Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Carol Titler served on the Friends of Cortes Island Board (FOCI) during some of the society’s formative years. She was not one of the founding members, but joined in FOCI was still meeting in people’s homes and hauling its records around in boxes.
“Then Hubert Havelaar built an office space and it was moved to downtown Manson's Landing where it put us right there in the public eye. People began to really want to see what we were up to,” she explained.
“I think I joined at a really great time because there was a wonderful group of people there. They had these great projects that were really interesting and I felt were really great for the island. Ralph Nursall, who is no longer with us sad to say, was the president of the board. He brought all of his skills from being a marine biologist and a professor. He put together contracts to work with people because sums of money would be donated for something like forestry, large sums of money, and we needed to make sure that was all accountable and so forth. Our office person was Kathy Smail, who was really wonderful about devoting a lot of time to setting up the actual organization … Kathy was always there working away at her computer. She was a great person with the members of the island and the public.”
Now that FOCI had an office, they started putting together a library. They purchased a lot of books on sustainability, the environment, gardening or orchards, pruning, beekeeping, mushrooms, botany and anything else that seemed relevant through Marnie’s Books. Nursall contributed books from his years at the University of Alberta.
A discussion of various programs follows - photo courtesy FOCI
