Editor’s note: This fall 2024 issue is the last one of our tenth-anniversary year, and we’re taking a final look back at the last issue of our first year. The theme for Volume 4 (Fall 2015) was Movement, and there’s been considerable movement on all three of these stories in the past decade.
Wachiay Studio
In 2015, “Squeegee Valley” discussed the worldwide resurgence screen printing was enjoying, thanks in part to its versatility and low-cost entry point. Wachiay Studio in Courtenay was noted for playing a particularly important part in the local screen printing scene, and that is still very much the case.
In the past decade, many Island businesses have begun screen printing, thanks to the training offered by Wachiay and its co-founder, Andy MacDougall. This includes businesses that work in wood—one of MacDougall’s favourite substrates—like Cumberland Crate Company and Merville’s Kindred Snowboards. Thanks to the skills they picked up from Wachiay, both companies have added more detailed and colourful offerings to their product lines.
Wachiay Studio has also been busy with Comox Valley Schools, in particular developing innovative programs with SD71 Indigenous Education. All Comox Valley high schools now screen print. During the pandemic, Wachiay developed www.screentheworld.org, an online knowledge centre to help people anywhere start screen printing, which many schools and community-based printshops now use. And Art for Entrepreneurs, their Zoom-based screen-printing program for Indigenous artists in remote communities, helped start several enterprises that are still going today.
These days, Wachiay is primarily a textile printing operation, but also prints limited edition prints and posters, drums, and other materials; MacDougall remains involved on a project basis, but has handed the day-to-day operations to Scott Henley. The studio’s mission to pass the squeegee on to a new generation of screen printers continues.
Hakai Energy Solutions
In 2015, Hakai Energy Solutions (HES) was a three-man operation started, some years before, by Jason Jackson and Eric Peterson, founder of the Hakai Beach Institute. Their mission was to build a completely solar-powered off-grid development for the Institute at a former fishing lodge on Calvert Island, off British Columbia’s Central Coast.
Tim Ennis’s story in 2015 highlighted the Institute and the installation that HES created, which he described as “powered off the grid by solar and micro-hydro power and connected via satellite internet.” At the time, Jackson had no idea how solar-energy technology was about to take off. In about ten years, he says, “It went from being the most expensive way to generate energy on the planet to the cheapest.” He and his team have been front row participants in this transition. “It’s been really wild.”
Today, Hakai is the largest solar energy company owned and operated in BC, with 40 employees. The company is a Living Wage Employer, with an employee profit-sharing program and a commitment to local environmental causes. Their projects range from simple solar panel installations on homes (they’ve done hundreds of these) to much larger scale energy systems. Locally, the 121-kW Comox Valley Airport is one of their biggest projects; they’ve also installed solar on every school in SD69 (Qualicum). And they recently wrapped up the province’s largest off-grid solar energy system (a whopping 824 kW) at Clayoquot Wilderness Resort.
“The technology is miles ahead of where it was,” says Jackson, noting that the cost per watt for solar energy is about a third of what it was only a few years ago. “The landscape has completely changed.”
He claims to be “terrible at forecasting” the future, but with the ongoing boom in clean energy, there’s no telling where this innovative outfit will be another ten years from now.
Perseverance Trail Run
Sharon Fisher’s 2015 story colourfully described the experience of the run, its origins way back in the 1990s as a casual River Rats event, and its evolution in the 2000s under the guidance of the non-profit Perseverance Adventure Club (PAC) created by Lené Curts and Sarah Seads.
The run, which takes place not far from its namesake Perseverance Creek in the Cumberland Forest, has always been a fundraiser for the Cumberland Community Forest Society (CCFS). Over the years, the event has generated more than a million dollars towards CCFS’s work to purchase and protect the forest.
The original story noted that Seads took the reins after 2014’s race. (Sadly, Curts passed on in 2017 after a battle with cancer.) In 2021, Derek Kaufman, who recently opened Courtenay’s new running retail store, Foveō Running, took on the position of Race Director for PAC. Under his guidance, the run continues to grow, with over 600 participants and $69,000 raised last year.
“I am forever grateful to the River Rats, Sarah, Lené, and their volunteers, who built an incredibly strong foundation in our community that has allowed us to grow the Perseverance Trail Run and inspire the creation of other events with the same values,” says Kaufman.
The Perseverance 3K course is a cross-country run for all ages and abilities, while the 12K features a no-joke climb and a hard, fast descent. The 21st Perseverance Trail Run takes place on October 27—Halloween costumes are encouraged!
