There were fifteen of us, observing. The fact we were directly behind our Regional Director Noba Anderson added another dimension to someone’s promise that we were watching her back. Yet this Strathcona Regional District Board Meeting seemed less strained than the one a month ago. On February 14, 2019, the board passed a motion that will result in SRD staff responding to 32 Cortes Island emails.
Fourteen Cortes Island residents unleashed a political avalanche, when they filed a legal petition in the Supreme Court of British Columbia last month. Close to half of the island’s voters have signed an open letter protesting the petition’s “unfounded and mean spirited” allegations, as well as ways in which they suspect the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) may be complicit. Now, amidst mounting criticism, the SRD Board will not listen to the presentations two Cortes organizations hoped to make at their February 13, 2019, meeting.
They paddled almost every day, sometimes more than fifty kilometres a day. The two women were at sea for three months. They started in the icy waters of Glacier Bay, Alaska, meticulously tabulating the impact of single use plastic everywhere they camped. I heard the story of Mathilde Gordon’s 2,042 kilometre kayak adventure during her recent visit to Cortes Island.
Almost a month after they filed their petition in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the havoc left fourteen Cortes residents continues to spread. On Thursday, January 24, 2019, the Strathcona Regional District Board took a vote which, in the short term, largely left Cortes island sidelined.
