Orchard, commune, alt-ed, hostel:
Fiddlehead Farm fades back into the rainforest
S
ome of the best gardens and fertile and goats. Giuseppe sold this produce land in the area is located in Wild- in Powell River, using a motor boat to wood, largely due to the genera- get up and down the lake. tions of Italian families who laboured After Giuseppe passed away in 1947, the soil and planted wide varieties of the land remained vacant for some fruits and time. In the vegetables 1960s, it over the was sold to years. Mark VonOne of negut, who the first created a JOËLLE SÉVIGNY farms in commune qathet was for youth. owned by an Italian family, and was He wrote about the area and his battle actually located just before the half- with schizophrenia in a book entitled way point (around 20 km) along Thah The Eden Express. yetl, Powell Lake, across from Goat The Schreiber family purchased the Island. It was called the Powell Lake land in the 1970s and operated an Farm, where Giuseppe (Little Joe) alternate education program called Gagliardi, settled in 1914 via a crown Total Education, heavily focusing on grant. environmental studies. Later, in the Giuseppe was born in 1886 in the 80s and 90s, it became a hostel and Calabria region of Italy. It is believed retreat. In 1985, Linda Schreiber rethat he left in the early 1910s and came named the area to Fiddlehead Farm, directly to Powell River. He was a man after the thorny ferns that grow everyof small stature, measuring 4’8”, but where on the land. he had grand dreams and a pioneering Today not much remains of the spirit of establishing a farm in the mid- farm of Giuseppe. The remnant of the dle of the coastal forest. retreat’s meditation hut can still be Giuseppe’s pre-emption on Powell found, but all other buildings were Lake consisted of 80 acres. He built demolished when the land was sold a farmhouse with hand-split cedar in 2002 and subsequently logged. One planks measuring 10 feet long. John of the Sunshine Coast Trail’s huts was Minichello and his wife, as well as Jo- named Fiddlehead Landing, as a nod seph (Pep) Gentile and Domenic Diana, to the history of the land, and is locatalso worked at the farm with Joe. They ed by the original docks that lead to had orchards with apples trees, sheep the retreat.
BLAST FROM THE PAST
EVOLVING SPACE: Guiseppe Gagliardi’s 80 acre farm up Powell Lake supplied the town with produce. Above, in his orchard in 1920. Below, Fiddlehead as Total Education in the 1970s. Photos courtesy of the Powell River Historical Museum & Archives
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qathet Living • May 2022 •
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