as if I no longer had something anyone needed.

But then something curious would happen: the guilt and shame cycle would kick in. I felt guilty when I had money, then shame when I didn’t. There were so many situations in my life where money haunted me.

I maxed out my first credit card at 18. I hadn’t even had it for more than a couple of weeks. After that, I kept racking up debt, which led to a series of consolidation loans throughout my 20s. Some would say this sounds terrifying, but, to me, debt was a comfort zone. Not having more than I needed was a place I felt safe.

abuse at the time, and I found myself relying on spending as another way to satiate my need for “enoughness.”

I am proud to say that I am now drug free, alcohol free, and mostly consumer-debt free (I have a mortgage, so I’m not completely debt free). None of this would have been possible without my desire to take my power back through a holistic and varied approach to healing, with somatic trauma therapy, coaching, yoga, herbalism, and community.

I was in and out of recovery from substance To me, debt was a comfort zone.

Ironically, it was getting rid of everything I had that made me feel safer.

For too long, this was my self-sabotage cycle with money. I wouldn’t allow myself to want it, and I wouldn’t allow myself to hang onto it. At the same time, money would make me feel temporarily happy in that fleeting moment when I could spend it all to fill a void.

These days, I am an empowered woman when it comes to money. I look at it in terms of building generational wealth, and I now teach women how to build wealth in a way that aligns with their integrity and values. It’s about reimagining capitalism with models of business that focus on collaboration, accessibility, shared power, nourished nervous systems, and abundance.

I am creating new money standards for myself by scaling my business to multiple six figures and creating the freedom to volunteer for the non-profit I co-founded to support other women on their journeys to recovery.

I don’t feel guilty anymore. I have witnessed money become an amplifier and I feel excited knowing that good people (by and large) do good things with money. Generous people have the capacity to be more generous.

It took me years to get here, but once I did, I finally understood that money isn’t always bad, or filthy, or greedy. Money can be supportive, playful, and freeing. I am evidence that when one woman heals herself, she heals her family and her community. And the world needs our healing now more than ever.

These islands are alive with the sounds of writers. You may find yourself wondering: Was that a downy woodpecker or a poet on a laptop in the woods? Am I hearing the wind whipping through the cedars or is that just a novelist rearranging their chapters? And then, if you’re lucky, you might hear the most literary sound of all—silence.

Those who are ink-inclined have always flocked here for the solitude and the rooms with a view, and Michael Christie is no exception. May hearing about his aweinspired practice inspire some awe in you as well.

WITH MICHAEL CHRISTIE

GREENWOOD AUTHOR MICHAEL CHRISTIE TALKS WRITING FUNDAMENTALS

THE INNER WORKINGS

What motivated you to commit yourself to writing for a living?

I suppose it’s the fact that I’ve tried many, many other things and nothing seems gratifying in the deep way that writing is. And I should point out that there’s a big difference between committing to doing something and actually being able to do it! In the past, I’ve written

while needing to work many different jobs (the front desk at a homeless shelter, at an art gallery, and doing construction to name a few), and the fact that I’m now able to write full-time is a blessing that I’ll never take for granted.

What was your biggest learning curve in becoming a writer?

Probably learning to structure a narrative. It took me ages to understand how to actually organize a complex story in a way that a reader can grasp with almost a deceptive kind of

ease. And this particular learning curve will probably never flatten out. Because the more I write, the more I realize just how complex a thing it actually is to do.

Where do your stories and characters come from?

Books I’ve read, random memories pulled from my own life, things I observe out there in the actual world. William Faulkner once said that writing is part imagination, part observation,

and part personal experience. Every writer has a different mix of these, but I estimate that I write with a fairly equal blend of all three.

Your most recent novel, Greenwood, combines themes of wealth and power, environmentalism, and family connection. Are these topics of special interest and concern to you?

I mean, I often wonder how environmentalism couldn’t be interesting to someone living today, with the dire warning signs of our devolving climate plainly visible for all to see (and worry over). But I suppose that with Greenwood I wanted to take a deep look at humanity’s evolving relationship with nature over four

generations, perhaps in hopes to describe how we got here in the first place. And, naturally, this included an investigation of greed and wealth. Oh and families always have interested me as a fictional subject, and probably always will. A family is the oven in which a person is made. What’s more interesting than that?

How would you describe your writing style?

That’s a tough one! I like to believe that I don’t have a particular style, much in the same way that people believe they don’t have an accent—that is, until they travel outside their culture. But, of course, I must. Embarrassingly, in my earliest stories I tried to write in this sort of tough, Hemingway-esque narrative voice. (Lots of male writers do this, probably from insecurity.) But thankfully I abandoned that

pretty quickly. These days, I try to be lyrical and precise while remaining grounded in emotion and the needs of the story. Mostly, I make all my decisions based on the characters that I’m attempting to conjure up and let the style take care of itself. Sometimes I suspect that worrying too much over your writing style is akin to a marathon runner worrying about what their hair looks like during a race.

I’m a huge fan of the Russian writer Anton Chekov, who was a medical doctor, not to mention one of the greatest short story writers ever. He saw people with such honesty and generosity and wrote with this beautifully non-judgmental eye. Alice Munro is another writer who has inspired me a great deal, both personally and artistically. But I must confess that the idea of a mentor (both having one and being one) has always seemed sort of icky to me. There is an implied power imbalance to the relationship that I don’t care for. I prefer to have friends instead.

Definitely a person, and that person was undoubtedly my mom. She was incredibly creative and was into DIY long before the acronym even existed. She was also agoraphobic throughout her life and spent much of her time at home doing projects

and making things and reading every book she could find. She taught me so much about what it means to be curious, engaged, and willing to fail. It’s because of her that I’m an artist.

Do you have a mentor or particular literary figure from whom you draw inspiration?

Is there a book, piece of art, person, or experience that has greatly influenced you?

What are you most proud of?

My first reflex is to say my family, but it’s a weird word, “pride.” To me it contains a whiff of ownership, or a sense of one’s own personal accomplishment, which isn’t quite right for me. Maybe “awe” is a more apt word for the feeling I’m trying to describe. Of watching

people whom you admire grow and evolve and do their thing in the world. In my experience so far on this planet, pride is basically a useless emotion. I much prefer awe. Or the satisfaction that comes with trying your hardest at something, regardless of how it turns out.

THE OUTER CONTEXT

What drew you to rural island living? Is it isolating doing this work on a sparsely populated island?

My wife, Cedar Bowers, is also a writer, and she grew up on Galiano, so there’s definitely a family connection that drew us. But personally, I adore how harmoniously you can live with nature in a place like this. And I love to do jobs like fixing stuff or building things or growing things, and the island offers plenty of opportunities for all those—sometimes too many! Also, I’m kind of a solitary guy, which means I love the fact that it’s sparsely populated. I’ve spent a great deal of my life in cities, and though I still love to visit them (I’m writing this in a hotel room in Paris, which has been dizzying and fun), more and more I crave the quiet solitude of the woods, especially now that I’m getting older. Time spent alone fills me up. While time spent with people who I don’t really know depletes me. This is just a fact that I’ve come to accept over time.

When are you most content with what you’re doing?

There is a period, late in the composition of a book, when the pieces are all finally tumbling into place and you understand exactly what the book needs, and because of this you’re able to make changes and additions that feel

deeply fundamental to the story. Those days are the best, and a feeling of true contentment comes over me whenever this happens. My only wish is that it lasted longer!

You spent part of your life as a professional skateboarder—is there anything from that experience that you’re able to apply to your writing?

I know many people look askance at skateboarders (maybe the Olympics has changed this, but I doubt it). But, for me, it really was the first thing that I devoted myself to with everything that I had. I literally skateboarded every moment that I could, and in every moment I couldn’t (like say during Thunder Bay’s eight-month-long winters). I studied and memorized skateboard magazines. Skateboarding taught me that anything worth doing is going to be really, really hard. And that you’re still learning something, even when you are hitting the pavement more often than not. Lessons that come in handy for a writer, it turns out.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?

I’d do whatever it took to pay the bills, to be honest. I’d just try to find some work that was the least taxing on my mind and body, with the secret hope that I could write in my spare time with my spare energy.

Anything worth doing is going to be really, really hard.

WORDSMITH WISDOM

I take walks. Either in the woods or in the city when I’m there. I go running. I take my poor, old, creaky body out skateboarding. I chop wood. I chase my sons around our yard. I cook something for my family that is more elaborate than what I normally cook. I read books that I don’t need to read for work. In the evenings, my wife and I watch some of the great art that plays on the screens. But, over the years, I’ve learned that time spent relaxing is an essential

part of creative work. If you try to live in your book 24 hours a day, you’ll burn yourself out. Writing is so much more of a marathon than it is a sprint.

I’m a bit absent-minded, and in my early 20s I once took my car through an automatic car wash with all the windows rolled down. It was awful! But was that a failure? Though the car was soaked and the seats smelled like weird car wash soap for years, the experience was definitely interesting, and I wrote a poem about it later while I was in grad school. So, I suppose that I believe that the ideas of “success” and “failure” aren’t very useful. Either something goes as planned, or it doesn’t. Either the thing that an artist has made does what it’s intended to do, or they can’t get it to work quite yet. That’s basically all it is. Failure doesn’t really enter into it.

It has to be memento mori, which translates from Latin as “remember you must die.” Sorry to be morbid! But I believe that remembering the inevitability of death is one of the most important things we can do as human beings. And the purpose of most art is to remind us of this. The fact that time is limited is proof

that every single moment is precious and that the lives of others are just as precious as ours. It renders things like grudges and resentments and expectations for certain outcomes ridiculous, which is important as well.

What do you do to relax?

If you had a motto, what would it be?

What is your favourite failure?

Remembering the inevitability of death is one of the most important things we can do as human beings.

What advice would you give to a student about to enter the wider world?

Try to find things to do that you actually enjoy. Try to find enjoyment in the things that you are required to do. Don’t let your work-life swallow your life-life. Don’t let other people define happiness for you. Find people who

treat you well and who want what’s best for you. And don’t expect your life to assume the same shape as the lives of your parents or your peers. Take walks. Cook food. Read books. Keep a low overhead.

When you feel unfocused, what do you do?

Close the laptop or put down the phone!

Digital distraction is really the only thing in the world that makes me feel truly unfocused. The brilliant American writer Jenny Offill once said in an interview that screens make her feel “squirrelly,” and that’s pretty much the best description of this feeling that I’ve ever heard.

(My sincerest apologies to the squirrels, who may in fact be quite focused.) But it’s such a brutal modern paradox that the devices we require to stay connected with the world are the very same devices that disconnect us from ourselves so profoundly.

What are you excited about?

Right now I’m most excited for the long, dark, rainy winter and all the books I’m going to read while the fire is going.

Looking five or ten years down the road, where would you like to see yourself?

Alive would be good? As long as that’s possible, I’ll take whatever comes.

Michael Christie is the author of If I Fall, If I Die, Greenwood, and The Beggar’s Garden. His es says and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Globe and Mail

THE LUXURY OF WILD FOODS

BY HAIDEE HART PHOTOS BY HANNAH SPRAY PHOTOGRAPHY

I grew up on the remote stretches of coastal BC, surrounded by forests and wild ocean. Food was all around us. When we walked the beach, we’d gather sea asparagus to steam up with the mussels we would pluck from the tidal pools.

For a time, we lived in a little houseboat in a bay off Haida Gwaii, and my memories paint a picture of clams steamed on the woodstove most evenings for dinner, with a little pot of melted butter for dipping. We would gather chanterelle mushrooms from the forest, in that magical in-between world where the great Douglas fir trees meet the shoreline. We would sauté these wild mushrooms and pile them high on toasted, buttery bread. To me, as a child, this was the perfect breakfast, lunch, or dinner. My relationship with food was formed early on, steeped in the belief that true wealth was the abundance of what could be foraged around us.

In the early years after I met my husband, we lived in a rustic West Coast cabin just a few feet above the high tide line on a remote beach in Barclay Sound, with our water coming from the rain running off the roof, collected in an old oak wine barrel. I taught myself to bake bread while reading my way through all of Molly Katzen’s iconic cookbooks from the ’70s, feeling

her love of food transferring from the illustrated pages into my hands. This was a romantic, beautiful time on the coast, instilling an even deeper love and appreciation for fresh fish caught off the rocks, fiddlehead ferns harvested deep in the woods, oysters collected at low tide, and bunches of deep ruby rhubarb stalks that, with a bit of luck, could be grown in the rugged environment of a West Coast garden.

True wealth was the abundance of what could be foraged around us.

As I reflect now, many years and four grown children later, my relationship with food has also grown and changed in some ways. But I still believe that our true wealth lies in the richness of our environment, and I would rather find my ingredients in the forest and along the shores than in a shop.

That said, I’ve been a chef now for many years, and I have a kitchen full of ingredients from all over the world that I appreciate and work with every day. Finding the balance and beauty that can be created between the ingredients that come from far and wide—as well as those that have been grown just a few feet from our kitchen—is my everyday work. In our gourmet food shop, we make dishes that we love to eat, driven by our passion for food and our connection to the growing seasons. The farmers, fishers, growers, and producers around us make our days in the kitchen exciting, and we do our best to create beautiful, delicious dishes with the tasty ingredients we receive.

I often find that when I’m tired or having a hard day, I want to make the most simple, nourishing meal from ingredients that I mostly always have on hand.

The first recipe I will share with you, recipes prepared by myself and Avery Hunter, “Braised French Lentils with Roasted Squash and Breadcrumbs”, is just that—designed to work with what we have, with ease.

The second recipe, “Wild Grits,” also starts with very simple, easily found ingredients and is then enriched with some lovely wild-harvest additions.

To me, this is true luxury. Rather than spending money on higher-priced ingredients, it is the privilege of taking time to walk through a field, a forest, along the shore, or even through an area in the city that has an abundance of wild things growing.

I hope you enjoy settling into your kitchen on a blustery day to make these comfort food dishes. To me this is one of life’s simplest pleasures.

I would rather find my ingredients in the forest and along the shores than in a shop.

Braised French Lentils with Roasted Squash and Breadcrumbs

Serves four people

Braised Lentils

1 cup French lentils – rinsed

2 carrots – peeled and diced

2 onions – diced

2 celery stalks – trimmed and diced

2 bay leaves

500 mL diced tomatoes – canned, or fresh if in season

3 garlic cloves

3 cups stock or water

3 thyme sprigs

1 rosemary sprig

75 mL balsamic vinegar

Roasted Squash

1 squash

– butternut, acorn, or your personal favourite Olive oil

1 tsp salt

3 Tbsp brown sugar

A pinch of chili flakes

Za’atar Breadcrumbs

1 ½ cups dried bread

Olive oil

Salt

½ cup za’atar mix*

(10 tbsp each marjoram, oregano, thyme, lightly toasted sesame seeds, 5 tbsp sumac, 1 tsp salt)

Instructions

Heat a cast-iron pot on the stove and add a good glug of olive oil. Once oil is warm, add onions and sauté until translucent. Add garlic and sauté for one minute. Add carrots and celery. Cook until both start to soften but still al dente. Add the tomatoes and bay leaves. Add the rinsed lentils and cover with stock or water. Add the herbs and season to taste. The liquid will reduce, so you can always add more salt after. Turn the heat down to medium low and pop a lid on.

Braise the lentils for 25–30 minutes or until tender. Once cooked, take off the heat and let the lentils sit with the lid on for ten minutes so they soak up the last of the liquid. Stir in the balsamic vinegar and check the seasoning.

*Combine thoroughly. Store in an airtight jar at room temperature for up to one month.

To prepare the squash, quarter it lengthwise so you end up with nice wedges. Toss wedges in a bowl with the olive oil, salt, brown sugar, and chili flakes until well coated. Lay all the pieces cut side down on a parchment-lined baking tray and roast at 425˚F. After ten minutes, make sure the side that is down has a golden caramelization and then flip so the other cut side is face down. Roast until the squash is soft but still has some texture (about eight to ten minutes).

While the lentils and squash are cooking, make the za’atar breadcrumbs. Za’atar is a strong herb mix that you can find in Middle Eastern grocery stores or at a boutique food shop. But I highly recommend you make your own—and lots of it—because you’ll want to put it on everything.

Blitz your stale bread in a food processor. Once it’s the desired size (1-2 cm), toast it in a dry pan until the bread has a bit of colour and there is no moisture. Toss the breadcrumbs with a little bit of olive oil and the za’atar in a bowl. Season to taste.

Once all the elements are cooked and ready, it’s time to plate up. Place the squash wedges face up in four bowls. Spoon the braised lentils onto the squash and top them with a healthy handful of za’atar breadcrumbs.

Wild Grits

Serves four people

Grits

1 cup cornmeal

4 Tbsp olive oil (plus extra to drizzle on top)

4 cups vegetable stock

Salt and pepper to taste

¼ cup butter (optional)

¼ cup Parmesan (optional)

Pickled Rosehips

1 cup rosehips – deseeded

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup white wine vinegar

¾ cup chanterelles– foraged, or bought from a mushroom picker Olive oil

Salt to taste

2 grand fir twigs

Instructions

Start with the pickled rosehips. They can be done a week in advance and kept in the fridge. (However, they are best prepared 24 hours before serving and can stay in the fridge in an airtight container up to one week). Slice the rosehips in half, scoop out the hairy seeds, pack the deseeded rosehips into a jar. Heat up the sugar, vinegar, and water. Once the liquid reaches a simmer, pour it over the rosehips. Let the liquid cool and store it in the fridge until needed.

To make the grits, add the stock to a 3-litre pot (big enough for the grits to expand). Bring to a simmer and add the cornmeal. Continue to stir the grits until the mixture thickens (about five minutes). Cook the grits until the kernels are soft and creamy. You might need to add more stock if it reduces too quickly. You want the grits to be slightly runny, but not soupy. Once the cornmeal is done, add the olive oil and season. If you’re adding butter and cheese, now is the time.

While the grits are cooking, tear the chanterelles in half lengthwise or in quarters if they are big. Heat a large cast iron pan. Add olive oil. Once it smokes, add the chanterelles. The goal is to cook the chantarelles quickly, softening them a bit, but not making them mushy. After 15 seconds, add a good pinch of salt and sauté until all the liquid has evaporated and the mushrooms have nice colour.

To plate, portion the grits evenly between four bowls. Place the sautéed chanterelles on top and scatter the pickled rosehips over everything. Make sure to get a bit of the pickle liquid on there. To finish, drizzle some olive oil on top. Then take the fir twigs, strip all the needles off, and chop them very fine. Sprinkle a bit over the bowl of grits. It may seem weird, but trust me. It will add an amazing forest flavour to this rich and earthy meal.

THE BIG MONEY QUESTION

Fairy Godmothers Wave Their Wands for CoHo Landing

BY LAURA BUSHEIKIN

“So where’d you get the money?” That’s what almost everyone asks eventually.

Creating a 15-household land co-operative that provides affordable housing on 89 acres isn’t a cheap undertaking. Our project, CoHo Landing, has never applied for grants or government subsidies. Our set-up is too idiosyncratic for that, our attitudes too do-it-yourself.

But even though almost all our members fall into the low-income category, we found a way to finance our dream. The process took much perseverance and showed us that sometimes help comes just when you are about to give up. For us, this help took the form of three fairy godmothers who each appeared, as if by magic, when we were most in need.

Over a decade before we broke ground, an initial group started meeting regularly, full of hope and determination. We researched other communities, studied regulations, hammered out a common vision, and learned about consensus decision-making and rainwater catchment. Eventually, one sunny spring day, we went to look at a property.

It had a cleared building site, a drilled well, proven septic capability, and lots of trees. I remember standing in the clearing with six other people and turning slowly in a 360°-circle. The sunlight filtered through the branches of Douglas fir and cedar, the air smelled of green growing things, and the eyes of my companions looked brighter than I’d ever seen them. “This could be the place,” someone said.

The next day, we sat in a circle. We needed $50,000 for a down payment. The question on the agenda was how much each of us could contribute. These were our answers:

- “I’ve got $2,000 in a term deposit. It could be available tomorrow.”

- “I’m supposed to start work at the café, and if that works out, I could pay maybe $50 a month.”

“I’ve got $75 right now and when I get my next cheque, I could probably throw in another $75.”

- “If my harvest goes well, I could contribute maybe $5,000.”

- “I’m pretty much living week-to-week when it comes to money, but I’m working on some ideas.”

- “I talked to my parents about making me a loan. They said no, but I’m going to try again.”

A long, heavy silence followed. It was like our hot-air balloon had sprung a leak. After that, our regular meetings fizzled. Some group members drifted away. The dream didn’t die, but it went into stasis.

Creating a 15-household land co-operative that provides affordable housing on 89 acres isn’t a cheap undertaking.

Then one day Shaun Woods, one of the original members, shared some news. He’d been contacted by a man named Gary who had heard about our project. Gary didn’t look like a fairy godmother, but that’s what he was to us. He was a huge man, with a big voice and a big personality and a big heart. He also had a big problem and a big dream. The problem was his health: Gary had diabetes and a heart condition, and the prognosis wasn’t great. The dream was to spend his last years being part of an intentional community. He was moving to Denman with one goal: to join us and help get the project started.

And—he had money.

Gary was an unusual hybrid—a leftist radical who was also a savvy investor. He was willing to provide a chunk of cash to help buy land. Our group— some of the same people, some new ones—started meeting again with renewed energy. Gary fit right in, and his bright enthusiasm was worth as much as his money.

During this time, we got lots done. We incorporated as a non-profit co-operative and created a constitution. We drafted some membership policies and got partway through a vision statement. Learning from the past, we made sure that all members had at least some financial means.

This time, when we went to look at a piece of land, we did so knowing that we had a chance of buying it. Then tragedy struck. Gary died suddenly of cardiac arrest. Everything ground to a halt.

A few months later, we heard from Gary’s executor. He had left all his money to a foundation, but the staff there had heard him talk about “the Denman project” and had freed up $40,000 to donate to us.

We bought property. It was bittersweet because Gary wasn’t there. But it felt like a great way to keep his spirit alive. We moved ahead with the next step: rezoning the property so that it would allow multiple homes that would remain affordable in perpetuity.

We soon hit a major hurdle. At our first public meeting, where we presented the project to the community, a man we’d never met stood up and said he was a neighbour. We thought we’d talked to all the neighbours in advance, but his property was kitty-cornered to ours, and we hadn’t included it. That, he said, was a big mistake, because he believed the project posed a grave threat to himself, his ailing wife, and the neighbourhood.

He vowed to fight it tooth and nail and to organize with others to create a unified opposition. Inflammatory articles and letters started appearing in the local newspaper. Local government meetings started to resemble battle zones. Rezoning became a nightmare. Again, the balloon was deflating, fast.

The message from all the banks was consistent: There was no way a project like ours could get a mortgage.

We started looking for a new property and found one we thought would be perfect—bigger and more central. We put in an offer. It was accepted, subject to the sale of our original property and confirmation of financing. We just needed to borrow several hundred thousand dollars to complete the deal.

That’s when we found out what the banks thought of us. “He literally laughed,” said Shaun, reporting on his meeting with a loan manager from a big bank. “She literally pointed at the door,” he recounted after his next meeting with another big bank.

The message from all the banks was consistent: There was no way a project like ours could get a mortgage. We would need to restructure, moving away from our membership-based co-operative to a standard strata corporation—an expensive process that would run roughshod over our values. And each of us would need to prove enough income to qualify—not a likely proposition.

The hot-air balloon was plummeting. The deal fell through. Meetings fizzled. We argued among ourselves about what to do next. Again, some members left.

That’s when our second fairy godmother appeared. One day, I got a phone call from a local business-owner. “I just bought

the quarter section on Denman Road next to the Fire Hall. That’s the piece your group was trying to buy, right?” he said. “I was thinking we could work something out—subdivide it into a few lots, with one going to your project, the rest to me. This way I get to make some money while also supporting you.” He offered to hold the property while we sorted out our financing and rezoning.

We made it work with the help of the third fairy godmother: our tiny local financial institution, the Union Bay Credit Union.

The folks at the credit union didn’t laugh or point to the door. Instead, they listened, took notes, congratulated us on our vision and perseverance, patiently worked through the complexities involved in needing 15 signatures and 15 mortgage approval forms, and bravely adapted to our sometimes tedious consensus decision-making process. They gave us a loan of almost half a million dollars to complete the purchase and build infrastructure.

Not long after, we were finally able to stand on the land and say, “This is our home. This is our dream come true. Let’s start building.”

This story had a happy ending for us, but for many others it’s frustrating. By “others” I mean the people who ask us if our project can be replicated. People who come to us with dozens of questions because they want to do something similar. There’s a deep and intractable housing crisis, not just on Denman Island but on all the Islands and in much of Canada.

Could the CoHo Landing model work for others? Yes.

If you can replicate our idiosyncratic mix of assets: a group characterized by dogged perseverance, key skills, and an arguably irrational comfort with risk, along with a (mostly) supportive community, receptive regulators, and a series of magical financiers that appear just when the situation is dire.

If fairy godmothers really exist, then maybe we can dare to believe that we, as people and as communities, have the magic we need to make housing and land-share dreams come true.

Here are some things that could help:

• More fairy godmothers! Let’s encourage and celebrate generosity, risk-taking in service to community, and genuine partnership;

• Flexible and caring financial institutions that can think outside the box; Flexible funding programs that support innovation and can adapt to fit differently sized and differently structured projects;

• Regulatory systems that provide accessible, affordable, and simple options and processes for land-shares and housing;

• Tax breaks for properties zoned and regulated as off-market housing;

• A wide and deep reconsideration of the ways land is treated as a commodity for profit rather than a shared resource to be stewarded.

I offer this story as a prosperity spell, aimed at those who dream of sharing land, those who have the vision and courage to innovate, and for everyone willing to put energy into building communities where all beings have a home.

KATRINA RAIN

PHOTO BY SHANNON KAY

FOLKLIFE PARTNERS SHARE JOYFUL THINGS ABOUT THEIR BRANDS

Gulf Island Seaplanes

People bring us joy! Gulf Island Seaplanes is committed to providing the best possible service and that means our staff and passengers come first. A carefully selected team makes GIS stand out and attracts such a wide variety of loyal passengers and that is a rewarding part of our business. We enjoy connecting people to their family, friends, workplace, communities, and favourite parts of the West Coast. The new paint job on our DeHavilland C-FHRT is a close second . . . best plane around!

Salt Spring Kitchen Co.

When customers try our products at the farmers’ market or in our shop, I see the surprise and joy on their faces. Knowing that we are a small part of people’s lives while sharing a meal with family and friends makes all the hard work worthwhile.

Marchlight

Everything Marchlight creates is a joint effort between myself and my husband. Even our company name is derived from Mark (March) and Claire (Light). That’s our joy! Marchlight is us and we are Marchlight. The two of us see and process things so differently that what we create together is better than anything either of us could create individually. Plus, we love working together. It’s the best!

New Society Publishers

The most joyful thing about our brand is that it is a true reflection of who we are: our passions, values, hopes, and dreams of a better world, worn on our collective sleeve. It isn’t a gimmick, and it isn’t static; it changes and evolves as we learn, as the world changes, and it’s guided by the desire to come together and recognize our shared responsibility and interdependence, to imagine and co-create a just transition to a better future for all.

Randee Wilson Personal Real Estate Corporation

The moment where you first step into a house with clients and you just see the excitement light up their faces. The fact that you found them the perfect home they’ve been looking for—that moment makes all of the work worth it. It brings me joy every time.

AN ISLAND

BY RORY HOLLAND

Moving to an island is making a conscious decision to be inconvenienced. I have made that choice twice. It must say something about me.

In the fall of the time when we all feared, I arrived here with my share of the furniture and a broken heart. I lived among renovations, both of my new house and of me, maintaining a safe distance from everyone other than my limited allotment—my sister and my brother-in-law.

at a full dining table with neighbours and friends. It can take years before you’re not introduced as “new to the island.”

Arriving here alone is a reset. I say “alone” like it’s a bad word. It’s not. It is a hard word, though. There is a supposition with “alone” that it describes what, or who, isn’t there. There is an implied incompleteness. All alone.

I am inconveniently myself.

Weekly Zoom visits with my therapist were a welcome respite from simply talking to myself. I spent a lot of days walking where the water met the land—finding the edges, the limits of my new place. I had again chosen to live surrounded by the sea, a natural boundary from the people and things that had been so familiar to me.

I know what it means to be an islander. I know how long it can be before one earns that “right.” You know you’ve made it when your house is actually referred to as yours versus the previous owner’s, when you are recognized in the grocery store, invited to the book clubs, or find yourself sitting

These past couple of years, most of us have been living on our version of an island. Everyone has walked to the edge of their own exile, disconnected from the familiar, from eye contact and touch, from belonging. There has been a global discussion about how hard it is to be stuck with just oneself.

With apologies to John Donne, I am an island. Much like the place I live in, with all the hassle of ferries and less shopping choice, I am inconveniently myself. Once I am okay with that, belonging will come—with or without invites to the book club.

In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of the things not meant for you.

Oh, the places you can go . . .

Well-known for going that extra mile, Sean and Alison Evans are the team to fly you high above beautiful coastal British Columbia. Whether you are looking to get from A to B or to go on an excursion to see the sites, this proudly Indigenous company is who you’ll want to take you there.

Always going above and beyond. Fly with Gulf Island Seaplanes today.