Community People Profiles are a series on the Salt Spring Exchange featuring local personalities on our island home. These profiles are short interviews, with one answer questions to share with you a little about what each of these folks are thinking about as they go about their lives living on Salt Spring Island.
This weeks featured local people profile is: Keith Picot
Here’s a bit about Keith;
I am a professional Bull Fiddler and maker of silent films. I have lived on Saltspring Island for 8 years and spent the prior ten years on Mudge Island. I have built houses, barns and outhouses; cleaned gutters, floors and stalls; cut trees, lumber and hair; fixed tractors, mills and horse hoofs , and I loved every minute of it! Working around Hek's Half Acre Film Studio making silent films, and leaving for the occasional music tour along with pitch hitting at the Local Barber Shop keeps me busy and happy as a clam these days! What a grand place Saltspring Island is to be living!
What brought you to Salt Spring Island?
My sweetheart!
What one thing about Salt Spring would you tell someone who has never visited the island?
Salt Spring Island has everything one could hope for, a lovely town, beautiful forests, lakes, mountains, mild temperatures, farms and fields.
If you had a magic Salt Spring wand, what island thing would you change?
The same thing I would change everywhere... I would do away with any change and "progress" with greed as a motivator.
Which well known person, living or dead, do you think would be a good addition to the island?
Art Newsome, my Grandfather. A lover of life and nature, though always a city dweller, I think Grandpa would have loved it here, and been an energetic and positive addition to the community. Besides, he would have made a swell neighbor!
Is there a special project, business or initiative you are working on that islanders should know about?
I thinking my next, Island based silent film, will be rooted in space travel.
Is there a really good interview question we should have asked you?
What is it I like most about the Gulf islands?
How would you have answered your question?
The Gulf Islands tend to be mostly free of the "keeping up with the Jones's " sort of mentality. This is especially noticeable in the island youth. Perhaps subscribing to fads and pop-culture whims regarding fashion and attitude, makes less sense when living so close to nature.
