Saltspring BC

It’s pretty cold in the mornings here on Saltspring Island, a small socially active “Green” community located between the southern mainland of British Columbia and Vancouver Island.

The first thing I have to do at 6am before the sun rises is to light the woodstove for heat...quickly followed by plugging in the kettle to make some hot java!

Jasmine isn’t liking to cold too much, and manages to pull the covers over herself and wait for sunrise at just past 7am.

Kate too, bundles herself up waiting for the warm glow of the Autumn sun to rise from the East where the big city of Vancouver waits.

Allergies have kicked in, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the dust and cobwebs that have accumulated in the cottage over the years. Today, Sunday, is cleaning day.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and have spent the first couple of days buying groceries, supplies and launching Duggan’s boat so we can harvest crab, prawns and maybe, if the sea Gods smile upon us, a salmon or cod. Yesterday, the outboard engine holder almost fell off the transom of the boat, and I had to pull the engine back in lest it plunge overboard. I managed to get to the hardware store before it closed, bought some stainless steel bolts and a wireless drill. Found some good pieces of wood, and re-set the mountings using the timber as a bolster to the stern of the vessel. Today will be the big test when I go and check the crab pots.

Saltspring, like the rest of the planet, has changed in the twenty or so years that I have been visiting. But surprising less than most places. It still has its unique hippy charm, lesbian activists and active retiree population. What was once frowned upon as being a fringe element of society, “socially active environmentalists” now call places like the Gulf Islands their bases, and those newbies who are looking to understand sustainability, now flock to the Islands like some sort of Mecca.

I think of myself as one of those who waxed eternal the importance of environmental stewardship, learning it equally from my parents, the Boy Scouts and the Duke of Edinburgh Awards where I achieved the Gold Medal. As a person who loves to fish, I only keep what I will eat, and ALWAYS, return those species that are too small or too few. Recently, I have become very involved in a number of projects relating to Clean Energy, and am in the midst of launching a solar power company.

It all starts at home though. My parents taught the importance of composting and recycling at a very early age. They still take used envelopes and put blank white stickers on them so they can be used again. My grandmother used to count how many sheets of toilet paper she used, and collected all sorts of things like pieces of string and wax paper. These generations learned from living during the Wars and Depression. It wasn’t that they were being consciously ‘Green”. They needed to survive. But their necessity evolved into what has become a mainstream doctrine in the West.

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