Anthill
Newsletter of the British Columbia
Institute for Co-operative Studies

During the week of the 17th through 21st of February 2003, a BCICS research team visited Malcolm Island, off the Northeast tip of Vancouver Island. The main centre of the island, Sointula, has long been a centre of co-operative action: a Finnish intentional community was established there in 1901 and though long ago defunct, it continues to inform the residents’ understanding of their collective responsibilities and capacities.

One of the main formal expressions of this action is The Sointula Co-operative Store Association, incorporated in 1909 (the oldest running co-op in BC, and as every resident seems to know, the longest continuous running co-op store in Canada). The co-op operates the only grocery, hardware store and gas pump on the island. The credit union, incorporated in 1940 as the Sointula Credit Union and a member of Evergreen Savings since 1999, and the store are the traditional co-operatives of the island. Kevin Wilson and Dr. Ian MacPherson conducted interviews and studied documents relating to these older co-operatives during the visit (see page 3 for more on Wilson’s research).

A new generation of co-ops incorporated during the last five years. Malcolm Island Shellfish Co-operative (1999), Wild Island Foods Co-operative (2000) and B.C. Maritime Resource Co-operative (2001) are participants in BC in the New Economy, a 3-year study by BCICS that looks at the emergence and performance of co-operatives in rural and remote settings of British Columbia. Dr. Ana Maria Peredo, Dr. Merdith MacLean, BCICS research co-ordinator Kathleen Gabelmann, and researcher Ryan George conducted interviews relating to these organisations.

While the technical team at Malcolm Island Shellfish Co-operative (MISC) is busy with R&D on abalone production (grown on land in tanks), the co-op is negotiating a new partnership to ensure it has adequate finances to complete its first production cycle which can be up to 5 years in length. MISC hopes to expand from its current location to a larger facility and to increase its number of employees from the current four up to ten to fifteen over the next decade as conditions permit. These jobs would help revitalize a fishing community that has been economically depressed since the Mifflin Plan (1996) and now worries that its remaining commercial fisheries may be endangered by in-water finfish farms located in the area.

Wild Island Foods Co-operative currently runs the island’s only scratch bakery and commercial eat-in restaurant, and is poised to become a major hub of economic activity on the island. The multi-stakeholder (consumers, producers, employees and investors are all members) co-op will soon open a food-processing plant that will allow entrepreneurial members of Malcolm Island to add value to available seafood and wild and cultivated fruits and vegetables for sale in commercial centres elsewhere in BC.
Wild Island and MISC are both members of the BC Maritime Resource Co-operative, which will provide accounting, managerial and marketing services to them and other shellfish and maritime produce co-ops once the businesses are in full operation.

During their visit BCICS researchers learned about the incredible amount of work that is done for the community by non-profit organisations and informal networks of island residents. The gift-economy accounts for a considerable amount of services in the areas of construction and care for children and individuals at risk.