Jon Cooksey

Building Our Future Through Community

Ask anyone who lives on this island, and they’ll have a story about “the other side” having unreasonable ideas. Currently, our community is divided on housing, roosters, policy statements, shoreline conservation, to name a few topics. Look back at the past decade, and you’d have dozens of issues where we just can’t seem to agree. Our problem isn't that we see the issues differently. Our real challenge is that we too often devalue the ideas and people that we don’t agree with. I’d argue though, that Salt Spring’s diversity of opinions is actually an important strength for our island’s complex challenges. Holding different ideas can help us innovate, improve decision-making, and prevent groupthink. But, in order to collaborate, we have to be constructive in our approach. It helps to be curious - why do you think the way you do? Then, we need to listen to understand - not to prepare our rebuttal. It also helps to have good democratic practices to support difficult co…

Hands Across the Water - Building Regional Resilience Through Relationships

Dedicated teams on both sides of the border have been hard at work on creating the upcoming Hands Across the Water event since May, which will include many fun events for both visiting Americans and Salt Springers: concerts, tastings, soccer game, harbour cruises and much more. And it’ll be an important boost to the Salt Spring economy in the shoulder season when tourism is tapering off. But the real purpose of the event runs much deeper: improving our regional resilience in shaky times. “From the beginning we’ve been working on setting up ‘sistering’ conversations between people and organizations on Salt Spring and their counterparts on Orcas.” Chamber of Commerce President Jason Roy-Allen recalls. “And there will be a number of sidebar conversations between our museums and historical societies, our community foundations, our churches and individuals who want to share knowledge and culture. But the centrepiece is our conversations about regional resilience.” Tho…

We Don't Have a Housing Crisis

There used to be a 2002 report on the Islands Trust website called “Crisis in Paradise - Accelerating the Provision of Affordable Housing on Salt Spring Island,” by Clare Heffernan. It’s cited in other reports, but I haven’t been able to find it, gone down the memory hole. But the title of the report still tells you what you need to know. We don’t have a housing crisis on Salt Spring. That was decades ago. What we have now is a housing consequence. I found references to that missing paper when I was reading those other reports, trying to educate myself about the history of housing on our island after I was asked by Transition Salt Spring (TSS) to find out how much common ground there is in our community about housing issues. TSS is not a housing organization, but they know that a community can’t be resilient against the impacts of climate change and other habitat issues unless a) people have stable housing and b) they trust each other. COVID and social media have been a doub…

Jon Cooksey

News Posts