the

Acorn
The Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy Number 29, Spring 2005

Mount Erskine
Help Us Reach for the Top!
The Board asks for your generous financial support
for this important acquisition by the Conservancy. A
donation and pledge form is included on page 3 for your
use. Please call Charles Kahn (537-1899) or Peter Lamb
(537-4859) if you have any questions.
We would also be delighted if you could help with
our campaign in any way or have any creative ideas for
fund-raising.

- Peter Lamb and Charles Kahn

www.mounterskine.org
The Ultimate
Peak Experience! Inside:
photo: David Denning AGM & Elections ................2
President’s Page ...................3
Director’s Desk ....................3
We are pleased to announce that we have reached agreement with the owner for the
Erskine Pledge Form ...........3
purchase of the 40 ha (100 acre) parcel of vacant land, which includes the summit of
Events
Mount Erskine. Successful completion of this acquisition will result in the protection Calendar...........................4
of a large, contiguous area of undeveloped or covenanted land on Mount Erskine. Event Notes
The property contains spectacular arbutus and coastal Douglas-fir forest, (which Imagining the Worst .....5
B.C.’s Conservation Data Centre classifies as an “ecosystem at risk”) along the edge May in July! ..................5
of a dramatic cliff, as well as some wetlands and Salt Spring’s largest habitat for hairy Travelling the Dempster 5
manzanita. This privately owned property also includes a vital portion of the trail Eco-Home Tour ................9
network from Collins Road to Toynbee Road and provides spectacular views over Features
Stuart Channel and Vancouver Island from the peak’s summit and western ridge. The Living Whole in a Divided
World ...........................6
purchase of this 100-acre property will secure this popular trail, now and for future
Nightrise, Dayfall .............8
generations.
Chocolate Lily ..................9
A major fund-raising campaign has begun in earnest to raise the required Inside SSIC ............................
$650,000 total purchase cost by August 31, 2005. This amount includes related Nancy Braithwaite ............8
acquisition expenses such as appraisal, legal, baseline study, fund-raising and future Kudos
land management expenses. Pam Barry ......................10
This will be an ambitious campaign for us and we need to have a solid base of Susan Evans ...................10
financial support from Salt Spring Islanders if we are to attract other major funds in Nina Raginsky ................10
the short time available. Broom Pullers .................10

http://saltspring.gulfislands.com/conservancy
AGM and Elections ‘05
Salt Spring Island Conservancy
Annual General Meeting
Friday, May 13th, 7:00 pm
Lion’s Hall, Ganges

Tie a string around your finger, cross your palm pilot, mark
your calendar - do whatever it takes to remember your
Conservancy’s Annual General Meeting.
Our 2005 agenda includes a slide show by a very special
speaker, Dr. Rob Butler, entitled “The Web of Life.” You’ll
hear reviews of highlights of the year from our inspired and
tireless committees, Pres. Peter Lamb will offer perspectives
from Mount Olympus, and Exec. Director Karen Hudson
will tie the efforts of board and committees to fundraising,
membership, volunteers, and office management.
You will be able to vote on an increase in membership
fees to help offset increases in rent and postage (among other
things).
You will also elect new directors. This year Samantha
Beare, Maureen Bendick, Charles Dorworth, Linda Quiring,
Brian Smallshaw, Bob Weeden, and Doug Wilkins will let
the calendar move them smoothly into year 2 of their 2-
year terms. Nigel Denyer, Jean Gelwicks, Peter Lamb, Rachel
Ogis and Ruth Tarasoff, apparently no wiser than when they
agreed to serve in 2003, have chucked their chapeaux onto
the pile on the floor and are at your mercy.
Two candidates, Steve and Maxine Leichter, are fresh
faces. They found land on the Island 10 years ago and began
readying for the move (2003) from Los Angeles. They are
just finishing their pro-environment home on Mt. Belcher,
which features low-energy appliances, an off-the-grid solar
electricity supply, and water catchment.
Other clues to their approach to life are scattered
unobtrusively all around: moss divots back in place after
construction dislodged them, piles of decaying Scotch
broom, footpaths avoiding every possible patch of blue-
eyed Mary. Maxine volunteered for the Conservancy her first
year here, helping to write our successful stewardship grant
application. She was, in fact, a grantwriter by profession in
California. Steve is an attorney, a seasoned negotiator, and
an experienced business person.

Guest speaker Dr. Rob Butler will present a slideshow Rob Butler is a senior research scientist with the Canadian
on the “Web of Life”. government and an adjunct professor of biological sciences
at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
He has written over 100 scholarly publications for scientific
“The high tide had pushed a
journals and authored several books. His most recent book
large flock close to the marsh
is The Jade Coast, a popular account of the ecology of the
edge, and their twittering calls
north Pacific Ocean.
periodically erupted in a din of
Dr. Butler’s main research interest is the ecology of
chirps as flocks rose from the
marine environments. Recent emphasis has been on bird
beach. Some flocks began to
migration, mostly of shorebirds; the ecology of great blue
form into long lines in the air
herons in coastal environments; and the ecology of Dr.
and climb higher in the sky. I
Butler’s research has been reported on national science radio
followed with my binoculars
programs, featured on television and in magazines. He has
their silhouetted shapes against
served on the executive of scientific societies and has received
the reddening sky until the dots
several awards for his research and conservation work.
became specks and the specks
Dr. Butler earned his doctoral degree from the
merged with the sky. Their
University of British Columbia and lives in New Westminster
next stop would be the Copper
overlooking the Fraser River.
River delta. In my imagination,
I flew with them.”
R. MacVicar photo
– The Jade Coast

2 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

President’s Page

Governing Environment
PLEDGE/DONATION FORM
Few could deny that effective governance of Salt Spring
and, indeed, all the Gulf Islands is critical to the work of the
Conservancy. It is important, therefore, that we monitor and
Mount Erskine Property
participate in, when necessary, the activities of the Islands
Trust and the Capital Regional District.
Salt Spring Island
To do this, we have recently established a new standing
Committee on Environmental Governance which will Yes, I would like to make a
monitor legislation, regulations and programs affecting donation/pledge to help acquire the Mount
environmental governance on Salt Spring and recommend Erskine property!
actions to be taken by the President and the Board where
appropriate. It will be taking an active role in the proposed I would like to donate/pledge:
OCP review and related potential bylaw changes. If you have $50 $100 $250 $500
an interest in this topic, please let us know. $1,000 $5,000 $ ___________
There is no doubt in my mind that 2005 will be a pivotal
year in the evolution of the Islands Trust and, hopefully, the
I would like my donation to be anonymous.
strengthening of the original vision of our Islands as a special
and sensitive environment worthy of real preservation and
protection. Your Conservancy intends to remain vigilant. Donations: Please make cheques payable to
Salt Spring Island Conservancy and specify "Mt.
- Peter Lamb Erskine Property." A charitable tax receipt will be
issued for donations fo $20 or more on
Director’s Desk
satisfactory completion of the total financing.
Saturday Market
Pledges: For pledges, 21 days notice will be
Spring is here and for Salt Spring Islanders, the arrival of given before the funds are required. A
spring flowers also means the infamous Saturday market- charitable tax receipt will be issued for
in-the-park has begun another year. For the Conservancy, contributions of $20 or more.
this means the beginning of our 5th annual bench raffle
in the market, and the quest to enlist volunteers for shifts
every Saturday from May 21st to the draw at the Fall Fair on Name:
Sunday, September 18. Volunteers work with partners for Phone:
three-hour shifts, either morning or afternoon, and sell raffle
tickets. The driftwood bench, designed by local artisan Luke Email:
Hart-Weller, is so beautiful that the tickets sell themselves.
Address:
We also need volunteers to do office work, a weekly GVM
receipt collector, and assistance with this summer’s big
fundraiser: the Salt Spring Eco-Home Tour on July 31.
The Conservancy has now joined the AIR MILES®
Reward Program. We will be giving Conservancy Air Miles Postal Code:
Cards out to members to show at participating merchants for
points towards flights and other items needed for our work. Signature:
Please let us know if you want a card or more information Date:
about this program. We are also collecting Canadian Tire
dollars to enable us to buy tools for broom removal on our
nature reserves. You can drop these at events or the office, Mail or fax this form to:
Salt Spring Island Conservancy
or mail them to us. Locally, we have a receipt box at GVM,
Box 722, Ganges PO
community chest number #58 at Thrifty’s, and you can Salt Spring Island BC
credit your bottle returns to us at the SSI Refund Centre. V8K 2W3
Happy Spring! fax: 250-538-0319

- Karen Hudson

Spring 2005 3
Conservancy Events

Upcoming Events
May 13th (Friday): AGM 7:00 pm Lions Hall
Salt Spring Island Conservancy Annual General
Meeting.
Dr. Rob Butler, a senior scientist with the Canadian
Wildlife Service, will present a slideshow on the “Web
of Life”.
May 21st (Saturday): Birding with Bob at Ford Lake.
Sign up at 538-0318.
Annual Report Available
Our brochure-format annual report is available:
• online: http://saltspring.gulfislands.com/conservancy
• as an e-mail
• at our office: Suite 201, Upper Ganges Centre
• at Conservancy AGM and later events
• at the SSIC table, Saturday market

June 10th (Friday): 7:00 pm Community Gospel

Chapel
Ronald Wright - New talk from this year’s CBC Massey
Membership Fee Increase
lecturer and local writer. Co-sponsored with Salt Proposed
Spring Islanders for Justice and Reconciliation (SSIJAR)
Members attending the AGM will vote on the Board’s
July 5th (Tuesday): 7:00 pm – Lion’s Hall proposal to increase membership fees in all categories by
Elizabeth May Book Tour. The executive director of $5. The new fees – to be applied when your current one-
The Sierra Club of Canada will speak about her revised or three-year membership expires - are:
and updated book: “At the Cutting Edge: The Crisis in
Canada’s Forests”. Co-sponsored by The Sierra Club of Youth under 16 1 yr @ $15
Canada. Senior/low income 1 yr @ $20 3 yrs @ $60
Regular single 1 yr @ $25 3 yrs @ $75
July 30th (Saturday): 7:00 pm – Sustainable & Regular family 1 yr @ $35 3 yrs @ $105
Environmental Home Forum Group/school 1 yr @ $35 3 yrs @ $105
Panel of speakers including Paula Baker LaPorte, Business 1 yr @ $55 3 yrs @ $165
architect and author of “Prescriptions for a Healthy
House” (Location TBA)

July 31st (Sunday): 10am – 4pm. Salt Spring Eco-

Home Tour Thank you to our business members:
A tour to the many unique examples of sustainable
homes located on Salt Spring. Look for Anchorage Cove B&B Salt Spring Centre of Yoga
announcements in the Driftwood. Tickets will be Baker Beach Cottages Salt Spring Centre School
available at Salt Spring Books. Balmoral By The Sea B&B Salt Spring Coffee Co.
Barb’s Buns Salt Spring Home Design
August 18 (Thursday): 7 - 9pm - Lions Hall. Beddis House B&B Centre
Join us for John Neville’s book launch “Travelling the Bold Bluff Retreat Salt Spring Island Chamber
Dempster” and CD release “Bird Songs of the Arctic- Bootacomputer of Commerce
Along the Dempster Highway”. Creekhouse Realty Ltd. Salt Spring Kayaking
All proceeds to the Mt. Erskine Campaign. Green Acres Resort Salt Spring Way B&B
Gulf Island Picture Framing Saltspring Linen & Dry
Island Escapades Cleaning
Volunteer to protect the environment for a few years and
Island Star Video Saltspring Soapworks
you’ll surely be called a do-gooder. Whenever that happens
Neil Morie - Architect Spindrift at Welbury Point
I treat myself to a wry grin.
Murakami Auto Body & Sprague Associates Ltd.
Given the choices of doing good, doing bad, or doing
Repairs Terra Firma Builders Ltd.
nothing, I don’t mind the label at all.
Salt Spring Books The Wine Cellar
RBW

4 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

 Conservancy Events

Event Notes
Imagining the Worst Travelling the Dempster
Ron Wright lecture, June 10, 7:00 pm John Neville Book & CD launch, August 18 7-9:00 pm
Community Gospel Chapel Lions Hall.
In our civilization, and in others from which we have Travel Canada’s fabulous Dempster Highway with
written knowledge, writers have expressed anxiety about the nature recordist and SaltSpring resident John Neville, the
human place in nature whether by mythology, theology, or Birdsong Man. EXPERIENCE the natural history of this
fiction. In ancient times this usually took the form of moral tundra wilderness in Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
tales set in the past, warning of the pitfalls of arrogance and ENJOY bird encounters that’ll make your ears tingle. MEET
recklessness. In modern times, ever since the industrial historical characters (recently disinterred) in Goldrush
revolution brought runaway growth and change, writers Dawson. EXPLORE with MacKenzie and Franklin above the
have focussed on the shape of things to come: a fate made Arctic Circle, and feel the heartache experienced by the Lost
more by man than God. Our cautionary tales have become Patrol and the determination of the Mounties tracking the
nightmare futures, dystopian satires in which the fears and Mad Trapper of Rat River. LEARN about aurora borealis, the
follies of the present are writ large. Porcupine herd of barren-ground caribou, willow ptarmigan,
Ronald Wright was born in England to a Canadian and much more.
father and an English mother, and now lives on SaltSpring
Island. A novelist, historian and essayist, he has won awards
in all three genres, and is published around the world in
more than a dozen languages. He studied archaeology
at Cambridge University and at the University of Calgary,
which awarded him an honourary doctorate in 1996. His
nonfiction books include bestsellers “Time Among The
Maya” and “Stolen Continents,” a history of the Americas
that won the Gordon Montador Award. Wright is a frequent
contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. He has made
radio and television broadcasts in Canada, Britain, and the
United States. In 2004 he gave the CBC Massey Lectures,
“A Short History Of Progress,” the book of which became a
national bestseller and is now being widely published abroad.
Conservancy members will remember his talk, based on “A
Short History...” last January.

May in July!
Elizabeth May, July 5, 7:00 pm
Lions Hall
Elizabeth May, Executive Director of the Sierra Club of
Canada, will visit the Island again to talk about her newest
book, “At The Cutting Edge: Crisis In Canadian Forests.”
Elizabeth is one of Canada’s most respected and effective
conservationists, and never fails to inspire and inform
audiences.
Her topic certainly is important here in BC, where
the Province has instituted a “results-based” code of Forest
Practices, a system in which forest leaseholders are trusted
to be good stewards - and nobody checks. According to the
West Coast Environmental Law Association this approach View from Mt. Erskine photo: Terry McIntosh
“ignores results, shifts control to forest companies, creates
red tape for environmental protection and inhibits effective
enforcement.”

Spring 2005 5
Comment
Living Whole in a Divided World
We live in a world of divided institutions and connected
problems. Common sense makes the full shape of problems
visible to us as individuals. The universal challenge is to bring
myriad narrowly focussed, turf-defending, responsibility-
denying institutions to the point of concerted action.
There is a typical example in our own backyard.
Many people live in Cusheon Lake’s watershed. Homes
and cottages ring the Lake. Many of their owners drink
treated lakewater. Residents and visitors boat on the Lake,
swim and fish in it, and enjoy its everchanging scene just
as people everywhere are drawn to water. Summer and fall
algae blooms have become more and more noticeable in
Cusheon Lake. Occasionally the bloom includes a massive
explosion of “blue-green algae,” actually a bacterium living
with a photosynthesizing algae. It produces a strong toxin
that resists boiling or filtering and makes you really sick if
you drink it.
What is behind this situation? Algae and cyanobacterium
populations are limited by the amount of phosphorus in
lake waters. Phosphorus piggybacks into the Lake on soil
particles washed in during rains, and from septic tank
leachates. A lot of “old” phosphorus is chemically bound in
lakebottom muds and sands, but is released when dead algae
drift to the bottom in numbers sufficient to rob deep water
of oxygen when they decompose. It mixes into the water
column during fall when cooling surface water, dropping,
stirs up the summer-warmed deeper water.
Surface runoff carries 60% or so of yearly additions
of phosphorus to the Lake. Reducing silt loads of overland
and incoming stream waters is the obvious action. Rocket
science it is not.
Nevertheless, practical evidence tells us it is easier to
send a rocket into space than to control phosphorus in a
neighborhood lake.The rocket involves more people and costs
more money, but one institution with one budget launches
the rocket. Cusheon Lake water quality, in contrast, touches
the narrow mandates of a dozen agencies, each with bits of
authority they may or may not be willing to use. They may
become “involved,” but commitment comes much harder.
(The difference? Well, think of the favourite North American
breakfast of ham and eggs: the chicken is involved, but the
pig is committed.) Moreover, an institution playing a key
role is not an agency, it is private property, which often has
the most obdurate walls of them all. Reducing phosphorus
means changing how individuals act on their land - how
they cut trees, site homes, build driveways, control drainage,
plow ground, and control livestock access to streams.
After years of lake-watching and some scientific
sampling, a goodly number of individuals and some agencies
understand the situation. Citizen work, both dogged
and inspired, has begun to move the creaking machinery.
6 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy
Through a Water Council, initiated and hosted by the
Capital Regional District, the Cusheon Lake Stewardship
Committee has made all key agencies and non-profit
groups aware of the situation. The Local Trust Committee
has helped the Committee produce a truly professional,
persuasive statement - a Management Plan - that will be the
prime educational tool for all stakeholders. It will be a long
time, however, before agencies actually do what they know
they should do, and even longer, perhaps, before property
owners, through education or changing rules of land use,
collectively reduce phosphorus-loaded runoff.
Our world moves rapidly toward universal subdivision.
Churches and sects parcel out religion and guard their
identities and followings. Business is highly specialized
so as to profit within a tightly defined market. Even huge
corporations , global in scope, are internally divided into
strongly walled compartments. Science and academe are
divided into disciplines and subdisciplines. Professions,
unions, governments - all are compartmentalized.
It is hard to be devoted intensely during the workday to
a narrow compartment of life and still think and act broadly
the rest of the time, not only because it boggles the mind but
because broad thought and loyal maximization of narrow
interest will always be at odds. Institutions punish doubt.
Nevertheless, people are compelled to try. This spring
I was awed by the scope of understanding evident among
a score of Mayne Islanders who met to talk about problems
of environmental protection on their home Island. Even as
they talked about seemingly small “issues” their discourse
ranged easily from local and regional economics, governance
and politics, demography, land use, and supra-regional
environmental change, to the natural history of their own
landscapes. They understood patterns and connections that
everywhere characterize the real world.
Conservation groups attract people with that sort
of mind. Yet as institutions such groups often act more
narrowly. They specialize in litigation or lobbying, land
acquisition, education; in whales or butterflies, in deserts or
forests, and so on. Or they tailor a broad constitution, then
prioritize rigidly. Practicality demands it. There are only so
many volunteers, only so much money, only a few fleeting
days to seize an opportunity.
I accept all that as inevitable, not as desirable. Somehow
conservation groups need to make sure that their neighbors
(by that I mean the entire community of people whose
actions both create and resolve problems) understand not
only the project-specific wins and losses time brings, but as
well their broader context and meaning. Every neighbor will
cherish our model, which is of lives lived whole in a divided
world.
- Bob Weeden

Good Stewards - Nancy Braithwaite
Roots are important to Nancy Braithwaite: her family’s, her
own, and the thousands of trees in her care. Roots mean
choosing well and with a whole heart, and sticking to it. Her
family have owned land on SaltSpring Island for almost a
century, and she has made her home on Trincomali Ridge for
18 years. She is a founder of SSIC and a loyal supporter.
Nancy’s land lies on the ridge that rises strongly from
Trincomali Channel near Walker’s Hook, strides smoothly
west for 2 kilometres and plunges boldly into St. Mary Lake.
From the uppermost windows of her home there is a grand
view of a stretch of Trincomali and of Galiano’s west side,
but from most of the rooms the view is of nature’s variegated
green and Nancy’s informal gardens.
The backyard shrubs and trees grow rampant, chasing
light and moisture. Nancy may apologize for their sprawl,
but her bent toward tidiness is overcome by her reluctance
to amputate or uproot. “The birds love the tangle of this red
osier,” she says. “This bay tree is a bit wild, I’m afraid,” she
says.
Nancy Braithwaite was designated a “Conservation
Steward” during the Conservancy’s 2000 stewardship
project.
A footpath - the kind your feet feel even as your eye is still
looking - leads from the driveway around an orchard fence
and into the woods. You follow it, aware of the sawn stubs on
either side at intervals that tell you how hard the wind blew
A doorway to where?
photo: Peter Lamb
Spring 2005
Inside SSIC
last winter. Otherwise the feeling is of following the trace of
a meditative stroller who wants to leave everything unhurt.
Here the path is just below a gentle ridgetop, rising soon
to rockier ground where cedars are few and arbutus many,
dipping into salal under mixed fir and cedar. The trail forks.
One is closed to us because of fallen trees; it would drop
eventually toward Malcolm Bond’s farm, turn west along the
boundary, and close its loop at Nancy’s home. The other rises
over the ridge, then twists and turns at the very edge of solid
footing as it parallels a lovely swale full of yellow-candled
skunk cabbage. Soon you are on her driveway again.
This drive, perhaps 200 metres long, is laid out like the
casual trail you just left, except for a somewhat wider person.
Its turns preserve mysteries ahead while following the best
footing and avoiding every possible wetland and elder states-
tree. Occasionally you see a stub of cedar or alder full of
the prospect holes of several generations of woodpeckers.
An owner knowing and valuing nature less would call them
ugly and cut them down.
While Nancy cares for them these woods will simply
“be,” doing everything they are meant to do, busy even while
an unattuned visitor is accusing them of doing nothing.
Thirty of Nancy’s 37 acres are covenanted, giving the forest a
chance to do its marvelous “nothing” halfway to forever.
- Bob Weeden
7
Feature
Nightrise, Dayfall
Each day fades as light withdraws from the eastern lee of
tall things: a mountain, a wood, a barn, a tower. In cities
we scurry then through a geometry of shade and light, first
blinking at a sun-blazed intersection and then submerging
into semidarkness as comfortably as a water-ouzel leaps in
and out of a stream.The band of afternoon sun climbs storey
after skyscraping storey until it vanishes into thick air. At
dusk there is only the imperceptible bounce of blue or pink
from distant motes of dust and vapor. At first dark on the
peopled streets impossibly high noctilucent clouds may still
glow. When even they are gone, it is deep night.
We sleep dreamlessly, or dream sleeplessly, or perhaps
toil in the night. A watchman going home meets a baker
arriving. They pause to talk. They note the brightening of the
eastern sky. A cloud, having stolen unseen across the night-
smothered land, shows itself first as a colorless texture, then
as a passage of pink flame, and finally as a single float in a
parade of yellow and white. Sun strikes the tallest spire, then
slips smoothly down each glass and steel or brickwork wall,
carrying daylight onto each shoe of the awakening city.
For billions of years earth and its riders have seen the
night rise at end of day, and day fall at the end of night.
For hundreds of millenia these events have bracketed every
day, been recorded in the human brain, directed our bodies
through the daily dance. For how long have tongues woven
stories around the flight of sun and stars? For how many
centuries have hands written the science, the religion, the
poetry of spinning earth? Why, then, does no one speak of
nightrise and dayfall, but of their opposites? In my own
tongue we say”nightfall,” or “darkness falls,” there being no
word in dictionaries for the rising of the dark. I’ve made no
survey of languages - itself an interesting task -but know that
the Spanish speak of “la caida de la tarde,” the fall of night;
Germans have no phrase suggesting whether darkness falls
or rises; and in French “la nuit tombez.”
When it dawned on me that night did not fall, my mind
danced. After all, we ordinary folk make only one personal
discovery in our lives, which is that whatever we think or
say has been thought or said before. Once, and once only,
grace gave me a claim upon discovery when, one summer
day on an ancient hill in central Alaska, I rested beside an
arctic flower unknown to botanists. It was a joy to find the
hiatus in Webster and Oxford between “nightmarish” and
“night owl.”
I should have let well enough alone. Google knew what
Noah did not. “Nightrise,” it seems, is in an album title by
the music group “Phoenix,” and “Dayfall” is a new music
group working simultaneously on its first album and first
website. Worse, while enjoying H. M. Tomlinson’s “The Sea
and the Jungle” (1928) recently I found this:
8 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy
“...ascending that hill which looks with uplifted and
shining brow, to the far vague country whence comes the
last of the light, at dayfall...”
The ocean of existing print must contain more such
bits of flotsam, and riverine torrents of words here and soon
to come carry more. I have been warned. In his poem “Bats”
(Atlantic Monthly, May 2005) Mark Jarman watches them
“...skim the darkness as it rises,...”
I have to disclaim unique discovery, but console myself
that the company I am in is small and partly dead.
“Sunrise” and “sunset” are equally wrongheaded; more
forgivable, perhaps, because anyone can see night’s onset
every 24 hours and should be able to describe it accurately,
but can only take on faith science’s assertion that the sun
neither rises nor sets but merely hangs around while earth
spins toward and away from it.
Are we hoodwinked by a vast, poetic conspiracy? Or
does mankind have a flaw after all, an inborn and universal
dyslexia?
Of course, I could be the one with a contrary brain:
night may, indeed, fall. How do the other billions who see its
descent, explain it? Friends whom I ask just look bemused
. Is light more bouyant than darkness? (We do use “light” to
describe things less securely gripped by gravity.) Do particles
of darkness form in the still-bright air of late afternoon and,
like an invisible rain, drop downward to collect as puddles
of night? Or perhaps as the disappearing sun leaves lee sides
in shadow the air cools and, being heavier, sinks?
Skiing through an aspen wood at dusk, the trees dark
against pale snow, I have looked across openings and seen
the lances of a hidden sun ricochet to me from a distant
mountain peak. I have stood of a fragrant summer evening
in a dimming garden and, looking up at a sound, have seen
a sunlit jet carrying its passengers to a far city. Therefore,
right or wrong, I hold to my conviction that the night rises
every evening, having gone to ground the previous morning.
The darkness hides first in the valleys, then in the deepest
shadowy hollows, then in abandoned barns. Hounded from
its last surface refuge it goes underground, sometimes to be
surprised and unearthed by early morning diggers of graves
and miners of coal.
Language needs to adjust to reality; I could add “again,”
given the pace at which novelty outruns language today. In
this case, however, the new words need to embrace a reality
known since the dawn of time. Both “nightrise” and “dayfall”
are simple and accurate. The puzzle is to find words to tell
the truth about our morning turn toward the sun and our
evening turn away.
- Bob Weeden
 Natural History

Salt Spring Eco-Home Tour

July 31st: 10am - 4pm

A tour to the many unique examples of

sustainable homes located on Salt Spring.
Look for announcements in the
Driftwood about this exciting event
and a panel of speakers at 7pm, on July
30th. (Location TBA). This event is co-
sponsored with the Earth Festival Society.

Tickets will be available at Salt Spring

Books.

Call Karen at 538-0318 for more info or

to help out in any way.

Rammed Earth home on tour photo: Jens Fischer

Chocolate Lily
The chocolate or checker lily (Fritillaria lanceolata) is a
native perennial plant with delicate dark purplish bell-
like nodding flowers. The plant grows from a bulb with
numerous bulblets that look like grains of rice. As a matter
of fact, coastal Salish people used to dig up the bulblets and
eat them either steamed or boiled just like rice, although a
little bitter. Chocolate lilies are rare now; people keep the
sites of these lilies secret for fear of others picking them. I
had the luck to buy one from the nursery to be able to paint
this picture. My knowledgeable nurseryman told me that the
bulb takes 9 years to bloom. So never pick these wildflowers
or dig them up!
The chocolate lily is barely one foot tall. The slender
stem, slightly purplish-green, bends into a delicate curve
bearing a single (occasionally two) bell-flower with 6 petals
that are dark purple to chocolate with very even checkered
patterns. My pot of nursery-raised choolate lily is very pretty
with pinky mauve patterns on the flowers whose yellow
anthers add to the likeness with hanging bells. The leaves
are green, alternate, and lance-like. Fritillarias bloom from
March to May and can be found in grassy meadows and
bluffs. After blooming, the flowers form seed capsules.
If you see these rare beauties in the wild, enjoy your
lucky day!

- Ling Weston

Spring 2005 9
Community
Recognizing Volunteers
Veteran Volunteer Retires - Pam
Barry
Pam Barry began collecting Ganges Village Market
checkout slips from the Conservancy’s box back when the
world was young, 8 or 10 years ago. No pipes or drums, she
quietly brought them to us when the box needed emptying.
Our treasurer or ED checked the total and converted them
to cash, courtesy of the store’s generosity. We’ve received
hundreds of dollars over the years from that source (and
from Thrifty’s as well, whose system bypasses the need for
slips).
Pam is going on to bigger and better things, the logical
next step being PM. She’d get my vote. Our sincerest thanks
go with her.
Who will next take on this job? We need someone to
volunteer, perhaps a frequent GVM shopper. Call Karen at
538-0318, pick up a key, and you are on your way.
Flowering Plant Endangered
on Nature Reserve
A vigorous, well-known shrub with gorgeous yellow
flowers in May appears to be succumbing to negative
environmental factors on Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve.
Its population status, once abundant, has suffered several
partial, sudden declines in the past two years. The most
recent seems coincident with the presence on March 28
of 13 humans of various sizes, carrying pincer-pullers and
sharp hand implements. This armed force spread out on
trails along the Reserve’s west side. Havoc ensued. Tender
infants were tore up ruthlessly, healthy plants in their prime
were sacrificially secateured or cunningly levered out of the
ground. Even old-growth, some of it as much as six inches in
diameter, felt the fatal bite of sawtoothed weapons.
There appeared to be a hidden agenda involving
brainwashing of the young. One five-year-old, Aidan Haigh,
obviously had been subjected to cerebral laundering earlier
and was as hostile to the target plants as the calloused adults.
His sister Chloe, age two, was allowed to watch from a
backpack carrier, but was subjected to quizzing afterward,
before supper.
Although this Government, notorious for its
environmental policies, seems unwilling to act, there is a
citizens’ movement to place this lovely plant, favored by
haggis-chewers for generations, on the threatened list. To
join, email cygnus@saltspring.com.
10 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy
Evans May Get Life
Susan Evans, early SSIC leader and strong supporter
for a decade, has been nominated as Honourary Life Member
by the board of the Conservancy. Susan may have been a
day too late to be one of the founding directors applying
for incorporation, but as our first treasurer she was never a
dollar short.
Susan not only established our bookkeeping process on
a solid basis - we have always known where we stood and
have never jeopardized our charitable status - she also “kept
the books” for our first successful land acquisition campaign.
Susan accurately recorded pledges and payments for the Mill
Farm project, enabling us to turn over about $100,000 to
the CRD as Island residents’ good-faith contribution toward
purchase. Islanders’ respect for the Conservancy was so high
that when pledges were converted to cheques, cash exceeded
promises!
Susan participated fully as director as well as treasurer
until the 1998 AGM. She has remained a loyal contributor
and supporter ever since.
SSIC members will be asked to vote Susan Evans onto
the roster of Honourary Life Members at our AGM on May
13.
Nina Raginsky Recognized
Saltspring Island resident Nina Raginsky received
a Burns’ Bog Environmental Excellence Award earlier this
spring. One of the Island’s best known environmentalists,
Nina is also a highly gifted artist and photojournalist,
an officer of the Order of Canada, a member of the Royal
Canadian Academy of the Arts, and recipient of the Kees
Vermeer Award for wildlife conservation.
Nina’s love of nature is a daily practice. She has made
a jewel of beauty and wildlife habitat of her home environs,
including the marvelous mini-estuary of Walter Bay.
Seemingly tireless and surely fearless, she has committed her
life and talents to innumerable campaigns to protect wild
things and their homes. From eagle trees to heronries, from
eelgrass beds to mature forests, from anemones on wharf
pilings to beleaguered oystercatchers on sandspits, Island
wildlife are in her debt.
The Salt Spring Island Conservancy extends its thanks
and congratulations to Nina for this latest recognition of her
work. WELL DONE!
 Essential details

Office Update
Call for Submissions! Items Wanted:
You are invited to submit articles to the Acorn on Donations of any of the following gratefully received.
any topic, including: the Conservancy’s history, natural
Office Items Household Items Other Items
history, stewardship, and fundamental conservancy interests
Vacuum Cleaner Hot plate Saws, clippers
including selected issues beyond SSI borders. If you have
Speaker phone Electric tea kettle Compass
any ideas, write to us at ssiconservancy@saltspring.com or
Calculators Small refrigerator Loppers
PO Box 722, SSI, BC, V8K 2W3. Thanks!
Laptop Computer Hand secateurs
Thank you! We would also appreciate donations of gifts, such as new
Thank you to Brian Finnemore and Bob Andrew for books or items related to nature or conservation, to give to
donating GPSs to the Conservancy! our educational speakers, who volunteer their time.

Help Wanted: Stewardship Receives Grants

• Do you like talking to friendly people?
• Do you have 4-8 hours a week that you could volunteer
to the Conservancy?
We need YOU to help us schedule volunteers. We have the
volunteers, we just need some help calling them.
Please call Karen 538-0318 for more information.
The Conservancy is pleased to announce that it has
received $51,900 for its 2005 project: Habitat Protection
and Stewardship of Species at Risk on Salt Spring. This
funding has come from the Government of Canada Habitat
Stewardship Program for Species at Risk, the Vancouver
Foundation, and the Salt Spring Island Foundation.

The Acorn is the newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy, a local non-profit society supporting and enabling voluntary
preservation and restoration of the natural environment of Salt Spring Island and surrounding waters. We welcome your feedback and
contributions, by email to ssiconservancy@saltspring.com or by regular mail. Opinions expressed here are the authors’, not subject to
Conservancy approval.
Editor: Bob Weeden
Layout: Brian Smallshaw
Membership Application Volunteer Opportunities
Board of Directors:
Samantha Beare (Treasurer) We have a Volunteer Application Form
Maureen Bendick (Vice-President) Youth (Under 16) 1 yr @ $10 _
that best describes areas you wish to
Nigel Denyer Senior or Low-Income: 1 yr @ $15 _ 3 yr @ $45 _
Charles Dorworth
help in. For now, which areas interest
Regular Single 1 yr @ $20 _ 3 yr @ $60 _
Jean Gelwicks you? Please check off:
Regular Family 1 yr @ $30 _ 3 yr @ $90 _
Peter Lamb (President) ❒ Office Work (typing, filing or
Rachel Ogis Group/School 1 yr @ $30 _ 3 yr @ $90 _
computer work)
Linda Quiring Business 1 yr @ $50 _ 3 yr @ $150 _
❒ Information Table at Saturday
Brian Smallshaw
Ruth Tarasoff Market (May through September)
Name:
Doug Wilkins ❒ Education Programs
Address:
Bob Weeden ❒ Annual Fundraising Events
❒ Information Table at SSI
Postal Code:
Community Events
The Salt Spring Island Phone:
Conservancy ❒ Joining a SSIC Committee (Land
Email:
#201 Upper Ganges Centre, Restoration & Management,
338 Lower Ganges Rd. Fundraising, Covenants,
Mail: PO Box 722, ❒ Please send me the Acorn via e-mail.
Acquisitions, Education,
Salt Spring Island BC (We NEVER give out member’s email addresses to anyone!)
V8K 2W3
Stewardship, or Environmental
❒ This is a renewal for an existing membership
Office hours : Tues/Thurs Governance)
10 am - 2 pm ❒ Other: _______________________
Phone: (250) 538-0318 Donations
Fax: (250) 538-0319 In addition to my membership fee above, I have enclosed The Salt Spring Island
Email:
ssiconservancy@saltspring.com my donation in the amount of:
$50 _ $100 _ $250 _ $500 _ $1000_ $2500 _ $5000 _
Conservancy
Web site: Ganges PO Box 722
http://saltspring.gulfislands.com/ Other ___________ Salt Spring Island BC
conservancy Tax receipts will be provided for donations of $20 or more. V8K 2W3
Printed on 18% recycled paper

Spring 2005 11
 the Salt Spring Island
Conservancy
Ganges P.O. Box 722
Salt Spring Island, BC
V8K 2W3
40026325