After announcing that his company will be moving its roasting operation from Salt Spring Island, co-owner Mickey McLeod chatted with us this past week while he was in Vancouver working on a deal to find a new location for his company’s facilities.

“We don’t have a confirmed  location yet, and we are not sure how long the roasting facility will stay open on Salt Spring, but we felt we needed to make the announcement because of our staff. They need to know our situation, and our intentions,” said Mickey during a phone interview.

The coffee shop in Ganges will stay open and Robbyn and Mickey themselves will not be moving off island though it will mean that Mickey will be spending more of his time commuting to be present in his soon to be Vancouver-based business.

The decision to move “came out of a lot of frustration and disappointment from the fact that we couldn’t wait any longer for Salt Spring to allow this to happen. We have been working on finding a good solution for a roasting facility on Salt Spring for over five years now, this ( the location on Fulford Ganges Road) wasn’t the only attempt we had made.

We did as much due diligence as we could in advance of buying the property and talked to the trustees before hand and brought them the proposals. We were not discouraged from proceeding.  The tone we understood was ‘We want companies like yours on this island and we’ll do whatever we can to help you.’  With that verbal support we proceeded with the purchase, the studies, the public engagement process, everything we could think of in order to be a responsible company doing business in our community.”

So what happened?  “ The real problem here is that the Islands Trust process is totally flawed,” said Mickey.

“They accepted our $5,000 application fee – they allowed us to proceed.  They knew what we were going to do. During the process we took out ads to inform the community how things were going and the challenges we faced with the process, spent a great deal of money and time to make this work. My biggest disappointment is that they allowed us to go down this road in the first place.”

As islanders are also expressing their disappointment in online channels and reflecting on the impact this loss will have on the community, Mickey takes stock of the Salt Spring Coffee Company’s history on the island. It is a great success story.

Robbyn and Mickey, May 2010

Mickey and his wife Robbyn Scott moved to Spring Island in the early 1980’s.  Mickey came from Texada Island in 1981 to visit his brother Ross who was managing Mansell Farm. He worked at the farm for a few years before establishing a sawmill business that he worked at part time. In 1985 Robbyn moved to Salt Spring from New York City where she had been pursuing her passion for dance. The couple had originally met on Texada Island  in the early 70’s

In 1987 Mickey began working full time on the sawmill business which had become a successful enterprise. “We cut timbers for Artspring, Creekside, Moby’s Pub and some for Grace Point Square. We did work on Bob Hassel  and Hank Schubert homes. “

In 1996 Mickey and Robbyn started the Salt Spring Roasting Company, and Mickey kept the sawmill business going until their new venture demanded more of his time and money. “I sold parts of the sawmill to the O’Donnell brothers to help raise capital for the coffee business. “

They set up their coffee shop in the current location which had been Work Wear World, and the Credit Union before that.

What was the inspiration to get into the coffee business?

Mickey and Robbyn in Peru with coffee farmers.

“Robbyn and I have always enjoyed good coffee – and we were watching the specialty coffee movement happening on the west coast in the USA. We did some looking into it thought it would be a good fit for Salt Spring.  What appealed to us is that we could reflect our own personal values while promoting the product.”

The Roasting Company was an early advocate for supporting organic farmers and pushing for suppliers of organic coffee. They were an early adopter of fair trade ethics and one of the original handfull of companies involved in Transfair Canada which was established in 1998 to certify fair trade practices.

“We educated people about what organic was. When we first started going to grocery stores to sell them our coffee, some of the buyers would ask us things like ‘What is this organic stuff all about? Is that some sort of a fad?’

"Union of Women Workers that we are working with in Nicaragua. They are a newly formed co-op of woman working in the coffee dry mill. We helped them form their co-op and will be supporting their micro finance program."

The same thing with fair trade. Now carbon neutrality is the next thing we are working on. Through pursuing these values in our business we are able to communicate and educate consumers. It is ongoing. It’s because Robbyn and I have these values in our lives that we have been able to incorporate that into the business model.

The business is more successful than I expected. I didn’t really have any huge expectations. I really wanted to do something different and meaningful. We are now roasting about 800,000 pounds of coffee a year and selling to retailers throughout western Canada. It has been very exciting and rewarding.”

Coming to Salt Spring originally Mickey says the appeal was  spending time working with his brother Ross at Mansell Farm and the unique blend of counter culture and the well to do.

“I suppose now I have a bitter taste in my mouth about Salt Spring. I feel disillusioned.  The community seems fragmented. We thought it was the perfect place to continue to support the ideals we held. We wanted to try and help build this hub of business awareness, food awareness, and though a lot of people seemed engaged in that, and I think there are a lot of aware people — the other side sort of fragments it.”

As far as lessons learned from this, Mickey points to what he perceives as a problem with the structure of the Islands Trust.

“I believe the problem is that the two Trustees have too much power. And they ended up responding to pressures from constituents as opposed to any kind of protocol.  We were very up front and open with our process, but realized too late that we were playing the wrong game.  We were going by the book and the way the “process,” if you can call it that, was presented to us. Decisions are not made by logic but by influence and emotion.

I am fine with their answer  but would have preferred that up front instead of 18 months later and about $200,000 in costs that we won’t recover, from going through this process. This is a problem with the system.

This problem goes very deep into the community besides what it has done in this case with Salt Spring Coffee.

I was sent a copy of a petition recently from a lawyer on Hornby island. There is a movement underway to look at the actual Islands Trust act. I think it is something we should look at.”

In the meantime, the Salt Spring Coffee Company looks for a new space in the city and workers jobs at the local facility will be moved off island.

“We tried hard to keep our operations on the island and I am sorry to our staff that won’t be going with us and other community members that will be affected by our move,” said Mickey.

“All the postings on the community list, petitions, letters and support paid off! It was announced today that Saltspring Island will be given a security portal during the Olympics.

We will be allowed to fly direct to and from Vancouver during the Olympics, no detour to Nanaimo. A few more visitors to the island in February will be welcome too, we can show off the island to visitors drawn to the Olympics from all over the world.

So a big thank you to all who helped including Minister Lunn and credit to the community board for being the way to get a message out to the people that can make a difference  –’Islanders.’”

Thank you
Philip Reece
www.saltspringair.com

Message Courtesy of Philip Reece from the SaltSpringCommunity.com List

Read more about this story from our local paper: The Driftwood

Watch the Video – Take the Flight with Saltspring Air from Vancouver to Ganges

You asked for it, now here it is. The islands very own SaltSpringCommunity.com Board discussion forum for lively online conversations on issues and ideas that we all care most about.

Again and again, we’ve been asked to facilitate discussions on the SaltSpringCommunity.com List and while the list is a powerful community building tool, its not ideal for ongoing discussions that can generate many hundreds of emails on any given topic. So we’ve created the SaltSpringCommunity.com Board for you to have those conversations and share opinions.

This is a new experiment for us, if you’re interested in using it, we’ll support it and we’ll all need to take time to learn how to use and make the most of this resource. To get us all started we have created 7 new forum topics:

Salt Spring – Making it Better
Salt Spring – Sustainability
Salt Spring – BC Ferries
Salt Spring – CRD
Salt Spring – Islands Trust
Salt Spring – Real Estate
Salt Spring – H1N1

Contact us if you have suggestions about additional SaltSpringCommunuity.com Board forum topics. You will need to Register with the SaltSpringCommunity.com Board to participate in the discussion – Click here to Register. If you have questions about how the SaltSpringCommunity.com Board works – Click here to read the Frequently Asked Questions.

We’ll add more forum topics if there is interest in doing so, but please, jump in, start a conversation and please be patient with us as we find a way to manage this appropriately for all of us.

After fourteen years of  programming and coordinating the Fall Fair music stage, islander Nelly Kostelijk is hanging up her hat and moving on to other pursuits. Island musicians who have played the Fall Fair over the years have enjoyed a good quality sound stage and system, and a professional performance environment that is a pleasure to perform on. And audiences have been entertained by some fantastic local musicians who donate their time to the event. But before Nelly came along – there was no music stage at the fair.

“In 1995,  I went to my first Fall Fair meeting with my neighbors Margaret and Robin Reid.  Margaret invited me along as I was new to the island and she knew I wanted to meet some more of the locals,” said Kostelijk.  “I had no idea what was about to happen.  During the meeting I asked where the band stand was.  Everyone looked at me and said ‘we don’t have one.’ or something to that effect.  There is so much musical talent here I just assumed there would be one.  The next moment,  someone said ‘all in favor of having Nelly as the Fall Fair Entertainment Co-Coordinator please put up your hand.’ The vote was unanimous!  It happened so fast I thought:  ‘what just happened?’

One of the first things we discussed was that we would have to give the musicians a good place to play and provide a spot to make it worth their while.  And since it’s all volunteer they should be allowed in free and have a space to park and be allowed to sell any CD’s they might have to help make it more appealing as some do this for a living. That first year they  got volunteers to put up someone’s flat deck trailer and palettes and tarps and away we went.”

Along the way infrastructure was built to ensure the music would continue to be part of the fair.  “Tony Threlfall and the gang got the stage built and made benches happen so the wet hay bales were used elsewhere.”

Kostelijk says she has enjoyed her work programming the music stage over the years:  “I love Salt Spring Island and wanted to make a contribution to it in some way and this was something I would enjoy,” she explains. ” I enjoy live music.  I enjoyed the spirit of cooperation and people willing to come and do a gig and just being part of helping make the Fair a success — making something else to contribute to it.

The Fall Fair is run by tons of volunteers; it’s always so rewarding to be with a group of people who do this to make a contribution to the community for the joy of doing it.  This is totally volunteer and not paid except for the satisfaction of the job well done at the end.  I think that’s great don’t you?”

Local musicians agree it has been great to have Nelly orchestrating the music at the fair all these years. Thanks Nelly!

Its been weeks of clear blue skies and sun here on Salt Spring, but last night the skies opened up, while the air cooled, and the island was treated to a much needed burst of rain. The beauty of nature and life was on full display with rare thunder and lightning along with a breath taking sunset through the evenings rain clouds. If you missed it, we managed to capture some video of the sunset looking West from the Fulford Valley across the peak of Mount Maxwell. Enjoy!

Salt Spring Summer Rain Storm Sunset from Salt Spring Community on Vimeo.