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The sweater has iconic status on Vancouver Island. Since the Scots brought textile arts and knitting from the Fair Isle in Scotland's Shetland Islands, the chunky sweater has become synonymous with the Cowichan tribe from the beautiful Cowichan Valley. First Nations knitters still create these popular sweaters using traditional techniques and materials. Many, like Vancouver's Granted and TNA have emulated this style of sweater in their contemporary catalogues, and craft giant Mary Maxim is proud to boast Bob Hope wore one of their designs while visiting Canada.

Sweaters and blankets, I must love the textile arts!

Infrastructure 20110417

Both Bernard Chapais and Kim R. Hill in the March 2011 issue of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science Magazine speak to kinship relationships and deep social structure as being the root of what it is to be human. Hill et al. hypothesize in their article that humans' kinship arrangements and the resulting large social networks led to the social learning that resulted in cumulative culture. As Hill explained succinctly on CBC's radio show, Quirks and Quarks, no one human could build a space shuttle on their own, but many humans collaborating and contributing each in their small way led to the space shuttle's development. Is kinship and maintenance of familial relationships a core infrastructure?

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Vancouver Island's history — both political and geological — is brimming with independent, creative spirit. Personalities like Amor de Cosmos, Cougar Annie and Emily Carr are but a few of the characters that have inhabited this island paradise. Geologically, studies at UBC and other institutions point to evidence the island is a remnant of a rogue oceanic plateau formed out in the Pacific while the other continents were heaped together as Gondwana. Only recently has it crashed into North America to create the Salish Sea, Rockies and other formations. Given its peculiar history, it seems appropriate that, as BC Ferries continues its unrelenting drive to isolate islanders from the mainland, we Vancouver Islanders embrace this spirit we have been bequeathed by nature.

Long live Wrangellia and long live the spirit of the island!