Cowichan Green Community (CGC) unofficially began in 2001 as an environmental-based community outreach project which was supported by the Green Door Society. CGC opened its first storefront environmental centre at 161 Jubilee Street in Duncan, B.C. CGC’s passionate volunteers then created an informal committee and established CGC’s original mandate: to promote energy efficiency, healthy housing and environmental sustainability in the Cowichan Valley. Financed solely by their efforts, they continued to operate the centre for almost a year.

In 2002, CGC moved to 244 Craig Street in Duncan’s City Square and also accepted an invitation to join the Cowichan Community Land Trust Society (CCLT), where it operated as a committee of the CCLT until February 2004. In March of 2004, CGC registered as a BC Society and commenced the process of recruiting and developing a Board of Directors, and to expand its staff base, including the creation of an Executive Director position in 2008.
As a result, this change in organizational structure brought new visions, aspirations and opportunities to the organizations, and led to the gradual shift in the types of programs and services offered. Recognizing a need in the community, CGC increasingly began to address issues of food security, through both policy and program based initiatives.

In 2007, CGC began transforming an underused downtown park into a bustling epicentre of food production by building a community garden at Kinsmen Park, located next to Cowichan Secondary School. Funding and community support was acquired and 18 raised beds were erected. Since then, the various plots have been continuously used by community members.

In 2009, the existing garden was expanded to include an additional 24 beds in a ‘mandala’ style garden, as well as a tool shed and compost bin. In 2011, a native plant demonstration garden was created, more fruit trees were planted, a memorial bench was erected and more perennials were incorporated into the landscape.

In the fall of 2009, as staff and program capacities grew, CGC relocated to a larger office space at 181 Station Street, in downtown Duncan. In this fabulous space, CGC opened a new Green Store, a large community space, and a bright and beautiful office. At that location, CGC developed a variety of Social Enterprises, which is used in part to sustain the organization through income generated by the retail store and an urban agriculture consulting business, Ceres Edible Landscaping.

In June 2010, CGC published the first ever Cowichan Region centric food map. CGC’s goal for the map is to improve the viability of local farms and promote local food producers. The Cowichan Grown Farm, Food and Drink map serves as a direct marketing tool that provides local farmers with an affordable way to reach new local customers. Furthermore, the map serves as a great resource, informing customers where they can source local food.

In October, 2012, CGC once again relocated to the old Phoenix Station Motor Inn as tenants on the main floor with an expanded storefront, a larger boardroom and office space. This also marked the grand opening of CGC’s new storefront, The Garden Pantry Thrift Store.
This was a specialty thrift store where community can donate or purchase everything needed to grow, harvest, cook and preserve food!

After site plan presentations were made and subsequently approved by North Cowichan and City of Duncan councils in late 2012, CGC’s Skills link team of 6 local youth, began to bring their vision of an urban farm on park land to life. This included the transformation of a quarter acre of grass at Kinsman Park into a lush growing space and the construction of a passive solar greenhouse next to the retrofitted pool building.

What has emerged since is a youth-led urban farm and demonstration site based on the principles of permaculture, that aims to train young people how to grow food and run a business, provide increased access to local and sustainably produced food, and educate community members of all ages on various aspects of urban agriculture.

Since July 2014, KinPark expanded it’s programming by adding in a summer camp called KinPark Kids Camp. Every summer, KinPark blossoms with learning, laughter, and magical friendships from children and their families attending KinPark Kids Camp. This camp is for children ages 6 to 10 to engage in hands-on learning that includes growing, harvesting, cooking, and all-things related to sustainability.

On June 28, 2013, after months of negotiations and effort, CGC became the proud owner of the Phoenix Station Motor Inn in downtown Duncan (360 Duncan Street), which has been renamed “The Station”. The facility is approximately 20,000 square feet on two levels. CGC converted the ground floor to a mix of office and ‘green sensitive’ retail businesses including Harmony Yoga and Cycle Therapy, and renovated and transformed the upstairs into 20 affordable downtown living apartments.

Through the acquisition of the hotel, CGC’s office and storefront have a permanent home, and the organization has access to its own commercial kitchen from which to operate its food security workshops and events. This kitchen is also available for the community to rent. As a result of this purchase, CGC is in an ideal position to spread the message of food sustainability and environmental responsibility.

Once The Station was purchased the kitchen was used as a community kitchen where renters could utilize our new space.

In 2019 the kitchen was also contracted to make Meals on Wheels.

Since April 2021, Cowichan Green Community Foundation took on coordinating the Meals on Wheels program, which was previously run through Cowichan Seniors Foundation.

The kitchen now feeds various temporary shelters, homeless youth, seven day a week and will be taking on new contracts with various housing facilities in the near future

The Cowichan Green Community Foundation was incorporated on March 26, 2014, and its mission is to build community, health, and environmental stewardship.

The purpose of the Foundation is to advance education by offering workshops, seminars, classes, lectures, and instructional materials on the subjects of environmental protection, food production, food preparation, and food preservation to children, youth, and adults in the Cowichan Region.

The foundation was also a milestone for CGC to be able to issue for donations as well as apply for different grants as a foundation.

In 2015, CGC renewed and improved their storefront, The Garden Pantry, by including local vendors and value-added items. After many years of re-visioning CGC’s storefront, CGC rebranded the Garden Pantry to reFRESH Cowichan Marketplace in 2018, keeping food security as it’s main focus.

Early 2019, reFRESH Marketplace opened it’s doors offering recovered fruit and vegetables, value-added products, and locally made goods to nourish community. In addition, the reFRESH Cowichan Coupon Program began, giving over 100 low-income families, seniors, and individuals a weekly $25 voucher to shop for groceries in reFRESH.

Late 2020, reFRESH Marketplace underwent a gigantic transformation resulting in a completely new layout, shelving, flooring and more!

n of the hotel, CGC’s office and storefront have a permanent home, and the organization has access to its own commercial kitchen from which to operate its food security workshops and events. This kitchen is also available for the community to rent. As a result of this purchase, CGC is in an ideal position to spread the message of food sustainability and environmental responsibility.

The 3.5 acre lot on Beverly Street was acquired by CGC in the summer of 2015 through a lease agreement with North Cowichan in preparation for the new Cowichan Incubator Seed Farm. In 2016, fields were tilled and the seed farm began to grow producing locally adapted seed, training new seed farmers, housing a community seed library and offering education about seed saving and food security to community members. Throughout the years, the seed farm became the Cowichan Agricultural Seed Hub and expanded by including an equipment lending library, community seed bank, and the Ross Wristen Inclusion Garden with wheelchair-accessible beds and garden paths.

In 2019, the seed hub rebranded as the Farm & Food Hub, which now has two greenhouses, a retail space, and community gathering places for education and workshops in addition to what the seed hub has implemented already.

In August 2016, CGC was very proud to have purchased the Island Farm and Garden Magazine from the founder, Lesley Lorenz. This successful Island-wide magazine was in its 4th year and looking for a new owner so it could continue to grow and expand to the next level - and CGC was the perfect home!

Eric Morton is our editor extraordinaire, many of you may know Eric from his previous life at the Newsleader Pictorial. He's amazing and we are thrilled to have him on our team.

The issues are produced 5 times a year – March, May, July, August, and November. There are 8,000 copies printed each issue through Mitchell’s Press in Vancouver. They are distributed throughout the island and through Canada Post.

CGC staff contribute program updates/articles, program advertisements, and recipes. Judy Stafford writes a publisher column each issue as well.

CGC’s Food Recovery Program started in 2018 with the goal of improving local food access and security through food recovery in the Cowichan Region. Through strenuous research of various food recovery models and networking with over 21 service providers in the region, the team started collecting produce from local grocery stores and re-distributing it throughout the community. Since then, the program has expanded tremendously and rebranded to reFRESH Cowichan. By June 2021, reFRESH Cowichan had recovered and distributed over 450,000 pounds of fresh produce throughout the Cowichan Region.

Currently, every week reFRESH collects thousands of pounds of excess fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy, meat and bakery products from local grocery stores. In addition, local farms donate freshly harvested vegetables regularly. The program distributes the donated produce to regional partners including food banks, daycares, soup kitchens, shelters, community programs, and schools.

The Resiliency Project is a meadow-making project, focused on planting native wildflower meadows in parks, boulevards and shared green spaces. to increase biodiversity and create habitat for pollinators, and other beneficial insects. As a part of this rewilding effort, we are creating a community native seed library at the Cowichan Farm and Food Hub. These seeds are gathered and cleaned by community members, and are freely accessible to any individuals, community groups, or schools working to rewild their spaces

This work was initially supported by a grant from the City of Duncan, created in response to the Covid 19 crisis. We began the work in June, 2020 by reaching out to three neighbourhoods within the City of Duncan and calling together a community group in each area to work on these questions together. We have a circle of community members in Cairnsmore, in Centennial Park area, and in McAdam Park neighbourhood. In each circle we really reflected on our journey through the pandemic, and the places that we found resilience, and what could deepen this. We talked a lot about ecological resiliency. Food security. Supporting pollinators. We talked about the loss of community, the isolation created by the lockdown, the need to find ways to stay connected to our neighbours.

Since April 2021, Cowichan Green Community Foundation took on coordinating the Meals on Wheels program, which was previously run through Cowichan Seniors Foundation. CGC’s amazing kitchen team prepares hot meals every day from Monday to Saturday with an additional meal for Sundays when needed. Dedicated and caring volunteers deliver the hot meals every day between 4 – 5PM.

This service is also very successful and gratifying for clients and their families as this is like a check-in detail for seniors who live alone or may be isolated.

As a member of the BC Food Hub Network, the Cowichan Valley Full-Scale Food Processing and Innovation Hub (or as we’re calling it, the Food Hub) will offer a HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) Ready commercial teaching kitchen, processing kitchen and aggregation space to local food producers and processors. We will be able to offer local food and agricultural businesses access to shared processing infrastructure, processing and testing equipment, business advisory services, product development services, analytic services, applied research opportunities, and education and training abilities and facilities related to food processing and food safety. Businesses will have the ability to process a wide variety of food and beverage products, while working in a collaborative environment.

A food hub is a shared-use space between food and agricultural businesses that increases access to commercial processing spaces that includes equipment, expertise, and resources to help grow their businesses. It aids in improving the coordination and collaboration between agriculture and food stakeholders and across the value chain.