A glimpse of one of Vancouver Islands most beautiful trails…..

Vancouver Island Spine Trail : Cape Scott to Victoria (click to enlarge)

On Saturday June 26^th the Living Forest Communities team  participated in the inaugural Vancouver Island Spine Trail Relay. Everyone associated with LFC; Cathie, Alice, Tim, Claudia, Gayle, Gaurang and myself each completed a section of the Trans Canada Trail and finished a 30 km run from Camp Pringle to the Humpback Road Water Reservoir.

The Relay, organized by the Vancouver Island Spine Trail Association (VISTA), a part of “Hike BC”, the BC wing of the National Hiking Trail, started on June 5^th in Cape Scott and finished in Victoria on June 27^th. The main purpose of the Relay, which can be done by foot, bike or horse, was to increase community support for the development of the 700 km long proposed “VISpine” Trail between Cape Scott and Victoria. This impressive inland trail between the North and South part of the island offers hikers, bikers and horseback riders an adventurous route along mountain ridges, lakes, old growth forest and characteristic communities.

Vancouver Island Spine Trail Section 10: Camp Pringle > Humpback Road

When we received the invitation to run the portion of the VI Spine Trail, which would cross the Elkington property, we decided to take on this great opportunity to experience the Trail ourselves. On Saturday Tim and Claudia, kicked off a sunny start in Camp Pringle with 10 other runners. Then, my wife Cathie, our friend Alice and myself took over the running as soon as the group arrived at the North tip of the Elkington Lands.

Here we are with all of the Relay participants

The Relay participants showed a lot of interest in what we are doing at the Elkington Forest.  So during a short break I explained how the Elkington Community could become a main stop along the Trail, providing services like a coffee shop and Bed and Breakfast accommodation for hikers and tourists. The round of applause at the end of my talk surprised me, but showed how much support and enthusiasm there is for this unique development model on the Island.

Our friends Gayle and Gaurang eventually finished the final part of the trail and by the end of the Relay every one was talking about the gorgeous route and the great quality of the trail. Even a little bit of bushwhacking here and there couldn’t spoil the fun for us. It was a fun active day and what an amazing way to discover the potential of The VI Spine-Trail for our island. I am confident that the VI Spine- Trail will become listed as one of North-America’s top hikes and the Elkington Forest Community will be ready to welcome the Trail visitors.

A special thanks to all the participants, organizers and sponsors of the very first VI Spine Relay. I would like to thank Andrew Pape- Salmon and Gil Parker in particularly for their tremendous job as the main event organisers and congratulations to Andrew for finishing the complete Trail on foot or bike.

I hope you all take the opportunity to check out the Trail and hopefully we see you at the next VI Spine Relay in 2011!

For more information about the VI Spine Trail Relay please visit the Relay blog or www.vispine.ca

To check out more pictures of the complete Relay click on the following link

Doug

Petrina Dezall is the lucky winner of “The Future Belongs To Me” t-shirt contest.

The mother of 2 year old Venice and 3 week old newborn baby Madea shared her thoughts on the changes she would like to see in her area for her kids and future generations, she wrote the following…

“I would like to see for BC schools to use and teach composting foods to our children.  Also for communities to take initiative to create local composting centers, not only to benefit gardens but to cut down on waste.  I could go on and on. But composting is easy and everyone should do it.”

Yesterday, we made our little contest winner Venice very happy with his new T-shirt.   Thank you Petrina for sharing your thoughts and congratulations with the T-shirt.

One of the topics that arose all evening long, was the emerging idea of creating a forested corridor from Yellow Point Lodge northwest through the Yellow Point Park and Ecological Reserve, to Merve Wilkinson’s Wildwood Forest, and eventually to the town of Cedar, possibly on a recreated Morden Collier Trail system.  We are at a very early stage in talking about this concept, but the general idea is that it would be possible to use the Living Forest Communities model to acquire the land for this trail corridor, and complete a density bonus or density transfer option to build hamlets or small clustered developments on sites that would make sense.

The primary objective would be to eventually have a hiking/biking trail connecting Yellow Point Lodge to the Trans-Canada Trail near the Nanaimo River system.  Another objective would be to create an alternative to having a large number of sprawling 5 acre rural lots each with their respective road networks, driveways, wells, and septic fields.  This area contains a number of sensitive wetlands, ponds, lakes, steep and rocky ridges, as well as areas with mature vegetation in rich fertile soil.

Many residents of the area said that they believe it would be preferable to conserve the majority of the forested land and cluster the homes elsewhere in a smart growth pattern, and in a manner that allows for an economically viable solution.  If you are interested in this emerging concept, please do give us a call or drop us a line.

It could be that the conservation of a Yellow Point - Wildwood - Cedar Corridor could be the genesis for a second Living Forest Community on Vancouver Island.  We can’t think of a more wonderful location for establishing a conservation corridor.  And rarely have we experienced so much delight and optimism as we did on Friday night with this group of articulate, active and alive residents.

We look forward to your comments and thoughts, and will provide more information about this idea in the weeks and months to come.

It was a wonderful time for reflection at our household.  We had terrific storms on Friday and Saturday and several trees fell on power lines in our block, in the older,  tightly-knit neighbourhood of Gonzales in Victoria.  For the entire day we had a power line waving across our driveway, sparking on the grass and killing all the vegetation, grass and bushes that it touched.

No one was hurt, but we had an all-day power outage.  At first, people came out into the street or onto porches to make sure that their neighbours were OK.  And in the areas where it was safe, neighbours helped each other out in various ways, including chopping up fallen branches, and running small errands.  Even though the street was blocked off to all traffic all day by the Firemen, a few of us threw our bikes over the back fences and were able to run errands on bikes.  Otherwise it was a day of tea, chess and monopoly.

It was a time of community building, and I thought that at Elkington Forest we probably will also have times where the power will go out, and where we will need the community to work together.  So as we plan, we need to build resiliency and redundancy into the infrastructure systems.  We are planning for alternative energy/heating systems, and alternative means of ensuring access to water if the power goes out.  We also need to build the “community-ness” of our community so that neighbours err on the side of looking out for each other.  Part of this willingness to act as a community comes with the character of the people who choose to be the first Pioneers of Elkington Forest, and part comes with the very design and proximity of the houses and businesses within the hamlet, as can be seen in this rendering.

The physical design we can address. We have incorporated principles of New Urbanism that lead directly to a pattern of development that facilitates daily face-to-face interaction and connection within the Hamlets.  Here we are talking about the walkability of the Hamlets, the mix of uses, the proximity of the coffee shop and businesses to the trails, and the proximity of the houses to the public courtyards, community gardens and amenities.  That is something that we are very intentional about.

The question of who chooses to be part of this beautiful gathering — well, that’s up to you.  And that is perhaps the bigger component of what we mean when we talk about building community.  It will be the early Pioneers who will contribute the most to the ethos and culture of this conservation community.  It is you, the hundreds of people who regularly read this blog and stay connected who will form the basis of the first Living Forest Community on Vancouver Island.

So stay in touch.

My friend, Brandy Gallagher, of OUR Ecovillage in Shawnigan Lake ends all of her letters with a salutation that I love.  It reminds me of this great aspiration…because we are

“In Community”

Doug

Ayrie Cunliffe's rendering of the trailhead hamlet

What I noticed is that effective collaboration is similar to experienced paddlers where the strokes are simultaneous, balanced and highly efficient. There is not a lot of splashing or paddles waving about creating wind resistance.  The strength of the paddler in the bow, who sets the pace, is matched by the skill, strength and dexterity of the paddler in the stern, who is responsible for keeping the course.

This year will be about ensuring that collaboration and networking with other like-minded organizations is done with minimal distractions and weaving about. There are very few places where this type of  networking is possible, and recently there was an event at Joel and Dana Solomon’s place that promised to be such an event, so I wrote that blog to encourage people to venture into collaboration.  Read the blog and let me know what you think.

Thanks

Doug

So our conservation communities at Elkington Forest will be a deliberate attempt at re-connecting us with the various features of our watersheds, and then examining the impacts of our lifestyle choices on that watershed.

Then on Thursday, Feb 25th, I presented 20 slides to a packed house at the Victoria Event Centre and told a short concise story about Living Forest Communities. For each slide I was allowed twenty seconds to speak; no more. The structured format of Pecha-Kucha (Japanese for chit-chat) is challenging but fun. It is amazing what information is not essential when you only have 6 minutes, 40 seconds. So what is the priority message for the Living Forest Communities adventure? Saving special places, producing food, building a memorable sense of community, creating forest based jobs, and preventing industrial deforestation — these are the biggies.

Two very different formats and two different angles on the same message: what is it that we have lost in our current urban life, and what is it we need to regain?

Talk to you again, shortly.

Doug
PS, I really like this image of a direct connection between kids and the food they eat.

Kids love having a connection to the food they eat!

Here is a firm that has invested equity and provided valuable management input to companies such as Small Potatoes Urban Delivery (SPUD), Happy Planet, New Society Publishers, and Stonyfield Farms. These are emerging new products and services needed for advancing sustainability. Their annualized IRR over the long run has been an impressive 12.2%

Paul and I both gave 15 minute power point presentations about our respective investment opportunities, and then we answered questions. You know there are some intelligent people in Vancouver.

The evening was topped off with delicious food from One Planet Catering, a company that sources locally, has a zero waste policy, and makes everything taste and look wonderful. Michael Kraus, the genius behind OnePlanet, was born in Munich, Germany in 1966 as the grandson of a master baker. His passion for cooking and knowledge of food started at a very early age in the vegetable garden and the kitchen of his grandmother. He completed extensive formal training in Germany as a Chef and Pastry Chef and immigrated to Canada in 1992. Since then he has been promoting well being and environmental awareness through the medium of food. Thanks Michael. You provide a wonderful gift.

We are currently exploring a variety of sources of renewal energy for heating and cooling. On the site, we have discovered a massive aquifer, with a proven supply of 100 gallons of water per minute, for 100 days without recharge. This source would be adequate for all of the domestic water requirements, as well as a looping geo-thermal heating/cooling system. We are currently looking for either a private/public partnership or a joint venture partnership to capitalize this utility.

On the other hand, there is a large amount of slash from previous timber operations on site and close by, which could be used in a high-efficiency bio-energy heating plant. As part of the forest management program under FSC certification, we will be doing a certain amount of on-going thinning both for the health of the forest and to reduce risk of forest fires. The reduction of “ladder fuels” will prevent a ground fire from jumping into the canopies. While it is important to leave some material on the ground for soil replenishment, excess thinning can be used as part of a bio-energy program.

Also, the cost of solar panels has decreased and the efficiency has dramatically increased. So we have a lot of options and we are looking into all of them.

The more we spend time examining the options for creating a sustainable conservation community at Elkington Forest, the more we bond with the land. Anyone who is thinking of living at Elkington Forest, (and I know there are lots of blog readers who are contemplating this) you should join us on the site visits that we regularly organize so that you can really get to know the land.

For how can you really take care of the land and love it, if you don’t know what is there? Where does the snow melt first? How does the water get filtered as it passes through the various ponds and streams? Where are the Arbutus trees? Have you seen one of the relatively rare red-legged frogs? Have you been inspired by the beauty and charms of this lovely hillside in all of its seasons and colors? These are just some of the things that we observe during the site visits. What other inspirations you take away… well that is up to you.

On our way up the hill recently, we were greeted by this beautiful scene. It stopped me cold…I thought “How many people in the world have a front door like this?”

Here is the main road up to the top of Elkington Forest

Please stay in touch, both through this blog as well as through our facebook page. And a big welcome to the 80 new facebook page fans who have joined in just the last 10 days.

Doug Makaroff

After I spoke, Michael Nation, the Chair of the Victoria association, said something very interesting. He said that he had always felt like he knew what a sustainable community looked like. It was something like Dockside Green or one of the other laudable platinum LEED projects. But he said, more than 66% of BC is covered with forests and Vancouver Island has a similar percentage of coverage. He asked,

“What does a sustainable community look like in a forested rural region? Do we really know how to do rural sustainability?”

Because if we don’t have a well thought-out model for a sustainable community in a forested rural setting, then we are not applying sustainable principles to the majority of our region. Even though we live in this forested region, we are not applying what we know as sustainability professionals in BC, to one of our most severe problems - deforestation. He concluded by saying that we need to support the concept of conservation communities, and support the Living Forest Communities model.

It struck me that the LFC business model started as a means to finance a replacement to industrial clear-cutting, but it has become much more. With the new emphasis on food security, fire prevention, alternative energy, clustered hamlets, localized economic development, eco-tourism and minimizing single occupancy vehicle trips, we are now creating a climate change demonstration model community. Elkington Forest is a community planning for a transition to a low carbon future.

Thanks Michael, for a simple Christmas gift.

And to all of you, who read these blogs, some of you quite regularly, I want to wish you all a peace-filled Season of reflection and warmth, kindness and joy. Thanks for the support and encouragement.

Doug

Beautiful views from the Ridge View Hamlet platform

Yes, with the great weather, we have been doing some preliminary layout of the lots, mostly in the Trailhead Hamlet, but also within the Ridge View areas. Tim Hewett, on the left, just finished his Master’s degree in sustainability planning, and is starting a volunteer internship with us. Currently he is compiling our GIS (Geographic Information Systems) data with our lot layout information, so that it can be handled more easily on a GPS (Global Positioning System). Now it is easier to envision where the homes will be located, where the central courtyard will be and how they relate to the Trans-Canada Trail and amenities.

We frequently have people offering to provide free assistance or technical/manual labor for this concept - and we appreciate this grassroots level of support. Alison Clark, one of our part-time administrative assistants also came to us initially through a year long volunteer internship that she did while she was finishing her degree at UVIC. Thanks to Tim and Alison for their generosity.

I also have really enjoyed the days spent bushwhacking and cutting line. This takes me back many years to when I did surveying/engineering work as my first job out of university.

Doug Makaroff