The Galiano Club

On October 8th the Galiano Club’s Blackberry Festival was held. For decades now, the Club has been holding a Blackberry Tea/Festival on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. No one seems to know exactly when it began, only that it is an island tradition. The Blackberry Tea is the main fundraiser of the Galiano Club. If anyone does remember when it began please contact us at 2175. We would love to be able to document the beginnings.
Pie Making
This year the blackberry abundance was amazing and many people picked and froze berries for the Festival pies. The irrepressible Kathy Benger, at 90, picked over 24 litres. Pie production began on Wednesday, October 5th with a pastry workshop led by Alison Colwell, one of two part-time Community Food Program Coordinators. Over 200 “bottoms” were made in 2 hours. This was followed by 150 “tops” on Thursday. Friday was a soup making and baking day, along with the set up and decorating of the old Hall. Over 150 blackberry, blackberry-apple and pumpkin pies were baked and this year for the first time unbaked frozen pies also were available for sale. Our Junior Club members were showing up the old pros when it came to crimping the pastry.

Saturday began as a misty, cool fall day. In the early morning, people were in the Hall heating soups, slicing pies and organising the dishwashing. From the moment the doors opened at 11:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. there was a non-stop whirlwind of activity. A team of volunteers served 200 bowls of 10 types of homemade soups, buns from the Sturdies Bay Bakery, over 200 pieces of pie with ice cream, endless cups of regular tea, fresh mint tea and Galiano Coffee Roasting Company coffee. The soups ran out at 2:00, the pies were all sold by 3:00. Inside and outside the Hall were tables of produce, bread, canned goods, native plants from the Galiano Conservancy Native Plants Nursery and spun wool items for sale. This was the final day of the Galiano Saturday Farmers’ Market.

Not including the berry pickers, there were over 40 individual volunteers involved (the list will be published next month), many of whom were involved in more than one day of the activities including hours of dishwashing and clean up. Also among the volunteers was an enthusiastic contingent from the Galiano Club Junior Membership (from ages 5 to 18).

It’s always a wonderfully chaotic community event. Thank you to the Galiano community for supporting the Blackberry Festival and remember to mark Saturday, October 6th, 2012 in your calendars!

Bluffs Park Lookout Road: Rick Gill and Andy Turner from our highways maintenance company, Mainroad, approached the Galiano Club with an offer to repair the “spur” road that leads from Bluff Rd. to the Bluffs lookout. This spur road has been in very bad condition for a number of years. Because the Bluffs are designated “nature protection”, very little alteration can be done within the park. The Islands Trust Planner has approved the road repair work which will include new gravel and ditching as well as adding fill in the lookout parking lot that is a lake for much of the winter.

This work will begin mid-October and will take about 3 days. This donation by Mainroad is an incredible community benefit. It would have taken the Galiano Club a long time in which to raise the money for this project. Thank you Mainroad!

In August, Bob Boyechko and his crew removed 2 old roofs from the South Galiano Community Hall and replaced them with a new roof. The work took about 5 days during the hottest week of the year. No rot was found under the old roofs and the new roof was expertly installed along with new flashings.

At the same time the roof was being re-done, Louis Gonthier re-coated the main Hall floor and the stage floor. Louis spent 4 days working on the floors and donated all of his labour costs.

Thank you to the Community for your support through the purchase of "shingles" and attending various fundraising events, to all who volunteered to help with the sprucing up of the Hall, to Don Anderson for re-building the front steps, to Ken Hancock, Capital Regional District Director, for his financial support of this large project, to Galiano Trading for their equipment loan, to Dave Gerlach for the loan of his truck and finally to Kathy Benger whose very generous donation of $6,000 allowed us to proceed this summer with this project.

The Galiano Community Hall, affectionately known as the 'South End Hall', is in need of a new roof.

As a heritage building, the Hall needs regular careful maintenance and ongoing improvements, but big-ticket items like replacing the roof are beyond our regular budget.

So, we need your help! Buy us a shingle!

You can donate by sending $10 per shingle to us at Box 219, Galiano Island, B.C., VON 1PO, or inquire via galianoclub@gmail.com or use our contact form.

And, when the time comes in 2011, we hope you'll come out to lend a hand, too.

The Galiano Food Program has set up a new site at http://galianofoodprogram.ca due to the increasing complexity of the various projects and activities and its heavy information sharing needs.

Please check it out, become a member, and participate!

http://galianofoodprogram.ca

Food Forever is a component of the Galiano Food Program that brings together seniors and school age children to learn more about the local wild foods, to cook with local foods and to learn computer skills. This includes cooking, foraging, growing, preserving and writing about these subjects.

Be sure to read the blog articles from this project: http://galianoclub.org/blog/21

Our goal is to use the blog to help build enough material to publish a short book.

More information about the Food Forever Project will be posted here shortly:

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The Galiano Club was founded in November, 1924 with the stated objectives: "to, a) encourage social activity; b) foster agricultural interest; c) form a public library & d) build a public hall which shall be used for the above three purposes". The document of Declaration was signed by Crawford O. Twiss, William Henry Gilmour, Stanley Page, Philip Steward.