Community Work
Hwmet’utsum (Mt. Maxwell) Community Park
New to Salt Spring, we were invited to launch a campaign to raise the final $350,000 needed to buy 75 acres on Hwmet’utsum (Mt. Maxwell) for a Community Park. In this way, we met so many community members, learned about Salt Spring and the issues that united and divided our wonderful islanders and helped save a mountainside as a place to appreciate nature and its gifts. Learn more about it here!
The Salt Spring Island Food Summit
Working with Michael Ableman of Foxglove Farm on the Community Park campaign raised our awareness about the urgent need to support our farmers to increase our food security on the island. Tarah Stafford, Jon and I gathered leaders from all sectors of the economy for a discussion about local food that led to many ideas with legs, and relationships were built that still carry these values forward. Learn more about it here!
Stqeeye' Learning Society Land Acquisition
I was deeply honoured to co-lead a campaign with my husband Jon for the acquisition of 10 acres in Xwaaqw’um (Burgoyne Bay) for Stqeeye’ Learning Society. With this base of operations on their ancestral lands, this amazing organization can continue its land restoration work, continuing the mi tse’ t’akw (Coming Home) campaign to establish a private space for youth land-based education, traditional plant nurseries, ceremony, and staff housing. Learn more here!
Indigenous Peoples Weekend
While planning a fund-raising event for Stqeeye’, we realized that there were potentially many local events that could happen around Indigenous Peoples Day and decided to make a long weekend of it. Three years later, we just celebrated the third IPW, now Indigenous-led and filled with cherished experiences, relationships and memories. Read more about it here!
Invasives Chipping Program
As the program manager for the Advocacy Circle at Transition Salt Spring, the Native Plant Stewardship working group, brought me a problem to solve – after 14 successful years of their invasive plant drop-off and chipping program, which reduces fire fuel and supports agriculture on the island, they were in need of funding to continue. I created a user-fee model and brought in CRD support to fund the popular program for the next three years and organized it with Deborah Miller, its creator. See a clip here!
Common Ground Summit
In my work at Transition Salt Spring, we wanted to identify the revisions needed in the Official Community Plan to balance the need for attainable housing with our mandate to protect our island and its ecosystems. We brought in Jon to create the Common Ground Summit to engage the broader community and identify the areas of consensus of which there were many. We published the Common Ground Consensus and fashioned the TSS submission to Islands Trust based on the great ideas that came out of that process. Learn more about it here!
Housing Minister Visit
After the success of the Common Ground Summit, MLA Rob Botterell asked TSS to organize a visit to Salt Spring by the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs Christine Boyle to learn more about Salt Spring’s housing situation. I organized meetings with local electeds of the agencies and improvement districts, their staff and a roundtable of representative community leaders that cemented an ongoing conversation with her office about much needed progress. Learn more about the visit here!
Hands Across the Water
CRD Director Gary Holman and Earl Rook, chair of the LCC, reached out to us for a meeting with Orcas Island sailors who wanted to build relationships across the border. Hands Across the Water, a friendship flotilla and cultural festival was born. With the Chamber of Commerce president Jason Roy-Allen, we organized three days of music, food, and panel discussions about affordable housing, shared ecosystems and indigenous family connections with the San Juan Islands. Learn more here!