the Acorn The Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy Number 33, Autumn 2006 They Need More of This! “They need MORE of this!” said one elementary teacher, love with the land. If we can get students to understand how referring to the Stewards in Training School Programs that ecosystems work and how everything is connected to the took all grade 4/ 5 students on all day field trips to Ford Lake health of everything else, they can’t help being awed with and Burgoyne Bay beach. Grade 6/7 students went to a Garry the wonder of it all. Our hope is by that understanding and oak meadow at the Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve. love they will become better stewards of the land than our A volunteer in the program was just as excited when she generation has been because they will “get it”, in a way that stated, “I wouldn’t have missed this experience for anything! we didn’t. Without a healthy environment we have nothing. Thanks to the superb creativity and organizational skills it Everything starts with and depends on a planet whose was great for both volunteers and kids.” ecosystems are intact and healthy. ”A grade 5 student exclaimed, “I have learned so much. This is a long introduction to let you know that the Thank you for arranging these field trips.” As one particular Conservancy is proud to announce that we have received enthusiastic grade 7 student put it, “I love Garry oaks. I never funding to continue with our Stewardship in Training heard about them before but now I love Garry oaks”. Program this year thanks to the Gaming Commission and to “I love Garry oaks” That is it in a nutshell. Falling in Continued on page 11 Inside: President’s Page .............. 2 Director’s Desk ............... 3 New Planner .................. 3 Features Salt Spring Coffee Co. 7 Natural History Bent Twigs .................. 4 Events Calendar ...................... 6 Event Notes ................. 6 Inside SSIC Green Pilgrims Guide ... 8 Hilary Brown ............... 8 Deborah Miller............. 9 Ashley Hilliard ............. 9 Ten-year Members ..... 11 Garden Benches ......... 13 Staff Biologist ............. 14 Stewardship Snake Sites ................. 10 Essential Details ........... 15 http://saltspring.gulfislands.com/conservancy President’s Page Authenticity: The Rise I usually catch things on the third bounce, so “authenticity” probably had joined the Top 100 Buzzwords by the time I heard a business leader use it this spring while chatting and Fall of Meaning about the place of tourism in our community. ingredients for the authentic community. Necessary, but not “The best thing we can do to attract the visitors we sufficient. At least two more are required. want,” he said, “is to be an authentic community. Just be Any settlement can have authentic individuals in it, and ourselves.” still miss the mark at the level of community. The move from Then I remembered seeing the term in our 1998 Official person to community is more than a matter of arithmetic. Community Plan. One of the Plan’s goals is “To ensure that It involves a shift from I to We, from the self-achieving, our community continues to function as an authentic, idiosyncratic self to the organic community that surrounds resident-centred community in the face of internal and us, that embraces or rejects us, that makes us more or less than external pressures to change and grow…” we can be alone, that pre-dates and outlives us, that shapes “Authentic.” It has the truth of the oboe’s “A” that brings and is shaped by our wholehearted residence. Community other players to pitch. I like it. authenticity is harmonious with the character of current I was still mulling it over two months later when the members, but out of its longer history and comprehensive host of a CBC talk show remarked that people who are memory it emerges into something more. creative with computers can live where they want to, and The other element essential for the authentic community that they are shopping around for authentic communities. I is rich relationship to landscape. In part this is the trial – and was glad enough to hear my positive reaction seconded; if a – error work of adjusting community form to local nature. phrase is on talk radio it’s mainstream. I took a bit of issue Common sense eventually shapes a community to fit safely, with the way the whole conversation developed, however. conveniently and efficiently within the floodplains, bluffs, These folks, lucky enough to be creative with the medium of swamps and shorelines of its surroundings. Beyond that is the millennium, seemed to be shopping for authenticity as the never-finished work of adapting communal to natural they did manicured lawns, brew pubs, views of mountains function. The authentic community lives with its landscape, and colourful autumn foliage. Something to buy into. My not on it. The land provides, the community cares. The ruminations had taken a different direction: some old- community asks, the land replies. The community’s fashioned notion like “if it is worthwhile you probably have boundaries are not the obvious limits of dense habitation or to earn it.” the political territories of governance but the entire area of Still feeling picky, I thought that to be authentic a thing continually adjusting, mutually dependent human and non- only has to be true to its character; genuine but not necessarily human societies. admirable. A town could be authentically bigoted or violent. I do think the term “authentic community” is full It could even pretend to be genuine and still be authentic, if of meaning and instruction. Yet, I’m afraid for its future. it had the character of a con artist. I’ve seen new and hopeful phrases rise and fall before. “Quirky,” I thought,” but I’d better pick up a cooler “Sustainable development,” for example, was offered in 1970 kartoffel.” by an ecologist who hoped it would do more than smooth It takes time for a community to achieve authenticity. off the rough edges of human expansion – that it would New places rarely possess it. Remember the New Towns express limits to growth, turn us from “more” to “better.” that were the concrete expressions of Utopia after WW It spread, became a cliché, cheapened, and finally became II? Planned by visionaries and hired consultants, they had interchangeable with “sustainable growth,” a simple-minded every feature avant-garde engineers, architects, landscapers, bovine for sure. Today the revolutionary intent of the term sociologists, educators and designers of infrastructure could has vanished, drowned in misuse and perverted into a want. But they didn’t have authenticity, and most didn’t marketing gimmick for yet another gated housing project. last long enough to get it. And think of the thousands of We greenies haven’t been very careful with our own new bedroom towns fringing every older city in North language. My eyebrows arch every time I hear the term America. Most are less than half a century old. Some are “sensitive ecosystem,” for instance. I just don’t know what forming right now, tight-packed groups of obscenely huge it accomplishes. Every ecosystem (another fuzzy word homes and condos springing out of yesterday’s dairy farm, when it leaves the ivy tower and reaches Earth) is sensitive leaving just enough space for the formulaic mini-mall and to something. The biota of the remotest arctic ice pack is short-grass dog latrine. The computer gurus aren’t looking being clobbered by a one or two degree rise in mean annual for authenticity there. temperature. Tundra plants are damaged easily by the Time and joy-packed, failure-ridden living are essential Continued on page 14 2 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy Director’s Desk 2nd Eco-Home Tour a Huge Success On August 6th, the Salt Spring Island Conservancy and Salt operating costs. Hearing these dedicated homeowners speak Spring Island Earth Festival Society showed close to 600 so passionately about their creative and sustainable building residents and visitors ten eco-homes and home renovations practices was definitely a highlight of touring the unique by Conservancy members on the second annual Salt Spring homes and beautiful gardens. Eco-Home Tour. Sustainable home technologies on the The Eco-Home Tour and Sustainable Home Building tour included: windmill power, rammed earth, hemp straw Forum was only possible with the overwhelming support bale, cob, water-catchment, masonry heating, solar, and of the following homeowners, volunteers, businesses and grey water systems. With support from the Conservancy, organizations: the Earth Festival Society organized a Sustainable Building Earth Festival Society, Adina Hildebrandt & Andrew Forum on the eve of the tour. Haigh, Paul Burke & Anna Gustafson, Denis Hoddinott, Elizabeth White, Rita & Denny Thomas, Becky & Paul Niedziela, Axel Dollheiser & Juliet Smith, Marcus Gasper & Eva Kuhn, Sandra Harrison, Marion Pape, Pat Parkes, Ann Stewart, Mark Broderick, Ellen Taylor, Meror & Mike Krayenhoff, Maxine & Steve Leichter, Chris & Carole Scott, Manfred Pape, Helen Goodland, Peter Ronald, Katherine Atkins, Eila & Holly Allgood, Zillah Parker, Nora Layard, Daniel Logan, Charlotte Argue, Maria Dammel, Elizabeth Buchanan & Larry Woods, Nancy Braithwaite, George & Nancy Slain, Lois Sprague, Katherine Atkins, Roger Middleton & Sylvia, Leslie Wallace, James Falcon, Ruth Tarasoff, David Borrowman, Linda Horsfall, Dick Willmott, Chris Drake, Ruth Tarasoff, Elehna De Sousa, Thrifty’s, Island Star Video, The Royal Canadian Legion, Alan Goldin To kick off the weekend’s events, architect and keynote & Manon Levesque @ Morningside Organic Bakery & Cafe, speaker Helen Goodland, Executive Director of BC’s Adina, Andrew, Gretta & Carrie @ Salt Spring Books, The Sustainable Building Centre in Vancouver, spoke to a crowd Driftwood, EcoNews, Ian Garthshore, Nicolette Brinkhoff, of more than 200 at Meaden Hall.