Brenda Guiled

Ruckle Farm's Evolving Story - Mike and Marjorie Lane Stay on as Managers

Ruckle farm continues to evolve, while staying true to its historic roots. Good news abounds from this cherished part of our island. Friends of Ruckle Park Heritage (FRPH) is happy to report several new developments, the most important of which is that BC Parks 20-year-contract to manage and operate the farm has been offered to Mike and Marjorie Lane. For 146 years, four generations of Ruckles ran the farm, the longest of any family farm in B.C. Henry Ruckle started it in 1872, an era that continued until the passing of granddaughter Helen Ruckle in 2018 June. She was one of the four signatories to the agreement that created the park and the last Ruckle, most sadly, with life-tenancy there. Since her death, the Lanes have continued to run the farm, under a permit from BC Parks. Their new contract will begin in 2021 January. It includes their current home, the Norman Ruckle house, as well as the Alfred and Daniel houses, plus numerous other structures. They have new obl…

Thoughts on My Trial, Part 3: Sentencing

On July 26th, the judge sentenced me to carry on with my volunteer work on Salt Spring -- no fine, no probation officer, no jail. For six months, I’m to “keep the peace and be of good behaviour.” Apparently, this is the most lenient sentence he's given to date for the 230+ convicted of contempt of court for protesting the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX), most of them arrested in front of its Burnaby Terminal gate. I had a strong case for acquittal, since Trans Mountain failed to mark its property line, as legally required, which led to my arrest on their private property, counter to my intention and great care to stay on what I reasonably surmised to be public property, outside of the Injunction Order arrest zone. The RCMP had used the TM fence and gate for the property line, which they confirmed in court, when the real line is 24 metres away. For my light sentence, I also owe a lot to our great island, for the opportunity to volunteer with amazing people working …

Requests for Proposals: Ruckle Active Farm Management & Operations

Friends of Ruckle Park Heritage started in 2016, to help save an old south-end farmhouse by moving it to Ruckle Provincial Park. The owners bulldozed it anyway, but the Friends have carried on, working with BC Parks to enhance the visitor experience of Ruckle farm. It’s been a slow start, getting our bearings, while work goes on behind the scenes. Last June, just as some possible projects were coming clear, Helen Ruckle unexpectedly died. As granddaughter of the farm’s founder, she was a treasure in herself and a treasury of invaluable memories. She had been a teacher, not a farmer, hence continued her family’s contract with Mike and Marjorie Lane, who became the Ruckles’ farm manager and operator in 1997. Following Helen’s passing, BC Parks assumed all care and decision-making for the park, farm included. For several reasons, they are required to open the management and operation of the farm to public bid. It has taken a year of preparation to do so. Mike has continued a…

Pipeline Activism: Thoughts On My Trial, Part 2

I’m back from the rabbit hole of court – the B.C. Supreme Court, in downtown Vancouver. Last fall, I spent five days there, self-representing my not guilty plea, after arrest for protesting on March 23rd in front of Texas oil-giant Kinder Morgan’s tank farm in Burnaby, now Trans Mountain Canada, owned by all Canadians. Three others are being tried with me, arrested on different days, represented by lawyers. We didn’t finish last fall, so resumed on March 12th, taking another day and a half to close my case. On May 1st, the judge will phone me to give his verdict. If guilty, as he’s found to date for nearly all arrestees, nearly 240 total, I’ll return to court for sentencing. I entered this strange world with such naiveté. The Alice in Wonderland feeling starts with remembering how professionally I thought the RCMP behaved throughout the protest, as if their respectful treatment of protesters would be matched by legal competency. Failing that, I thought they’d bear the con…

Salt Spring Bike Club Announces Merger with Island Pathways

With great enthusiasm and anticipation, the Salt Spring Bike Club announces its merger with Island Pathways and the creation of the new Island Pathway committee: Cycling Salt Spring Island! The Salt Spring Bike Club formed five years ago to: promote cycling as a healthy, sustainable and fun mode of transportation and recreation; foster a stronger cycling culture on Salt Spring Island and create and advocate for safer cycling opportunities for riders of all ages. Its first project led to creation of the Bike Park in Ganges, with generous funding from the SSI Lions’ Club and SSI Parks & Recreation inputs and maintenance. In the summer of 2018, it opened, a network of technical trails nestled into a treed area in the SE corner of Mouat Park. Since opening last August, the Bike Park has been well used by cyclists as young as two and as old as 70. In the fall, up to 20 riders could be spotted in the park at a given time. Spring will be busy again, guaranteed. The Bik…

Video: B.C.'s Electoral System: True or False?

Still sitting on your mail-in ballot to vote in B.C.’s electoral reform referendum? Still not sure how to vote? Feeling the November 30th deadline looming? This video should help, by offering valuable facts about our First Past The Post system, exposing misleading myths and misconceptions. Since 2002, I’ve been keen on electoral reform. Adriane Carr started a petition to change B.C.’s electoral system to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP). I signed up, determined to get 100s of signatures, back before the Internet made it easy. I agreed with her reasoning, but found the MMP system alarming. It has two ballots, the first one the same old FPTP, with its strategic voting and skewy, screwy results, and a second ballot for parties, to give them their “fair” share of seats won by the very system that needed replacing. Where were the demos, or people, if parties mattered more, with their deep-pocketed supporters and divisive politics? My readings about electoral systems began…

Thoughts on My Trial

This last March 23rd, I was arrested protesting in front of Kinder Morgan’s gate in Burnaby -- now Trans Mountain Corporation, bought by all Canadians in August for $4.5-billion. I wrote an Exchange piece, published on March 29th, called "Thoughts on My Arrest". Time for an update. In Vancouver’s B.C. Supreme Court last week, I represented myself, pleading not guilty. My trial ran from Monday to Friday, with more to come, resuming on March 12th. There were three other arrestees pleading not guilty, represented by three lawyers. This graphic shows the layout and seating in the impressive, red-carpeted Courtroom 20, specially built for the Air India trials. Becoming a criminal-defence lawyer almost overnight has been a lot of work, but I think I’ve done okay. Judge Affleck (who wrote the Injunction Order I’m accused of breaching) is required to help self-represented defendants. People who’ve watched many of these trials from the public gallery told me that he was more atte…

Ruckle Farm & Neighbours Fine Arts & Crafts

Salt Spring’s Ruckle family were farmers ... with a couple of artists. Or so the story goes, but it has come clear of late that Ruckle farm was long a south-Salt Spring arts hub Throughout November, the Salt Spring Library hosts “Ruckle & Neighbours Fine Arts & Crafts”, showcasing the works of nine south-end creators, from the early 1900s to present day. The foyer display case introduces Ella Anna Ruckle, the Norwegian matriarch of three highly artistic offspring. Son Alfred was a luthier and woodworker. His wife Helen experimented with dyes for the many rugs she hooked from Ruckle sheeps’ wool. Daniel, a consumate farmer, knitted with farm wool, with his vest on display. Neighbours and good friends of the Ruckle ‘boys’, Jim Monk and Sophie Purser King, were wood carvers. Present-day artist, Garry Kaye, took Gwen’s advice years ago and went to art school, setting off a success career. The Program Room features three gifted Ruckles. Two are known: Agnes, who die at age …

Ruckle Park Heritage Conservation Management Plan Receives Heritage Legacy Fund Grant

The Friends of Ruckle Park Heritage Society is delighted to announce that it is receiving its first and most generous grant to guide future improvements to Ruckle Park heritage. The Heritage Legacy Fund has provided $10,000 to help with the creation of a “Ruckle Park Heritage Conservation Management Plan”, which will not only serve Ruckle Park, but will become a template for conservation work on all BC Parks heritage sites. Ruckle is ideal, because it has some of everything, from deep woods to fields, from old farm structures to modern interpretive features. BC Parks has provided matching funds, to ensure the project’s completeness. The work will be directed by Heritageworks, under the skilled hands of Gord Macdonald and Ben Gourley. Some additional, volunteer help will be needed. Please contact Brenda, see below, if you have skills or interests to offer this project or future work. The BC Heritage Branch has also contributed $40,000 for the development of this Conserv…

Island Pathways 30 Anniversary Celebration

You’re Invited! - 2018 June 24, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. at the Farmers’ Institute and on the Ganges Pathways Hard to believe Island Pathways has been going for 30 years. Here’s some of what we’ve accomplished: Our Partners Creating Pathways group has built nearly $1-million in Ganges Village pathways, complete with benches and map kiosks, costing local taxpayers about $250,000. This year’s pathway will extend the network to Portlock Park at Central. We’ve sold out several editions of our award-winning “Heritage Map with Bike Routes”, with posters of it located throughout the island and on all Salt Spring Island ferries. We’re launching our new “Salt Spring on Foot”, with all of the public trail, paths, and beach walks on island. We’ve put over 700 elementary school kids into quality, well-fitting bicycle helmets, for $10 per student. We’ve spearheaded the installation of 36 bicycle racks.We’re still working hard to get a bikeway through the island – the reason we …

Thoughts on My Arrest

I’ve learned some things from being arrested at the main Kinder Morgan gate in Burnaby for civil contempt of an injunction to stay at least 5 metres away, important details that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. They might be of interest to others. First, despite being told not to talk to the police, I dared to make comments to a few of them and to ask some questions. They provided some heartening feedback and thought-provoking information. I thanked the commander of the two-dozen or so RCMP in attendance for their respectful treatment of protesters. Not one officer wavered from total professionalism throughout their long hours spent upholding the Supreme Court of B.C. injunction. He replied that, in Canada, we have the right to peacefully defy the law where we see that our laws and legal processes need changing. They have to play their part, and we’re allowed to play ours, understanding that consequences follow our actions. In other places and forms of government, re…

Incorporation: Post Vote Reasons for Voting No Research

Reasons for Voting Positively No in the 2017 September 09 Salt Spring Island Incorporation Referendum ~ From late 2012 to 2017, Salt Spring Islanders engaged in two studies, first a Governance Review Study, then an Incorporation Study. Both explored the incorporated municipal model of governance in full, as it would apply to Salt Spring. Neither study allowed an exploration of the full present-system model, only a "snapshot in time" of it, i.e. as it was currently operating, not any of its in-built or possible new means to strengthen and improve it. These studies and resultant referendum cost $400,000 (Governance Study, $85,000; Incorporation Study, $255,000; incorporation referendum, $60,000 budget, but didn't spend it all). The costs of B.C. ministry and CRD services to administer these studies cannot be determined, since personnel don't bill to projects. In total, it's reasonable to estimate that at least $750,000 of B.C. taxpayers' money was spent to present the incorpor…

Incorporation: The Facts About Our Roads

The Final Incorporation Study Report repeats, at least eight times, that Salt Spring taxpayers put pay $90,000 more per year into the in Provincial Rural Taxes than they get back in road works. How accurate is this? The report estimates that an average of $1,360,000 was spent annually in routine maintenance in recent years, or $5,100 per km. This closely matches MOTI’s reported average maintenance cost of $5,000 per km for all B.C. public roads. Since maintenance services were privatized in 2001, MOTI can’t find out what SSI road maintenance costs, because road-contractor’s books are closed to public scrutiny. Also, our road contractor, Mainroad, shuffles equipment and personnel within its South Coast contract area, making an inseparable mix of those monies spent. Thus, MOTI applied the B.C. average, as the most certain figure they have. For all road works beyond this regular maintenance, the report says that MOTI spent about $500,000 annually over the last 15 or so years…

Salt Spring Island - Local Governance

Salt Spring Island (SSI) has an unusual form of local governance, unique in the world to it and 11 other island communities in the southern Gulf Islands, an archipelago of 450+ islands in British Columbia. The land zoning and community planning services of these 12 islands are delivered through Islands Trust, created in 1974 by the British Columbia government through the Islands Trust Act, to separate land use and planning from delivery of other local government services. The impetus was to curb unbridled development, under way and in planning, at odds with rare, fragile, beautiful ecosystems (notably, coastal Douglas-fir and Garry oak) valued by all British Columbians. The constant press to expand the local tax base would doubtless sacrifice natural landscapes and biodiversity. The mandate of Islands Trust is to "preserve and protect" the environment in balance with broad human needs. The result is a distinctly different local governance system from rural-district and munic…

The Islands Trust Experiment

“The Islands” of the title are between Vancouver and Vancouver Island in British Columbia. There are 465 in this archipelago, known collectively as the Gulf Islands. I live on Salt Spring Island, shown in green, the largest of the 13, which have a total of 25,000 permanent residents. Islands Trust is a federation of local governments with land-use authority, tasked with preserving and protecting the area’s unique amenities and environment. This is something so rare that a web search of trusts related to land use yields many references to them as private agreements between non-profit or individual landowners, sometimes working with government, but not integrated into government. In the late 1960s, developers and speculators drew up huge subdivisions of city-sized lots for many of the islands, planning instant new villages, towns, and mega-resorts. The alarmed Social Credit government put on the brakes, freezing lot sizes to a 10-acre minimum. Still, large-scale d…

Salt Spring Island Local Governance

Salt Spring Island[1] (SSI) has an unusual form of local governance, unique in the world to it and 11 other island communities in the southern Gulf Islands[2], an archipelago of 450+ islands in British Columbia[3]. The land zoning and community planning services of these 12 islands are delivered through[4]Islands Trust, created in 1974 by the British Columbia government through the Islands Trust Act[5], to separate land use and planning from delivery of other local government services.[6] The impetus was to curb unbridled development, under way and in planning, at odds with rare, fragile, beautiful ecosystems (notably, coastal Douglas-fir[7] and Garry oak[8]) valued by all British Columbians. The constant press to expand the local tax base would doubtless sacrifice natural landscapes and biodiversity. The mandate of Islands Trust is to "preserve and protect"[9] the environment in balance with broad human needs. The result is a distinctly different local governance system fro…

Brenda Guiled

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