CV Collective Spring
Many people might be surprised to learn that one of the most successful astronomy news sites on the Internet is published from right here in the Comox Valley. Depending on what’s going on in the cosmos, between two and four million people land on Fraser Cain’s Universe Today website every month. Some of his YouTube […]
Words by Ryan StuartFeatured photo by Sara Kempner
CV Collective Winter
Colin Garritty has an enviable job. Four days a week, all winter long, he gets paid to ski and snowmobile the mountains of Vancouver Island. Somewhere different every day. Locations like: Mount Cain, the Prince of Wales Range, the Beadnell snowmobile area, Mount Apps, and Paradise Meadows. In a couple weeks he ticks off more […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhotos by Colin Garritty
CV Collective Fall
You don’t need to be an oyster farmer or sport fisherman for the daily ebb and flow of the ocean to impact your life. The tides influence everything from swimming conditions at Goose Spit and flooding in Lewis Park to a visit to the Royston Wrecks or a sail to Tree Island. We’ve all been […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhotos by Luke Phillips
CV Collective Summer
In 2008, novice paddleboarder Norm Hann hatched a plan to travel by stand-up paddleboard (SUP), with boat support, along the proposed Northern Gateway tanker route from Kitimat, British Columbia, south to the open ocean near Bella Bella. The expedition and the film that came from it, Standup4Greatbear, would highlight the traditional food harvesting areas of […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhotos by Bruce Kirkby
CV Collective Spring
I don’t remember the summit of Mount Colonel Foster. I know I stood on it with my friends, Chris and Sean. I know we signed our names in the summit registry. But all that I remember is panic. By the time we topped out, it was nearly eight o’clock at night, we were only halfway […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhoto by Sean Kerrigan
CV Collective Winter
Growing up in the Comox Valley, Mal Irvine, who uses they/them pronouns, often felt uncomfortable. They were assigned female at birth and curtsied to “societal pressure to just fit in with norms,” but when they looked in a mirror, they never saw a woman. This cognitive dissonance didn’t hold them back—on the contrary, they became […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhotos by Meredith Rose
CV Collective Fall
Watching John Waters scramble up a rock face is like watching a monkey climb a tree. A moment ago, he stepped off the ledge at the bottom of Devil’s Ladder, a climbing area on the shore of Comox Lake, and ambled up the nearly vertical rock wall with a nonchalance that suggests he’s spent most […]
Words by Ryan StuartFeatured photo by Sara Kempner
CV Collective Summer
What separates SOS Gear from other outdoor stores is not what it carries, but what it doesn’t. Like most gear shops, the store, located in a cul-de-sac across Cliffe Avenue from the Courtenay Air Park, is stuffed with covetable products. Sleeping bags, climbing gear, and face masks hang off the walls like kids at the […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhoto by Jenn Dykstra
CV Collective Spring
Sarah Wilson always loved her veggies, even as a kid. She attributes the craving to growing up in Rivers Inlet, a remote, very rainy, and now mostly abandoned village on the central coast of British Columbia (BC). Food came in by barge every couple of weeks, and “rather overcast” weather stunted her mom’s attempts to […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhotos by Sarah Wilson
CV Collective Winter
One day, the Itatsoo Lake Trail will connect the community of Hitacu, near Ucluelet, to the lake hidden in the rainforest nearby. It will be a place for members of the Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ (Ucluelet) First Nation to get some exercise, access foraging opportunities, and immerse themselves in the environment where their ancestors thrived. But in the […]
Words by Ryan StuartFeatured photo by Scott Horley
CV Collective Fall
The last in our series imagining how the Comox Valley’s communities could look 20 years from now. It’s hard to believe that Comox was once considered a creaking retirement destination. With solar-powered golf carts zipping between its permanent artisans’ market and botanical garden, the town has a diverse, vibrant, and eclectic economy with a community […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhoto by Luke Phillips
CV Collective Fall
The third in our series imagining how the Comox Valley’s communities could look 20 years from now. How quickly we can adapt. That’s the underlying message inside historian Kristen Cohen’s new book, 2020: The Year That Changed Courtenay and the World. The anthropology professor at North Island University traces everything from ubiquitous public […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhoto by Jenn Dykstra
CV Collective Spring
The second in our series imagining how the Comox Valley’s communities could look 20 years from now. MAY 2, 2040 At exactly 10:24 p.m. on May 1, Mother Earth breathed a small sigh of relief. Economists at the provincial Ministry of Climate Change Prevention say that was the minute the village of Cumberland […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhoto by Jenn Dykstra
CV Collective Spring
I’m inching along the narrow ridge leading to 5040 Peak, a ski on either side of the crest, mushy spring snow in between, and an ugly consequence in both directions. I should be gripped, but all I can think about is riding a horse—or to be more precise, the expression “au cheval.” It’s mountaineering jargon, […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhotos by Alex Mackay
CV Collective Winter
This year, we’ll be exploring possible futures for the communities of the Comox Valley based on current community planning processes, local and global trends, and conversations with community leaders. Our starting place? Union Bay. Hi Dad, You are not going to believe who I had a drink with yesterday. Or where we had […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhoto by Alexandre Crouzet
CV Collective Fall
If you know what to look for, the signs of the Comox District Mountaineering Club (CDMC) are everywhere. A new log bridge near Indianhead Mountain. Brush cutting along the trail at Slingshot Meadows. A gnarled trail sign, weathered grey, on Mount Becher. Tent pads at Helen MacKenzie Lake, or flagging tape leading to Idiens Lake. […]
Words by Ryan StuartFeatured photo by Ryan Stuart
CV Collective Summer
Jessica likes to eat her pot. Preferably in a gummy. But it could be years before she can buy them legally at a store in the Comox Valley. Jessica may not be her real name, but she is a real person. After a long shift at work her back aches, and in the past she […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhoto by Ultimate Grow
CV Collective Summer
Ian McKenzie sees things. These hallucinations started when he was a kid. He would hear voices while sitting in a room alone—sounds that weren’t quite English, so he called it the “gibberish language.” Seeing things came next. When he stared at a flat surface, strange combinations of lines, strokes, squiggles, and bumps appeared. Now 31, […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhotos by Ian Mckenzie
CV Collective Spring
At one time she was probably a sporty trimaran, moored inside Comox Harbour. Then, during a fall wind storm her buoy lines broke. She ghosted across the water and ran aground on the mud flats of the Courtenay estuary. Three years later, her name has long faded away. The double mast and one pontoon gone, she […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhoto by Sara Kempner
CV Collective Winter
Around 11am on a sunny Monday, Dan Espeseth, Sean Manara, and Chris Hancock show up for work. Instead of riding to their usual job at Dodge City Cycles (DCC), they drive the logging roads above Cumberland to the end of spur, park their trucks, load up their tools, walk into the clear cut, and start shoveling. […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhotos by Jenn Dykstra
CV Collective Winter
What a difference a year makes. I’m watching a small train of two-foot waves roll through a pack of paddlers at the start line of the 2017 MOMAR. One of these paddlers is Carl Tessman. A year before, in this same race, even calm waters caused Tessman stress while in his surf ski, a speedy sit-on-top […]
Words by Ryan StuartPhoto by Dave Prothero
CV Collective Summer
On the water, the fastest way between two points is rarely a straight line. Sailing, surfing, paddling, it’s all about understanding and anticipating the rhythm and pulse of the wind, waves, and tides–and then reacting so you’re in just the right spot at just the right moment. For the last two decades the Robinson’s have […]
Words by Ryan Stuart
