OCTOBER 2016
PEOPLE | COMMUNITY | CULTURE
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Chantelle Bartsch
Conservationist, tattoo artist and huntress
Small Business Month
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Michael Duncan A Remarkable Life
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Dave Hamilton Alistair Taylor Kristen Douglas Mike Davies Jocelyn Doll Dean Taylor Debbie Baker Maria Kirley Jacquie Duns Darcey Wood Michelle Hueller Rachael Beckley Kristi Pellegrin Marnie Neaves Tammy Robinson
Wave is Campbell River’s leading lifestyle magazine. To advertise or learn more about advertising opportunities please send us an email at publisher@campbellrivermirror.com
Dave Hamilton
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Mike Davies
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Publisher
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COVER PHOTO BY CHANTELLE BARTSCH
Graphic Designer
OCTOBER 2016
PEOPLE | COMMUNI TY | CULTURE
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ON THE COVER: Local “huntress” Chantelle Bartsch doesn’t let any one of her many passions define her, despite them being integral to who she is. If those ideas sound conflicting, check out her story on page 11and see for yourself.
Chantelle Bartsch
Conservationist, tattoo artist and huntress
Small Business Month
“IMPRESS” Efficiently target your market online.
Michael Duncan A Remarkable Life
Wave is produced by: Wave magazine is published quarterly by Black Press. The points of view or opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher of Wave. The contents of Wave magazine are protected by copyright, including the designed advertising. Reproduction is prohibited without written consent of the publisher.
[2] WAVE MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2016
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contents OCTOBER 2016 | ISSUE #16
20
11
24
27
6
16-19
Chantelle baRtsCh
holmes on homes
a Whale oF a time
11. Conservationist, Tattoo Artist and Huntress.
20. Sometimes the starts just seem ot align and they certainly did for property appraiser Jordanna Holmes.
27. Former mayor, photographer, community development manager finds his niche.
miChael DunCan 6. Artist and author Michael Duncan looks to close his life’s book doing what he can for abused animals.
PuttinG CommunitY FiRst 24. Laurel Sliskovic has always been one to put community first.
small business month
halloWeen histoRY
16-19. Small business is a big economic engine.
26. Halloween traditions actually can be traced back to ancient Celtic rituals.
Fall GaRDeninG tiPs 10. The time is now to plant spring flower bulbs and garlic.
taKe YouR PiCK 5. While apples are a staple of autumn, they can be enjoyed all year long thanks to their widespread availability.
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[4] WAVE MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2016
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Though apples are enjoyed across the globe, many people associate apples with the United States of America. That’s in spite of the fact that the first apples were cultivated on the opposite side of the world from North America in Asia. There are more than 7,500 known cultivars of apples that produce various characteristics for flavor and appearance. Apples are often a topic of discussion in the fall, when many trees produce their largest bounties of fruit. Autumn is a good time of year to take a closer look at apples, and explore some of the most popular varieties for picking and eating.
APPLE ORIGINS Malus deomestica, or the common apple tree, is a descendent of apple trees that originated in Central Asia in what is now southern Kazakhstan. Apples have been grown for thousands of years in Asia and Europe. The original apple tree was the wild apple, or Malus sieversii. DNA analysis has confirmed that the wild apple is the progenitor of the cultivated apple enjoyed today. European colonists likely brought apple seeds and trees with them when they emigrated to North America, introducing that part of the world to the apple tree. Records from the Massachusetts
Bay Company indicate that apples were being grown in New England as early as 1630. Americans also enjoy the popular story of Johnny Appleseed, who was believed to have distributed apple seeds and trees to settlers across the United States. While apples can be produced from seeds, nowadays many apples are propagated by grafting so that they retain the parent tree’s characteristics of flavor, hardiness and insect resistance.
APPLES AND SYMBOLISM Apples have become the main symbols of many different stories and tales throughout history. Apples are linked to the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve and their ultimate expulsion from the Garden of Eden. However, the apple is never named in any of the religious texts as the fruit Eve picked from the tree of knowledge. Apples have appeared in fairy tales and folklore. The Brothers Grimm had the character “Snow White” fall ill after eating a poisoned apple. In Norse mythology, the goddess Iounn was the appointed keeper of golden apples that kept the Aesir young forever. Apples have also played a role in science, most notably Sir Isaac
Newton’s study of gravity. While myth surrounds the story of Newton and an apple falling from a nearby tree, it’s likely that witnessing an apple fall from a tree did spark something in the famed scientist.
MOST POPULAR APPLE VARIETIES Many varieties of apple stand out as perennial favorites. In the United States, the Red Delicious is the country’s most popular grown apple. It was called the hawkeye when discovered in 1872. The Golden Delicious is the second most popular grown apple in America. The Delicious apples tend to have mild, but grainy flesh that can fall apart when cooked, so they’re best used for snacking. Cortland, Empire, Fuji, Gala, McIntosh, and Macoun are some of the other most popular varieties. Those interested in baking with apples can select among Granny Smith, Jonagold and McIntosh. These apples tend to be crisp and tart and hold up better in recipes. Apples have been enjoyed for thousands of years. While apples are a staple of autumn, they can be enjoyed all year long thanks to their widespread availability.
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OCTOBER 2016 | WAVE MAGAZINE [5]
Mike Davies Campbell River Mirror
Michael Duncan remarkable life.
has
had
a
The 82 year-old has danced for the Queen of England. He’s been a forest ranger in Northern Ontario. He’s lived homeless on the streets to research unemployment issues for a book – one of over 16 he has written and published. He’s crashed a biplane. He’s started a theatre school. He’s curated museums. He’s an awardwinning artist who has owned seven art galleries. He’s taught both martial arts – he actually had a martial arts television show back in the 1970s – and creative writing courses and he’s always volunteered for numerous boards of directors and charitable organizations. Duncan’s story – this telling of it, anyway – begins in northern Scotland. “My family has six miles of sandy beach along the northern tip of Scotland,” he says, “overlooking the Orkney Islands. Prince Phillip designated my home as a Scottish National Site.” Their castle – yes, they obviously have a castle – was once the site of a druid monastery (which later
[6] WAVE MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2016
became the family’s wine cellar) and the estate had over 400 people working on the property in its prime. “A whole village had to be built – it’s called Castletown – with a hotel and a pub and buildings for all the workers and a church and a graveyard.” The estate was the home of a flagstone quarry and because all that rock had to be shipped, it is the only castle property in Scotland with its own harbour, Duncan says. “So when you live in a family like that, there are certain things expected of you, and being expelled from school is not one of those things,” he says with a laugh. It wasn’t just any ordinary school he was expelled from, as you can surely imagine, coming from that kind of family. That school was Gordonstoun. Gordonstoun, for those who have never heard of it, is a private boarding school on a 150-acre estate in Moray, Scotland. It has educated three generations of British royalty, including Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Prince
Charles, Prince of Wales. Upon being expelled from such a school, “I became a disgrace to my family,” Duncan says, and he was given a choice between Australia, South Africa or Canada for where he would be shipped off to. “So I came to Canada – to Northern Ontario – and lived in the bush with the Cree, which was the most wonderful time of my life,” Duncan says. “I loved the hardships. I loved the desolation. And I was treated with great friendliness.” That experience would be the beginning of his life-long love of First Nations peoples and cultures. He would relocate to Northern B.C. for a while, and then he and a friend bought a Tiger Moth biplane in Terrace, hoping it would take them back to the East Coast somewhere, “but we never quite made it,” he says. “We ended up crashing in Northern Ontario, and I was hurt but managed to hitch a lift with a logging truck into Timmons to get to the hospital.” That may have been one of his best decisions ever, as his friend took off
again and ended up crashing again in Lake Timiskaming – which sits on the border between Ontario and Quebec – and drowned. Duncan became the art director of a television studio in Timmons – where he met his future wife – and started his family. In 1965, however, they relocated back to B.C. and took up residence in the Lower Mainland, where Duncan started the region’s first theatre school. He went on to curate museums, operate sailing and martial arts schools, write his over 16 books – many on First Nations art and culture – and exhibit his art. One of his roles during this period of his life was helping out at soup kitchens and housing facilities for the underprivileged people of Vancouver. “When I was working for the Salvation Army in Vancouver, I asked them one time, ‘what about the people who can’t walk into this place, who also need food and shelter?’ and I was told they couldn’t talk anybody into going out into the alleys, so for three years, four nights a week from 8 p.m. until 4 a.m., I patrolled the alleys of Vancouver alone at night.” He says he specifically worked to protect First Nations people,“because they were the most vulnerable. Bouncers didn’t like them, because they were racist, so they would pick them out of the bar and take them outside – and they had steel-toed boots – and they would put their head down like a rugby ball, and kick the hell out of their face. That’s what I had to go into and take care of.” But what he’s most proud of, in some ways, is the work he’s undertaken in the past decade or so, doing what he can for abused animals and organizations who help them. You see, 16 years ago when he lost his wife of 30 years, Duncan found himself lost, as well. He admits, looking back on it, that he didn’t cope well with his grief. But as fate would have it, a saviour arrived in his life just when he needed one. One of his students in the martial arts class he was teaching two years after his wife passed was a veterinarian. The student had an Australian cattle dog named Ellie for whom he was looking to find a home. Ellie had been beaten and found dying in a field surrounded by her eight already-dead pups. “He called me up one day and said ‘I have an animal that is desperate need of love,’” Duncan says.
OCTOBER 2016 | WAVE MAGAZINE [7]
“And I was so shattered by the loss of my wife, I didn’t want to have anything to do with anything,” he says, “but I said ‘I’ll make you a little deal. I’ll come down to your parking lot, outside of your office, and open my hatchback and stand there, not saying a word, and we’ll see what happens,’ and Ellie ran over and jumped in my car. And that was that.” He had a new best friend and partner for many years. Ellie has now passed from the world as well, but Duncan keeps her memory alive. He has formed a fund called Artists Helping Abused Animals (A-HAA) to help the people who help abused animals and has been creating pen and ink drawings of British Columbian heritage scenes and landscapes, donating the entire proceeds to various charities who need the help. It’s been going well on the Lower Mainland, so since relocating to Campbell River to retire, he’s decided to start the same thing here. “I’ve realized, in my short time here, that Campbell River really loves its pets,” Duncan says. “So I want to do my part to help them here, too.” So he’s mirroring his past efforts in Langley, where he has raised thousands of dollars for animal causes, and has begun selling his original, unframed pen and ink drawings in both Pier Street Gallery and Awatin Aboriginal Arts for $200 apiece with all the proceeds going to various local charities and non-profits, whether it’s the SPCA or another cause the buyer would like to support. “I went to a very unusual school where – it sounds strange in this modern era – where we were taught that you should be like an ancient knight,” he says by way of explanation.That school was Gordonstoun, a boarding school in Northern Scotland which just so happens to also be where three generations of British royalty have been educated, including Prince Charles and Prince Philip. “We were taught that you look after those who can’t look after themselves. You protect women and you protect animals. So all of the money from my books, I give away – I’ve given away over $1 million from the sale of my books – and all of the money from my art, I give away in memory of my dog, Ellie.” Eventually, he says, he’d like to develop a fund to help prosecute people who abuse animals, as well.
PHOTO BY MICHAEL DUNCAN
“I’d like to be able to say, ‘Oh, the SPCA doesn’t have the money to prosecute that person, well, here you go. Go get ‘em.’” When he’s not toiling away making art for abused animals, Duncan is out enjoying this beautiful part
Campbell River Hospice Society Fundraiser
of the world he now calls home, getting inspiration for more work, but he says he can’t venture very far. “I’m partially crippled, because 50 years as a martial arts instructor has done me in,” he says, laughing light-heartedly again as he groans
slightly standing from his chair. So if you are met by a nice older gentleman along the side of the Seawalk who asks if he can “say hello to your dog,” that’s probably him.
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Campbell River’s Best Steaks and Fresh Local Seafood Overlooking the Marina » Discovery Harbour Shopping Centre 250-287-4143 • www.harbourgrill.com OCTOBER 2016 | WAVE MAGAZINE [9]
Courtesy of the Campbell River Garden Centre
ContaineRs & annual PlantinGs Plant up an Autumnal planter for your entrance. Pansies, mums, asters, grasses, heather and groundcovers such as vinca or ivy look fabulous together. You might want to include some small evergreens plants with berries for winter interest. Also, it is great to layer some Spring Blooming Bulbs under your plants so they can come up and bloom in the Spring.
VeGGie GaRDens Harvest and enjoy the bounty of your garden. This is the part that makes it all worthwhile! Cover empty veggie patches with fall rye and winter pea cover crops which will grow through the winter and then can be dug back in to rejuvenate your garden for next year. It’s time to plant your garlic for next summers harvest.
bulb PlantinG Tulips, daffodils, snowdrops, crocus can be purchased now for best selection and prices. There are lots of interesting bulbs to choose from, so if you are looking for something different come in and ask us to show
you some of our favourites. Many of our bulbs are available to view or purchase here on our website.
boRDeRs & FloWeR GaRDens Plant perennials, shrubs, trees, hedging and fruit trees now. Fall is the very best time to add to your garden. Now is also a great time to think about great fall foliage like:-burning bush, aronia, virginia creeper, robinia and Japanese maples are just a few of the very best plants for fall colour. Check that stakes on young trees are secure for the southeasters that will come. We find the best way to stake young trees is to provide two (or three) stakes, one on each side of the tree, each eight to ten inches from the trunk.Tie an extended figure eight with a pliable material such as vinyl tie tape, soft rubber tubing or pantyhose that won’t cut into the tree. Tying in this way enables the tree to move in the wind but only to a certain extent. Trees tied too tight are at risk of being damaged on the bark and do not as readily develop a collar of roots to anchor it as it matures. As the leaves drop on your climbing roses you can also check that they are securely tied. Extra length on
canes can be trimmed to shape at this time as well. Bush roses are ideally pruned in early March but you can remove some extra lengths of these as well. This can save on winter injury from snow load and fierce winds. Prepare an area now for your sweet peas for next year. Dig a ditch and fill it with leafy matter from disease free foliage that you may be cleaning out of your veggie garden or annual bed. Cover with soil and when you go to plant your sweet peas you will have the perfect mixture of partially composed leaves and soil in which to plant. Sweet peas love this!
laWn CaRe Lime lawns to maintain pH balance over the winter months with Dolopril Lime. Feed lawns with Fall and Winter Winterizing fertilizer. We like the BC made Gardenpro Winterizer. Lawns that have poor drainage can be aerated now and then have coarse sand applied. Treat problem moss areas with iron sulphate. Two days of dry weather is required after the moss control is applied. Moss control is available in liquid or granular forms.
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PHOTOS BY CHANTELLE BARTSCH
At 12-years-old Chantelle Bartsch had four gerbils that very quickly grew into around 30 gerbils. That was a bit too many for her parents to handle so Bartsch traded them in at the pet store for two turtles, Leonardo and Donatello. From there her fascination with turtles began. She wore out the National Geographic tape at the library because she watched it so
many times. “It was the whole cycle of the baby sea turtle through to adulthood,” she remembered. By age 13 Bartsch knew everything she could possibly know about sea turtles and she swore to herself that when she was old enough she would go and contribute to their guardianship.
This year, 26 years later, will be her tenth year travelling to Mexico to work with CONANP and save the sea turtles. While she is down there she will handle around 10,000 baby sea turtles that might not have made it back to the ocean without her help. Of those 10,000 she said maybe 10 of them will make it to adulthood.
Don’t Hunt like a neaderthal
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OCTOBER2016 2016| |WAVE WAVEMAGAZINE MAGAZINE[11] [7] OCTOBER
While volunteering, Bartsch does many of the jobs that the full-time biologists do.
Despite those arduous odds, Bartsch runs on the belief that because of her hard work there might be 10 more sea turtles in the ocean each year. While volunteering, Bartsch does many of the jobs that the full-time biologists do. She stands watch over the beaches, hoping to keep eggs, hatchlings, and mothers coming ashore from being poached. She walks the beaches, collecting eggs and newly hatched turtles and bringing them back to the hatchery where they can mature in peace and safety before crawling to the ocean. At times she will even pick
[12] WAVE MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2016
up a mother turtle, turn her around and send her back to the ocean to hold onto her eggs for a few more days until the conditions are safer. She also does a lot of record keeping for the organization. Though she loves the work, Bartsch said at times it can be draining. The last time she was sitting on the beach feeling spent, a mother turtle came right up to her looking exhausted. Bartsch said she made eye contact with this beautiful creature, listened to it’s sigh of relief as it settled into the sand and remembered why she was dedicated to the cause. Bartsch said that some people,
even family members, have trouble coming to terms with how she can put so much energy and money into conservation yet still be such an avid hunter. “‘Where do you draw the line,’” she said they have asked her. “‘Which animals are worth saving?’” For Bartsch, the answer is simple. Sea turtles are endangered, they are protected. When Bartsch hunts she hunts legally and ethically. The tags she buys, the hunting license she is required to have, she said it all goes towards funding research and conservation efforts.
“If you are measuring the success of hunting based on what animals you bring home, you are totally doing it for the wrong reasons.”
Those who hunt out of season, out of zone, the wrong animals or with illegal equipment are poachers. “If it is legal to hunt…to take a turtles life, if it was legal and that individual that chose to kill that turtle was doing it legally, with a legal tag decided on by biologists and…by our government…if it is legal than do it if you are going to eat it,” she said. For Bartsch, hunting is a way of life. Instead of buying meat from a store that has come from far away and passed through many different hands, she chooses to feed herself organically, harvesting, butchering and cooking her own meat. She takes pride in knowing her meat hasn’t been sitting on a floor somewhere and that it is chemical and hormone free. “I am not eating garbage,” she said.
When Bartsch brings home a kill she uses as much of it as she can from the rack and the meat to the skin and the hooves. She has even saved the fat from a bear so that a friend could turn it into lard and use it to make pie. Bartsch received her first bow from her husband, Adam, as a Valentine’s Day gift. “After shooting about a half a dozen arrows, him and his best friend complimented me and said ‘Okay, you’ve got a natural talent, you should carry on with this,’” she recalled with a smile. A few months later, while on a hunt with her husband in Manitoba, she brought down her first animal, a black bear. She said it wasn’t a very big bear, maybe 200 lbs. and he had almost no fur on his body. Though he wasn’t pretty, Bartsch still thinks of that hunt as one of her greatest
trophies. “Some of my biggest trophies are because of the hunt, who I was with, what I was doing,” she said. “If you are measuring the success of hunting based on what animals you bring home, you are totally doing it for the wrong reasons.” Bartsch is all about the challenge. In 2008 she competed in a televised hunting competition in Nevada. For the final event she hunted a wild turkey while in a cast and on crutches because she wasn’t ready to give up despite having a broken leg. That extreme dedication showed through again this past summer when Bartsch competed as a finalist on the Extreme Huntress web series. The competition took place at the 777 Ranch in Texas. Over a week the competitors completed skill testing tasks and lessons from experts in
OCTOBER 2016 | WAVE MAGAZINE [13]
front of a camera crew. Bartsch said the experience was thrilling and she would go back in a heart beat. “It’s not just about hunting, this is a hunting and skills competition, this is real life,” she said. “It is about setting yourself up for success, putting in the effort, believing in yourself and making it happen.” In September, a friend of Bartsch’s got a tag for an elk. She and her husband were out in the bush every day for weeks before the hunt scouting for the perfect animal. Not only did they explore the area and locate nearby streams, they also researched topographical charts as well as what plants are edible during that time of year, all the better to locate and harvest the perfect animal. “As an ethical hunter I am not just going to pick up my bow and just put a couple of arrows into a target,” she said. “Off season, a true hunter is thinking about when the next opening day is. You are training your body, you are training your brain, you are planning, you are focusing and that’s what makes it so enjoyable.” After each kill, Bartsch performs a ritual called “The Last Bite.” She brushes grass over the wound and places it into the animals mouth, thanking it for its sacrifice so that she may continue to live. Though she learned the ritual from her husband, Bartsch has seen it in practice many times since. It is a show of respect to the animal, and that is important to her. If she had any message for hunters she said she wishes they would show more respect for the animals. “It disgusts me when people shoot an animal and they sit on it,” she said.“It’s disrespectful to the animal.” As well as locating and tracking the perfect animal to harvest, Bartsch uses her knowledge of animals, as well as her ability to imitate almost every call of every large mammal in North America, to get up close and personal and observe animals in their natural environment. She said she gets a thrill from being a ninja and
[14] WAVE MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2016
almost becoming a part of the natural environment, so much so that she can be only a few metres away from an animal and they don’t even know she is there. “I’m going to take 1000 pictures of animals before I harvest that one,” she said. She also uses her unique animal call abilities to help fawns who are in trouble. Mother deer will often leave their babies unattended while they wander off to feed and in most cases humans should stay well away from the babies. After seeing one right in the middle of the highway on the way back to Campbell River from Mt. Washington, Bartsch got out of the car to help. After removing the fawn from traffic, Bartsch did her best imitation of a fawn bleat, and the mother came running back to find her baby. Other times however, the mother isn’t so lucky. Bartsch ended up taking one new born fawn to an animal rescue centre after finding it’s mother’s carcass on the side of the highway near where the fawn had been running around. “I don’t wish death on something,” she said. “I don’t hunt because I see enjoyment in something dying. I hunt because it is my way of life. I am a survivalist.” Despite what she does being 100 per cent legal, Bartsch gets a lot of people criticizing and being hateful towards her for choosing to hunt. She said that she does her best to educate people and she is perfectly willing to listen to rational, educated anti-hunting opinions but some arguments you just can’t win. Bartsch said she won’t apologize for her choices. She is putting healthy food in the bodies, and freezers, of her friends and family. “What I am doing has been done since the beginning of time,” she said. Though hunting is the lifestyle she has chosen, it costs her around $3,000 to bring home 50 lbs. of meat so she needs a day job. Luckily, she loves it.
Bartsch knew she was going to be a tattoo artist since before she graduated from high school. When she walked the stage however, she kept that fun fact to herself. When Bartsch told her mother, her response was ‘Not on my life.’ Despite her mother’s doubts, everything just fell into place. Bartsch remembers spending a lot of time drawing while at her dad’s soccer games. From tracing to colouring to drawing on his teammates arms, she had a knack for tattooing since the beginning. Though it was a battle to succeed as a female tattoo artist, Bartsch gets up every day excited to go to work. She did dabble with other businesses, at one point working as a personal trainer, a taxidermist, and a landscape designer before refocusing on tattooing. “If I couldn’t make any money for the rest of my life and it came down to a barter system… [tattooing] is what I need to do to make myself happy and have the biggest impact, biggest result, on others,” she said. Though the art itself comes easily to Bartsch, it isn’t just a passing anecdote that tattoo artists double as therapists. Bartsch
has met people who have gone through some incredible things. She has covered horrible scars and has created many many many memorial tattoos. She feels that in some cases her art has the power to forever change someone’s attitude or perception of themselves or a life event. However, hearing these stories takes a lot of emotional strength on her part. She said she has had breakdowns after tattoo sessions because of a story she heard.
“I don’t hunt because I see enjoyment in something dying. I hunt because it is my way of life. I am a survivalist.”
“You become very close with your clients,” she said. “It is an energy transfer.” At the moment Bartsch does 50 per cent of her tattoos custom and the other 50 per cent people bring in their own ideas asking for only limited alterations. When she turns 40 in November of 2017 she hopes to be doing only her own designs. “Not that it is trying to prove anything, just where I am at in my life and my career, I just want to spend my final years doing completely custom pieces,” she said. If Bartsch had to choose between tattooing and hunting, she wouldn’t be able to. Luckily, she won’t ever have to.
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OCTOBER 2016 | WAVE MAGAZINE [15]
October is
Colleen Evans, Chamber CEO October 1, 2016 is the official start of Small Business Month across B.C. Small Business Month celebrates and highlights the contributions of small businesses, defined as businesses with 50 employees or less, to both
our economy and communities. In B.C., the small business sector is the primary provider of private sector jobs and has established itself as an essential mechanism of job creation. In Campbell River, small business retention and creating a positive business climate for businesses to
prosper and be successful in, is a focus of the Chamber. Our local small businesses create jobs and drive our local economy, more reason to celebrate and encourage their growth. The Campbell River Chamber of
Starting a business? Start with us! The City can help with advice on location, zoning, tax exemptions and grant opportunities, business licensing, networking and much more.
ROSE KLUKAS Economic Development OďŹƒcer Tel: 250-286-5738 Email: rose.klukas@campbellriver.ca
[16] WAVE MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2016
www.campbellriver.ca
October is small business month
BUSINESSWALK 2016 October 27th #crbusinesswalk
Campbell RiveR miRRoR First issue 1971
Presented by:
Commerce is excited to welcome Small Business Month with two major events and recognize not only the best of small business in Campbell River today but set the stage for future growth and development. The Chamber will kick off Small Business Month by hosting the 2016 Business Awards of Distinction on Saturday, October 1, 2016 at the Tidemark Theatre. The Business Awards recognize the success and innovation of businesses both large and small and creates a platform for them to shine. This platform is important to small businesses, enabling them to better define their brand, product and / or service in their community and showcase the breadth and capacity of what exists in Campbell River. “This year, we have seen a highly competitive group of nominees represented in the small business
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categories and that’s exciting for us as an organization to see local talent rising, entrepreneurs making bold decisions and business owners reaping the rewards of their hard work” shares Colleen Evans, CEO of the Campbell River Chamber. The Chamber will close Small Business Month with their second Business Walk. In 2015 the Chamber conducted its first Business Walk, interviewing over 122 local business owners and managers, identifying common themes, both positive and negative to foster future business growth. “It’s our mandate to ensure businesses thrive and in order to do that we have to get out there and talk to people about what’s going well and what’s keeping them up at night. Our goal is to track this industry intelligence over time and use it to influence policy and business enhancement
programming,” explains Evans. The 2016 Business Walk is planned for Thursday, October 27, 2016 and the Chamber is already gathering volunteers for the event. For further information about the Business Awards of Distinction or the 2016 Business Walk contact: Colleen Evans, Chamber CEO at 250-287-4513 or colleen.evans@ campbellriverchamber.ca Or Call Ashleigh Wilson, Member Services, Marketing and Events Coordinator at 250-914-1144
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October is small business month small business History of A quick look and our small business at small and economy week medium sized businesses
Investing in businesses that are trending upward is one way to avoid falling victim to small business trends. The following are some business opportunities that figure to thrive in the years ahead. • Cloud businesses: The “cloud” remains an evolving part of both personal and business computing. Each day, new methods of harnessing this relatively underfulfilled service are created, and new businesses can be built entirely on cloud interaction. • Senior care: Seniors are living longer, and a great deal of Baby Boomers have passed retirement age. Opportunities for senior-related services continue to grow. These can include everything from housing options to delivery and catering services. • Yoga and fitness: People spend billions of dollars on yoga classes, supplies and attire, as The Economist predicts the yoga industry will exceed $8 billion by 2017.
BDC Small Business Week™ is a Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) trademark whose origins date back to 1979 when BDC business centres in British Columbia’s Lower Fraser Valley pooled their resources to organize a week of activities for entrepreneurs. This first event and one that followed in 1980 were so successful that BDC officially launched Small Business Week across Canada in 1981. The initiative was quickly adopted by Canada’s business community. In 2012, over 200 activities across Canada attracted close to 10,000 business people to BDC Small Business Week™. This BDC flagship event celebrates entrepreneurship at the local, provincial and national levels.
Small and medium sized businesses are big in Canada: 98.1% of businesses have fewer than 100 employees and contribute slightly more than 30% to Canada’s GDP. In a global economy, exports add significantly to economic growth. 86% of exporting companies are small (<100 employees), but produce only 25% of the total value of Canadian exports; the majority of exports (57%) are provided by large firms. Almost 55% (615,599 firms) are micro businesses (1-4 employees). SMEs employed 63.7% of private sector employees in 2011, or 6.8 million people across the country. In 2011, SMEs created about 79 000 jobs. Over the 2001 to 2011 period SMEs were responsible for 53.9% of all jobs created on average in the private sector.
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[18] WAVE MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2016
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A DIFFERENT – AND LOCAL on
holmeshomes Mike Davies Campbell River Mirror A dozen or so years ago now, Jordanna Holmes was taking some business courses at North Island College in Campbell River and trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life – a typical thing for a woman in her early 20s to be doing – when a friend of the family had a secretary taking leave and asked her to help out around the office a bit for a few months. That office was Cunningham & Rivard Appraisals. She took the job as a means of making a few extra bucks and getting some experience in an office setting that she thought she might be able to use later in whatever career she decided on. “But I was getting bored, so I asked them to let me go, because I needed more, and they told me they thought I make a really good appraiser, which I had somehow never considered, despite being actually employed in an appraisal office,” Holmes says with a laugh. Once the seed of the idea was planted, however, she started looking into it. “So I went to the library and started researching the job itself. I looked at the pros and cons of doing the job, the hours, that kind of thing, and thought, ‘you know what? This might be okay.’”
I looked at the pros and cons of doing the job, the hours, that kind of thing, and thought, ‘you know what? This might be okay.’
And she suddenly found herself with a career goal to be proud of, and went to tell her father the news. “I walked in the door and I was at the bottom of the stairs,” she says. “I yelled up to my dad and said, ‘Dad, I’ve figured it out. I know what I’m going to be.’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’ and I proudly yelled, ‘I’m going to be a property appraiser!’” And her father spit his wine out across the table. You see, Holmes’ grandfather was a property
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appraiser. She didn’t know that. And she didn’t know her aunt was a property appraiser. Her father, to whom she was proudly announcing her aspirations, did property assessments on the weekends for a time. She didn’t know that, either. She was entering a field that many would see as preordained for her – and had no idea. She also didn’t know she was entering a field filled with old men. It’s not like she was intentionally trying to break into a property appraising to prove something. She’d never even noticed or thought about the demographics in the industry until she walked into her first Vancouver Island AIC Annual General Meeting a few years later. “It was the AGM,” she says, “and I walked in, and it was a room full of men – mostly older men – and I was about 25 and I saw one lady, but she was an older lady, and so there were two women in a room with maybe 45 men, most of them pretty grey.” She hadn’t made her career decision determined to break stereotypes or prove some kind of point, and the fact that the field was dominated by men didn’t even phase her. “I literally just looked at the pros and cons, and thought if I ever decided to have children one day, it was the kind of job where I could leave at 2:30 and pick them up from school if I needed to, and I could work from home if I needed to. When I was weighing the pros and cons, it didn’t even cross my mind that it was
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mostly m e n who did this, and it didn’t bother me when it turned out that way.” So what exactly is it that she does? Can’t you just kind of tell by what h o u s e s are going for on the market to know what a house is worth? Well, exactly.
not
One thing people might not realize about property appraisers, Holmes says, is the amount of formal education required. In order to be accredited, certified appraisers need to have a post-secondary degree and then enrol in postgraduate studies at the Sauder School of Business at UBC, which includes courses
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in residential construction, residential law, macro and micro economics, business writing and other facets of the world of housing and construction. They also need to take 24 credits of upgrading every year through the Appraisal Institute Council of B.C. (AIC–BC), to keep up with the constantly-changing trends and factors in property valuation. And yes, there’s also a ton of market research involved – constantly.
CUBAN EXPLORER January 14-29 Convenient Same Day Comox Connector to Varadero with Westjet • Havana • Vinalez • Trinidad • Cayo Levisa • Cienfuegos • Varadero When a house sells for a certain amount, for example, she can’t just mark it down in a book. She also has to find out why. “Appraisal is very grey-scale,” she says. “Sometimes people want to say, ‘that home costs $275,000,’ but no, there’s some wiggle room there. It could be $278,000 or $272,000. But at the end of the day, I have to be able to put a value on a home and be confident in that assessment.” She has to be confident in her assessment because she can’t get it wrong. Property appraisals are very important in the world of economics. Which is why she, as Cunningham & Rivard’s senior appraiser, is always the first one in the office in the morning – sometimes she gets in as early as 4:30 a.m. – and is regularly the last one to leave. But like she said, she doesn’t have to work those crazy hours. “I love that I have the flexibility I do,” she says.“Right now, I want to be making money, so I put in the hours, but if I ever want to dial it back, I can do that.” It doesn’t seem she has plans to dial it back anytime soon, however. These days she does three to five appraisals per day, and loves every minute of it. “My favourite aspect is that my job is ever-changing,” she says with yet another smile.“It’s never the same two days in a row – or even two days out of a month – and I love that I get to meet a ton of interesting people while I’m at it who are nice enough to invite me into their homes.”
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Putting community
Kristen Douglas Campbell River Mirror Laurel Sliskovic has always been one to put community first. As president of the city’s Young Professionals group, she’s able to fulfill that passion. Formed in July of 2012, the Young Professionals of Campbell River (YPCR) brings enthusiastic, community-minded workers together to network, share ideas, foster professional development and reach out to the community.
I get to enjoy a really great quality of life because I’m proactive in how I lead my life.
“It’s a nice organization to be a part of for so many reasons,” Sliskovic says, particularly because of the diversity of members from across the community and their big hearts. The organization firmly believes in supporting its community.
The YPCR hosts an annual gala for members every October. Proceeds from that event go to a different community group each year. In previous years, recipients have included the John Howard Society’s KidStart program, the Splash Park and the Discovery Passage Aquarium. This year’s event, which takes place on Oct. 29, will benefit two groups – the Mountain Bike Skills Park Society that is trying to establish a skills park at the Sportsplex, and Habitat for Humanity. The gala will also mark Sliskovic’s one-year anniversary as president – a role she hopes to continue in for at least one more year. Sliskovic was elected president of the YPCR in 2015 after serving on the executive one year prior. “It seemed to be a good fit for me personally and professionally, Sliskovic says
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Sliskovic says the YPCR, which currently has between 50 and 60 active members, was the first organization she joined upon moving to Campbell River in February, 2013 and setting up her leisure research company. Sliskovic says one of the things that really drew her to the organization was how receptive the members were to her and the ideas she wanted to share. Being a new face in the community, she says it was also a great way to meet people and feel connected with the community.
“A lot of it just simply comes down to I think actively participating in one’s community is one of the simplest ways to be a part of something and be able to contribute to the kind of community I want to live in,” Sliskovic says. “I get to enjoy a really great quality of life because I’m proactive in how I lead my life.” And leading the YPCR is a part of that.
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“It is a way for young professionals to get involved in the community and get their feet wet in community service,” Sliskovic says.
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Halloween may seem like a relatively modern holiday, and while it may have become modernized, Halloween traditions actually can be traced back to ancient Celtic rituals. It’s believed Halloween traces its origins to a Celtic festival for the dead known as Samhain. During the festival, people would dress up in costumes and leave treats on their front doorsteps to appease spirits
that were believed to be roaming the Earth on this holiday. Many historians also feel that trick-or-treating can be linked to the European practice of “mumming” or “guysing,” in which costume-wearing individuals would go door-to-door, performing dances and plays in exchange for treats.
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Former mayor, photographer, community development manager finds his niche as a whale watching tour operator Alistair Taylor Campbell River Mirror
PHOTOS BY ROGER MCDONELL
Roger McDonell sees his life as having come full circle.
is, years later, I am out spending day after day with them.”
A love for orca or killer whales inspired him to come out to the West Coast from Manitoba in 1978. Afterwards he worked in radio, community development, freelance photography, served a term as mayor of Campbell River, returned to videography and photography before having a boat built and buying into a whale watching tour company.
McDonell is content with where his life has taken him.
“It’s kind of a big circle, I guess,” McDonell says.
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“Living in Manitoba, I read an article about killer whales,” he says. “Here it
“It’s kind of a pretty nice course I am on,” he says. “I don’t see any huge deviations. I can’t say I have thoughts of changing anything.” And it’s hard not to see why he would want to change things. He spends a lot of time during his summers on the waters of northeastern Vancouver Island exposing people to the majesty and beauty of the whales and other marine mammals that inhabit the waters of the Inside Passage. Although a part owner
of Stubbs Island Whale Watching, McDonell doesn’t chain himself to a desk in the office. He has taken on multiple roles with the company he and his partners Heike Wieske and Geord Dunstan bought in 2011, including captaining the two vessels the company owns. He has a 60-ton masters ticket which allows him to operate Stubbs’ vessels. McDonell already had a lot of marine experience before buying into the company. He owns an Eaglecraft vessel he dubbed Gizmo and had it built with the intention of chartering it. He also had in mind using Gizmo
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He got me started in photography which, in a way, has made a big difference in my life
for working with marine mammal researchers and film crews.
collection and provides information for different research groups.
“Those were areas of interest that I had,” McDonell says.
When Wieske and Dunstan, who owned Discovery Marine Safaris in Campbell River at the time, were looking to expand and found Stubbs Island was for sale, they decided they need a another partner. McDonell was mostly just intersted in it from an investment point of view.
After his term as mayor of Campbell River (2005-2008), McDonell continued to act on his interest in marine mammals and spend time working with the Whale Interpretive Centre in Telegraph Cove. Through the centre, he attended a conference at the University of British Columbia on marine mammal research. “I’ve always been interested in marine mammals since I first came out to B.C. back in the 70s and had an interest in killer whales,” McDonell says. When he saw what the researchers were doing he realized he wanted to share this information with the world. “So I kind of had this concept of using the boat to document the work they’re doing,” McDonell says. He ended up buying into the whale watching business which “kind of distracted me” from that initial concept. “But at the same time it put me squarely in the middle of working with a lot of the researchers,” he says. Through Stubbs Island Whale Watching, he does a lot of data
“The joke was that I was thinking of being a silent partner and then they very soon started calling me ‘notso…’” McDonell says. As it turned out, all three partners had complementary skill sets and because of McDonell’s background interest in marine mammal research and his photography background, he was soon pressed into the promotional work. He was also used to being in the public eye and ended up being called on to do interviews about Stubbs Island.
he’s got a boat sitting at the dock he’d like to use more. Stubbs Island Whale Watching has two other captains who run and maintain the boats while McDonell fills in where necessary. Stubbs Island’s fleet encompasses two large aluminum vessels. One is the Lukwa, a 40-foot vessel that carries 46 passengers and the other is the Kuluta, a 40-foot catamaran that carries up to 42 passengers. McDonell still maintains a home in Campbell River but spends a lot of the summer up in Telegraph Cove. He ends up living in his boat when in the Cove. It’s moored in the harbour in sight of his office. Telegraph Cove is an interesting community, McDonell says. He is involved in the promotion of North Island tourism while still being involved in tourism initiatives in
“It just kept escalating and instead of being out doing stuff on my boat, I ended up doing stuff on Stubbs’ boats,” McDonell says. He’s not complaining, he says, it’s just that
OCTOBER 2016 | WAVE MAGAZINE [29]
Campbell River. He says it’s hard to get away from contributing to community development once you get started. “Once you get some of that stuff in your blood it’s hard to let it go,” he says, “especially when you see it really, in some senses, kind of floundering and needing the guiding experience. I have got kind of, like, 40 years experience with it now.” It got focused during his days as mayor where he was involved in supporting tourism promotion but then “the public had different ideas for my future,” he says with a laugh, referring to his one term in the mayor’s chair.
changing because of the mill winding down despite our best efforts on council,” McDonell says. After his term as mayor, he underwent an immense personal challenge with the passing of his wife Heidi. After going through that, he didn’t get involved in anything right away. It involved a lot of looking at where you have been and where you are going, he says. “And trying to appreciate what you have got,” he adds. He came to Campbell River in 1978
The mayor thing was an enjoyable experience, he says. It was a time when a lot of things were happening in the community and as mayor, he had a hand in them. “I still put my recycling out the door in the morning,” he says. It was a challenging time too. “Just seeing the community, overall,
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and his first job was with the radio station and that gets you involved in the community. It even got him involved in photography when he was enlisted by the editor of the Mirror to take pictures of the community events he was always covering for the radio station anyway. “He got me started in photography which, in a way, has made a big difference in my life,” McDonell says. From there he branched into underwater photography and that
has had a big influence on his life as well. Now he’s merged all of those interests of his life into a scenario where he makes use of it all – marine mammal research, photography, public development. The future involves more of the same, he says. He does have an eye on reviving the Whale Festival in Campbell River which ran a few years ago bringing to town people involved in the latest marine
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“People asked when are you going to do it again,” McDonell says. That may be something on his horizon now, he says. Something new but still moving in the same direction. “I get the occasional Campbell Riverite who remembers me from my mayoralty days,” McDonell says with a laugh. “How you liking this? I go ‘yeah well, you know, different office.’”
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