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- [Narrator] The temperate Pacific Coast climate makes
Campbell River a popular destination for ecotourism
and outdoor adventure, especially fishing.
In fact, Campbell River has gained a reputation as the
salmon capital of the world.
On the east side of Vancouver Island,
at the southern end of Discovery Passage,
you'll find this cozy coastal community.
There might be no better way to see the scenic beauty
of this city than from the sky.
Just ask the pilots of Corilair,
who deliver the mail by float plane to small,
off the grid communities and surrounding Desolation Sound.
- [Mike] Fishing has a really big part in the history
in Campbell River.
But right up there with fishing is float planes.
At one time actually,
Campbell River was one of the busiest float plane
bases in the world.
I got the airplane bug very young.
I had a private pilot license at 17, I believe.
And I've flown for the better part of my life.
One of the very popular things that we offer is
passengers riding along in our historic mail flight.
The stops on the mail flight aren't just mail.
We service an area as opposed to a destination.
That's where the flight is very entertaining
because it's not always the same.
Today, we're gonna go out to the Discovery Islands
and the edge of Desolation Sound.
The general area that we're servicing,
there's three options,
there's us, a private boat, or a water taxi.
So, it plays a pretty big role.
We fly so many different things.
We fly food and medical supplies.
We get usually once or twice a summer the panic call
for a baby seal that somebody's found.
We wind up moving them in.
We get the odd panic call to do medevacs.
There's a whole host of things.
- [Donna] I'm the post master at Surge Narrows.
It's a floating post office.
We service five islands.
A lot of people come by boat.
They get everything here.
They get wine.
(laughs)
Some people order stuff from Wal-Mart.
We even had a tree a few weeks ago.
And a porta potty.
It works for people.
The community is very nice,
they're very friendly.
It's quite a social thing, coming to the post office.
I mean for me as well as them.
Because there is no coffee shop.
This is the best job.
And then you have these pilots come in,
they're always very nice to me.
(laughs)
I have no complaints.
(engine starts)
- [Mike] Each community is different so we can go extremes.
We can stop at Surge Narrows and we have the homesteading,
live off the land type.
We can go over to Big Bay,
and we have the rich and famous.
We can go over to Refuge Cove,
where it's a community that's co-owned.
It's a cooperative owned by a number of people.
It's really hard to say this is the type of people
that live out here because it's a huge cross section.
We're off to Little Dent Island next,
we're gonna pick up a mechanic and his tools
who's been working on a boat.
From there we're gonna hop on over to Aaron Point
and pick up one of the workers there and we're gonna
take everybody back to Campbell River.
There's a lot of people that think it's very romantic
and they think that it's the best job in the whole world.
Reality is, it's a job like any other job with
good days and bad days.
The good days,
it's a nice sunny afternoon with no pressures
and no timelines.
The bad day is the weather's deteriorating and the wind's
coming up and you're running out of daylight and fuel.
(soft music)
We get people who have actually booked us
from all over the world.
That have actually come here specifically to do mail flight.
I think it's popular because of its uniqueness.
In it's simplicity.
It's realism, and it's not a put on.
Everybody gets off the plane going,
wow, I can't believe I did this,
it's awesome and I can't wait to come back and do it again.
- [Narrator] Campbell River has quite a history,
but it's also facing the future head on.
For Sean Smith that means empowering kids with the skills
they need in the digital age.
- [Sean] I love everything about this town.
From the people down to the vista views that I have
just walking down along the beach.
It's a small town with a big town feel
when you need it to have a big town feel.
Five, four, three, two.
Today we're going to discuss social media and your
smart devices and how to keep your kids safe when online.
That's today, on the Digital Hallway.
I'm a professional social media educator.
Where I'm teaching kids, parents, teachers, and teens,
how to use social media safely and effectively.
Today, I'm actually going to be going to one of our
local high schools and speaking to the class
on what we refer to as the social media footprint.
It's educating students on what your social media,
your online presence looks like and the effects that it can
have on your life.
The online world and the offline world are so
interconnected now that anything you do in one space
is going to be seen in the other space.
Trying to get kids to understand that is much harder
than to get adults to understand that type pf abstract.
What I'm gonna be talking to you today about is
social media and the social media footprint.
All your posts,
and your picture shares,
and your conversations and you text messages,
all of that equates to your social media footprint.
That follows you around forever.
We're dealing with the somewhat darker side.
How does a potential child predator utilize social media
for their proclivities and going after youth?
How does an employer use social media
as a means of doing it as their first interview.
What I want you do is I want you to log into your computers.
I want you to go on and I want you to do a Google search.
I want you to search for yourself online.
In your community,
or your name and a sport that you're into.
Or a name and a game that you're into.
And see where your profile shows up.
Because that's how the employers are going
to be looking for you.
They know the apps that they use and the tools that they use
but they don't know how other people use them.
For both positive and negative purpose.
Within a week,
she's no longer a candidate,
she lost her job with the city of Calgary,
and she's done.
All because of a tweet she did four years earlier.
That's how quick things can go sideways for you.
This is part of the reason why I teach about making sure
that the content that you post online
has value to you now and in the future.
Any questions?
Educating kids is probably one of the most challenging
and most rewarding things that you can do
because they're a blank slate.
If you engage them in something that they're interested in,
they are yours to teach.
- [Narrator] The landscape of Campbell River
inspires many artists.
Including generations of master carvers
in the Henderson family.
Who know the importance of passing down tradition.
(dog barks)
- [Bill] This carving shed is,
I built it 17 years ago,
I believe it was.
It is on Old Spit road.
The place where I grew up as a child.
I played here right on the beach.
I had a really good feeling here all the time.
Right on the water you look out and yeah,
it's a great feeling.
This picture up here,
is my whole family.
All my siblings,
all my brothers and sisters.
Mom and dad is up at the top.
Here's a picture of my brother Dan,
myself, my brother Sam, and my brother Mark.
We did that BBQ that day for,
we did a Henderson exhibit for my father's work.
It was a great day for us.
There's a lot of pictures of dad up there carving.
When he sat there painting in our old kitchen,
I was there with him.
(chuckles)
That's where I learned so much,
by sitting there and watching.
My first carving I made,
I was in grade one.
I learned how to use a knife as a very young boy
because we made our own toys.
As years went on I got better.
And the carving where we're sitting here today,
I've made so many carvings and totem poles,
and it's great to share our art with so many other people.
It amazed me.
I never thought I'd see this day what I'm doing now.
I've got poles going to Memphis Tennessee and New York.
Ishikari, Japan.
Akita, Japan.
You know,
I had a person go to Akita and she come back and said Bill,
it was like going to a Henderson exhibit over there.
She'd seen so much of our work.
Stuff like that really makes me feel good and proud.
Because they've got so much respect for your work.
(buzzing)
To pass it on is wow.
And to keep it going.
It makes me feel really good,
for my nephews and my son William.
Yeah when my brother Ernie passed away,
Greg was, he just graduated not long after that.
I knew he was interested in carving,
so I kind of took him along and helped him out
as the years went on.
I was impressed.
He learned fast.
He's just like Junior,
he came to me when he was 17 years old,
wanted to learn our culture.
I took him in and we learned how to make knives.
How to make the tools first.
Then we went into carving.
(scraping)
Passing it on is the thing in my family.
Dad says you know,
keep your legacy going.
You know,
as far as I'm concerned,
in my family it's not gonna go away.
- [Narrator] People fall in love with Campbell River
for many reasons.
For an early 20th century artist named Sybil Andrews,
it was the stunning landscape as much as it was
the fascinating people.
(piano music)
[Ken] Sybil Andrews was born in Bury St. Edmunds,
England and had a rather rural upbringing.
But eventually landed at The Grosvenor School in London.
Which is a very central school in the history
of English avant-garde Art.
After the war,
her and her husband wanted to emigrate to the colonies
and ended up in Campbell River which would be very English
weather for her and continued to make art
and teach here for over 40 years.
(piano music)
The work of Sybil Andrews is very central
of what we've come to recognize as early modernism.
There was so many changes at the beginning of the
20th century in technology,
and in science, and in physics,
it's also the time of the beginning of the automobile,
the airplane, film, movies, Freudian psychoanalysis,
all this is happening at the same time.
The artists were very quick to pick up on the implications
of what this would mean for visual imagery.
Imagery that loved speed,
loved energy,
loved the diagonal,
everything was impacted with this future hope of urbanism.
Sybil didn't just participate in that,
she was an active creator in the kind of imagery
that came out of that school.
So she's very much at the heart of what we mean
when we look at early modernism.
On the surface, you know,
when we hear that Sybil leaves England,
right after the war in 1946,
with her husband Walter Morgan,
and they end up in Campbell River coming out of London
and coming out of the English avant-garde,
it would seem to be impossible.
It was basically a logging town,
a fishing area.
It would be very rough and tumble.
Very working man,
and with not much development here.
So you would think that it wouldn't be a fit.
Yet, when you look at the environment of Campbell River,
with it's dynamic storms,
with its powerful tides,
with its moving rivers,
it's abundance of wildlife.
Everything is in motion up here.
She also had a great love for the working class
and the working man so,
in a way, it's not surprising that she would end up in a
place like Campbell River because it has all of the
attributes that contribute to the art
that she made when she was here.
I think what's interesting to see in Sybil Andrews
and her work is how that legacy is continuing
to gain recognition and gain popularity.
For example, there is a new Sybil Andrews academy
that's opened up in England.
The auction houses have been selling her works
for record prices.
The Sybil Andrews cottage in Campbell River
has become I think, one of the jewels of the community.
Though it didn't have a successful story
in it's early years.
When Sybil passed away,
it sat vacant for a number of years
because it was in need of repairs.
The decision was made not to turn it into a museum,
but to keep it as a community gathering space because Sybil
taught art here,
she taught music here for over 40 years.
Walter showed movies here.
They had movie nights.
He played trumpet,
the band would be here.
This was to many people the first cultural hub,
cultural centre in Campbell River.
And today, it is booked daily.
We are almost at capacity with community groups that access
the Sybil Andrews cottage and keep the legacy of
Sybil and Walter alive in Campbell River.
- [Narrator] Campbell River is home so many amazing people.
Who are the people you love in your community?
Tell us about them by emailing optiklocal@telus.com.
We will see you soon.
♪ I see colours wherever we go
♪ True true colours
♪ You know
♪ I see colours
♪ All the colours of the rainbow
♪ True true colours
♪ Yeah
♪ Hand in hand we're walking
♪ Putting footsteps in the sand
♪ We are laughing loud and talking
♪ Now we only want to dance