Project Watershed Celebrates our 30th Annual General Meeting 

Our 30th Annual General Meeting on June 10th, 2023, was one to remember. Thanks to the Comox Valley Regional District and Councilor Will-Cole Hamilton, we were able to hold the meeting in the Regional District’s Civic Boardroom. The advanced technical and purposeful physical aspects of the room made it easy to facilitate our first combined in person/online AGM and our first in person AGM in 4 years. To ensure all the technical details were in order Mayor Bob Wells dropped by to help set up.

At the meeting, our staff summarized a variety of our marine and aquatic research, restoration and education projects that span from Oyster River to Annie Creek, illustrating the breadth and depth of the projects we undertake.

New members were elected to the Board of Directors including Thomas Grimmer, Brodie Guy, Geoff Wickstrom, and James Godwin. These new Directors bring diverse expertise in society/charity work, Indigenous partnership, landscape architecture, environmental consulting, and communications. Existing Board members, including Kathy Haigh, Alisha Drinkwater, Pat Sloan, Brian Storey, and Bill Heath, continue to serve.

Long-standing Directors Don Castleden, and Dan Bowen stepped down from the Board. Don served for 22 years and Dan for 12 years, both helped shape Project Watershed into the environmental powerhouse it is today (to read more about Don and Dan click here). Tim, who was also a director from 2015 to 2018 and played a crucial role in initiating the Kus-kus-sum Project, also stepped down .

The keynote speaker, Fiona Hamersley Chambers, delivered an engaging presentation on native plants and discussed the concept of estuary gardens. “Wild plants are not a museum” she insisted, going on to speak about First Nation management practices that not only yielded the food they needed but also increased the productivity of the estuary plots they were managing.

The idea of maintaining a beneficial relationship with ecosystems underpins the term Keeping It Living (Q’waq’wala7owkw), which comes from Chief Adam Dick as written by Nancy Turner. Project Watershed has been using Keeping It Living as an umbrella for their stewardship work since 2008 and felt that Fiona was an appropriate speaker for the 30th AGM as she is directly connected to Keeping It Living having studied under Nancy Turner. 

With another successful AGM under our belt, we are back to work. If folks want to partake in our efforts, they can attend another event or be part of our 30 for 30 campaign where we are encouraging people to either donate $30 or 30 hours to celebrate our 30th year of stewardship. We have gift certificates and keepsakes for those who do!

Project Watershed’s Annual General Report and a recording of the Annual General Meeting can be found here.

Thank you to Bigfoot Donuts for donating some tasty treats for the event!