Saturday Sept 4, 8:00: Set your spirit free to the intoxicating rhythms of one‐man phenomenon,
Shane Philip at Beaver Point Hall. Didgeridoo, Kona lap-slide guitar, Djembe drums…Shane is described as a master of unique instrumentation who brings strange sounds together to form a seamless music mosaic.

“Swelling in primordial pulses and wholloping whoops, the tacit tones of Shane Philip’s didgeridoo hold the power to still listeners into silence or encourage audiences to rise up in a tribal swell of intoxicating spirit — with sometimes but a heartbeat in between. Meanwhile his hands will be skillfully juggling between shaking up rhythms with his aslatua, driving the dancefloor with his djembe and sliding out grooves on his Weissenborn-style guitar while his foot taps in earthshaking electronic kicks wherever they might fit.”

His sound has been likened to Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, and the White Stripes. Folk, reggae and blues are influences, but Shane blurs the boundaries of musical genres. His sound and his lyrics are derived from a unique fusion of his many influences in life and drive a passion to communicate heart, spirit and soul through his music.
With special guest  DJ Desunos ( aka Laughlin)

Tickets for the Beaver Point Hall concert are $15.00 in advance at Salt Spring Books in Ganges or Morningside Organic Bakery and Cafe in Fulford, or $20.00 at the door.

On September 25th the Harbour House Hotel will be throwing the first annual Salt Spring Island Rib Fest here at our Hotel. People from around the Gulf Islands/Victoria will be able to enter their homemade ribs to win ultimate bragging rights :). Rib lovers from around Salt Spring and Victoria will be able to come and eat to their heart’s content while taking part in local music and tons of beer provided for free by Big Rock Brewery who is sponsoring the event.

Besides being a ton of fun, there is also a side cause which makes this event even more important to the community of Salt Spring Island. About two months ago a chef at the Harbour House Hotel and his wife were in a very serious car accident and because of their injuries they have not been able to work. Therefore, the Harbour House Hotel is giving partial proceeds to the quick recovery of Ryan James & his wife Julie.

We want to make this an annual event on the island that brings people together at the end of every summer for lots of fun, music, RIBS, and beer. We really want to hype up this event!

The event will take place on September 25th, 2010 at the Harbour House Hotel (on the field – rain or shine) from 3pm – 9pm. Tickets are $10 dollars with lots of Ribs and Beer to go around. You won’t want to miss this!!!!!

” Enjoy each day in great big chunks and give just as much back ,” that is what I try to live by.

After teaching pump primers (a coed conditioning aerobic,  heart rehab class — loads of fun!!) on Salt Spring for 20 years I moved into offering guided stretch classes with Celeste at Ganges Yoga Studio four years ago.

I  teach a basic stretch class, guided everyday stretches for EveryBody to the background of emotive classical music. It is a fusion of styles that works on the principle of movement is life, Always mindful of good practice that enables EveryBody to feel and experience the benefits  coming from such a class. Functional everyday stretches that help us all regain balance, strength good alignment  It’s there for us all.

I realized that so many people do not do acknowledge  the benefits or the real joy that can come from regular stretching routines, so I combined my love of music, with movement so ANYBODY can do it.  I believe the benefits include lower blood pressure, better  brain function and a increase in self esteem.

I like to offer classes on Mondays and Fridays – the idea being that people stretch into the week and out of the week.

Someone asked me once what makes me get up in the morning.  I get up because of my day…look what I do…look where I live…look where I play.

I teach, I exercise, I show a way, through movement to classical music, to find the flow and rhythm of our bodies – the path … a different way to offer strength, balance, joy and relaxation. A journey.

My journey brought me to Celeste at Ganges Yoga Studio where she inspires me everyday.  She is  MY guide.  She enabled me to flourish in the warmth of such creativity.  Everyone who enters the studio immediately feels a sense of belonging.  As I do.
For me it is wonderful opportunity to work with a team of dedicated practioners after so many years of teaching fitness in isolation. I have Celeste to thank for this shared experience..this journey

I love what I do.
Catherine has been teaching fitness for 27 years the last 20 years with Pump Primers a popular coed heart re hab class here on Salt Spring Island. She has a teaching degree from Newcastle University UK (1976) where she was encouraged to apply her teaching skills to the health industry through fitness.
She took her fitness certification and has never looked back.

Her passion and energy is contagious and her participants quickly gain self-confidence coupled with body awareness and strength. Enthusiastic, experienced, and knowledgeable, her classes are supportive, encouraging and inspiring. She is motivated and a true believer in exercise as the route to sound health. She offers well-grounded sound exercise at an energy level that suits the individual and is continually mindful of good practice.

“Catherine uses classical music and injects fun into the movements. Her enthusiasm and energy will rub off on you, whatever fitness level you are at! She loves what she does and it shows.”   Pam Fry, a class participant
Catherine and her husband have lived on Salt Spring Island for 21 years – ” Our children were educated here and have now flown the coop. Son working happily with the  SS Coffee Company in Vancouver and our daughter in California, she owns and operates a yoga studio. Those are my grand children in the photo”

Dan Jason ships about 80,0000 packets of seeds from Salt Spring Island to locations around the planet every year.  He has eight growers on Salt Spring working cooperatively to produce hundreds of varieties of seeds, many of them old, unusual or endangered.  His seeds are tried and true, tested for countless generations and adapted to the regions they grow in.  Dan’s business, aptly named Salt Spring Seeds, is successful and vibrant.

However, Dan is more concerned about empowering people to grow their own food than he is in growing his businesses’ bottom line.   He is the founder of a non-profit Canadian seed and plant sanctuary whose aim is to sustain heritage seeds, through wise selection and safe storage, so that they are around for future generations.

Dan’s passion for plants and gardening sprouted in an unlikely environment.  When he was thirteen, his baffled parents succumbed to years of lobbying, and gave him permission to dig up a small sunless patch of their lawn and plant vegetables.  Dan grew his first crop of carrots and potatoes under a back porch in suburban Montreal.

After high school, Dan attended the University of McGill, completing a degree in anthropology and psychology.  Upon graduation he moved to British Columbia and a friend hooked him up with a small research grant in rural technology.  He travelled the province studying edible and medicinal plants and then wrote a book.   Seven editions of this small tome with the innocuous title of Some Useful Wild Plants were printed during the 1970s.  To this day, it is one of the best selling books on this topic in the province.

His wanderlust satisfied, Dan moved to Salt Spring Island in 1976 and put down roots in a garden of his own.   His insatiable curiosity about plants had fully blossomed and he set about challenging prevailing west coast gardening assumptions.   His garden was destined to be much more then your average island vegetable patch.

Dan successfully grows a large variety of plants not usually found on Vancouver Island or the Gulf Islands.  For instance, he harvests beans, barley, oats, rye, and a heritage variety of wheat called emmer, as well as a hot weather grain from South America called amaranth.

Dan has demonstrated that protein crops don’t always need to be farmed on a large scale.  He says, “Grains are easier to grow than vegetables because they are hardy and drought resistant.   Homegrown beans cook up faster and digest more easily.” He’s passionate about the importance of growing protein crops on the west coast because he believes they are an essential component in attaining local food security.

Thanks to Dan’s efforts the small-scale production of protein rich crops is catching on.  His seed packet sales testify to this reality.  Dan attributes his success to a growing public concern about local food production.  He states, “We export fava beans, lentils and chickpeas.  In other countries these foods are highly esteemed yet we don’t eat them.  Instead we import rice.  It would be better to eat what we grow.  How are we going to eat if we cannot import food?”

Dan works hard to enable others to save and protect seeds. People send him seeds from all over the world, some of which are very old and unique.  He works to keep these seeds going and prevent them from becoming extinct.

Someone recently sent him some thousand-year-old tobacco seeds found in an urn excavated from a First Nations burial site near the Great Lakes.  Dan was asked to grow out the seeds.  He says, “It was an amazing plant very unlike modern tobacco, short with big leaves.”   He has since sent these seeds to hundreds of First Nations people.

Dan procured the seeds for one of his favourite tomato plants from a stranger named Andy Pollock in Houston BC.  Andy grew and made selections from these seeds for thirty-five years and as a result they are hardy in cold weather and produce prolific fruit in a short growing season.

The concept is a simple one – you need good seeds to grow food and diversity is key.  It is critical that protecting seeds becomes a global trend.  Dan says, “Humans have changed the environment and climate so drastically that we cannot count on the weather. We must save seeds and store them so that we have a backup plan when climate change causes crop failures.  It is important that this happens in every community in every country.”

Dan imagines a future where local food production is a ubiquitous characteristic of urban and rural environments-where lawns are replaced by vegetable gardens and decorative shrubs by fruit and nut trees.  He envisions communities working together, one property owner planting tomatoes in their sunny garden while another plants peas in the shade behind their porch and then sharing the bounty between them.   He promotes gardens on rooftops and decks.  He says, “We need to open our minds and realize that nature has an amazing ability to provide what we need.”

Dan’s island garden has transformed the landscape well beyond the shores of Salt Spring Island.  His innovative approach to west coast gardening is likely to continue as long as Dan can turn dirt.

Thursday August 19, 2010 at 7:30 – Centre for Child Honouring Speaker Series presents “The Challenges and Opportunities of Conscious Parenting,” a talk by Adela Barcia.

Submitted by Lara Gossett.

Some of us vowed to bring up our children in a different way than the way we were raised. Even so, it is difficult to be balanced and grounded in our highest values amidst the many choices that parenting presents. How do we nurture our children’s spirits and encourage them to express themselves freely, while also practicing positive discipline—teaching them clear boundaries and respectful  treatment of others?

Adela Barcia has often been consulted about children’s emotional and behavioral difficulties, and related parenting challenges. She has identified confusions and misconceptions common to many parents that can interfere with raising strong, whole individuals. In her talk, she will describe these challenges and offer alternative, effective, conscious parenting strategies.

Bio:
A psychotherapist for over thirty years, Adela Barcia creates engaging frameworks for personal and social transformation. She describes her  orientation as “spiritual pragmatism”. Now writing a book about expansive love, Adela is the dedicated mother of two children and lives in Santa Barbara.

Front page banner photo: Julie Campbell

On Wednesday July 21st at 7pm at Harbour House, Richard Meech will be on hand to introduce his just-released one-hour documentary. As part of his West coast tour (the film is also being screened in Gabriola and at the Okanagan Film Festival) the producer/director will also host a Q&A after the show.

“Just think: there is a humble jungle plant that has the ability to affect the consciousness of the one species that can determine the fate of all species – just when that need is greater than ever.”
– Richard Meech, Producer/Director “Vine of the Soul”

Can a sacred plant from the Amazon heal our minds and spirits? For centuries, indigenous people of South America have used ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant medicine, to cure all manner of psycho-spiritual ills.

Today, thousands of Westerners, seeking healing and spiritual awakening, attend ayahuasca ceremonies around the world to drink the vision-inducing tea and experience dramatic transformations in their lives.

“Vine of the Soul” is a documentary that explores this brave new world, offering insights into the nature of faith, mystical experience and self-healing through a heightened state of consciousness. Filmmaker Richard Meech follows key protagonists as they journey to Peru – and back home to Canada – capturing in verité style both the life-altering epiphanies and nights of terror encountered after drinking the sacred brew.

Throughout the film, in-depth interviews with Peruvian and Canadian shamans, ethnobotanist Dennis McKenna, addiction expert Dr. Gabor Maté and scholar Kenneth Tupper speak to the increasing use of ayahuasca outside the Amazon and the potential benefits for Western medicine, personal spiritual growth and a new understanding of nature.

“In the mid 1990’s I started hearing about Westerners going to the Amazon to participate in traditional ayahuasca ceremonies,” recalls Meech in a recent interview. “These people were not the usual collection of anthropologists and enthobotanists doing fieldwork, but ordinary folks looking for emotional healing and spiritual awakening. And a few of them were apprenticing with the master shamans to lead their own ceremonies back home.

“I decided to meet some of the Westerners who drink ayahuasca and find out how it has affected their lives. I could never have anticipated nor imagined the emotional depths and spiritual journeys I would be privileged to witness.

“In learning about ayahuasca both through the filming process and my own ceremonial work, I have come to appreciate that there is a wide gulf in our popular understanding about the nature of healing. Living with a profoundly material worldview leaves very little, if any, space for what can be called the ‘spiritual’. Spirituality and healing? What does spirituality have to do with healing? A lot more than I had thought, it turns out. With ayahuasca one can have a direct connection with the divine or source of all creation, something one actually experiences, viscerally, in the depths of one’s own being. It can be healing on the most profound levels.

“How extraordinary then, at the turn of our twenty first century that we should be rediscovering the power of the sacred medicine, ayahuasca, that has been around for thousands of years. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, a measure of good timing.”

Studio # 24 – Antonio Alonso Madrona Gallery

“My work is a constant exploration of form, in the pursuit of balance, harmony and natural elegance. My aim is to reveal the treasures hidden within the tree and I strive to discover the shape in them that is so alive that one never tires of looking at it.”

The Salt Spring Studio Tour offers a year round opportunity to meet local artists and artisans and experience the creativity that abounds on this wonderful island. Please follow the sheep signs and enjoy.

Studio #23 – StoneRidge Pottery and Flowers by Design

Beth has been an independent floral designer since1993. She studied fine arts  at the Vancouver School ofArt and textile design at the Banff School of Fine Arts and Northwest Handcraft House. She has participated in master classes with  respected European and North American floral designers.

Gary  has been a potter for 38 years. He is a master ofthe craft. After receiving a BA at UBC, he studied ceramicsat Northwest Handcraft House, and fine art at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. His work has been exhibitedand collected in Canada, the USA, Australia and Japan.

The Salt Spring Studio Tour offers a year round opportunity to meet local artists and artisans and experience the creativity that abounds on this wonderful island. Please follow the sheep signs and enjoy.

Saturday July 10 – 2:30 – 4:30

Marion Pape and Susan Wetmore saw this amazing performance in Duncan and have invited the troupe over to Salt Spring as a special celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace.
Guaranteed to amuse and inspire.

Not to forget there is the freshly baked and grown strawberry shortcake you shouldn’t miss!

Bring your family and friends-there’s lots of space!

Submitted by Marion Pape

Thursday July 8, 2010 -  Jeremy Fisher, Said The Whale, Hannah Georgas & Aidan Knight Present The Malahat Revue concert at Artspring- their first stop on a bicycle powered tour that winds its way throughout the islands and ends with a performance at the Vancouver Folk Fest.

Salt Spring audiences were wowed by Jeremy Fisher’s performance last year at Art Spring.

Hannah Georgas is currently considered “the hottest commodity in the Canadian indy music scene,” ( Chart Attack Magazine)

Knight and Said the Whale are both part of the Peak Performance Project Top 20 – and also well-respected in the indy music scene.

The tour was conceived by Jeremy Fisher who has toured across North America by bike three times and at 33, doesn’t own a car. Fisher endeavours to do as much as possible by bike. It’s with that ethic in mind that The Malahat Revue will hit the road on their bicycles, playing six shows from July 8-18. With only a single support vehicle to carry drums and larger gear, the musicians will carry more portable gear with them, and rack up over 500 kilometers as they pedal from gig to gig in a little more than a week.

With eight musicians together on stage, playing a selection of favourites from one another’s back catalogues, it will be an unpredictable atmosphere of spontaneity and experimentation. One thing is certain: The Malahat Revue will be the greatest show made up of four bands touring on two wheels that you’ll see all summer!

See the clip of their impromptu performance today in front of the CBC building in Vancouver, as they kicked off the tour.

Vancouver Sun Article: here.

Tickets are $21 at Artspring. 250-537-2102. Show is Thursday July 8th.