INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Going Coastal Magazine, an online resource for Sunshine Coast information and contacts. We specialize in artists, events, tides amd food, but we won't limit ourselves ;) Send us an email at goingcoastal@telus.net if you have something you feel is noteworthy to locals of or visitors to British Columbia's Sunshine Coast!

GREENING THE LOCAL ECONOMY ONE CLICK AT A TIME
A new Sunshine Coast business launches this June

Reduce, reuse, recycle is a familiar motto reminding us to minimize our ecological footprint on the planet. Can the 3 R’s be applied to commerce? Can it show us how to keep our economy sustainable? If you replace the 3 R’s with 3 G’s then you get a new Sunshine Coast business and a possible answer. The business is called Gyos, an acronym for Get/Give/Grow Your Own Stuff. Gyos is an online community market that promotes locally used and hand crafted goods and services. From its philosophy to its practice, Gyos is an environmental, social, and buy-local business.

Local Ryan Logtenberg, an avid environmentalist, amateur economist, and computer nerd, along with his brother, has spent the last two years developing Gyos as tool to make communities most resilient and resourceful in hard economic times. “I love the Sunshine Coast”, says Ryan, “and I see its economic prosperity depending on two central things. One is the Sunshine Coast’s ability to bring in new business, the second is its ability to cycle money through the local economy as much as possible. If $20 cycles within a community 5 times through local transactions/buying locally, that’s $100 worth of prosperity”. Michael McLaughlin, Economic Development Coordinator of Gibsons and Area, is impressed by the Gyos concept particularly “its use of local resources for home construction initiatives. It is an example of local economics where local resources are used for local consumption, as opposed to importing,” says McLaughlin.

The Gyos site hosts a wide variety of products and services, such as books, clothes, event tickets, art, jobs, financing, real estate and more; and supports all types of commerce including buying, selling, trading, bartering, and donating. Gyos efficiently provides information but does not handle any transactions – erasing the middleman. Gyos is free and easy to use. The only ads that cost money to post are for real estate, but even these are affordable.

There is a special section of the website, that its owners are especially proud of. It is called the 5 Mile Diet. “The goal of the 5 Mile Diet”, says Ryan, “is to raise awareness about seasonal foods and then provide the tools the community needs to access them”. There is space to write about your produce, post photos, and also a map feature that allows you to pinpoint your location. “The Sunshine Coast has wonderful farms, avid gardeners, and overabundant fruit trees. If this food was bought, sold, traded, or donated amongst us, our community would benefit nutritionally, environmentally, and financially.” McLaughlin agrees: “The Gyos concept fits very well into regional food security”.

While the website is active and currently available for posting: www.gyos.ca, Gyos officially launches June 15th. Once up and running on the Sunshine Coast, the Gyos team is introducing it to surrounding communities, so that each small town and city is its own economic hub and can expand outward as needed.

For an interview with Ryan Logtenberg (Founder) or Nancy Roulston (Development Manager), please contact us at ryan@gyos.ca and nancy@gyos.ca respectively.

All dirty jokes aside, the beaver is a Canadian symbol of a hard worker. It made for a fitting name for a line of de Havilland float-planes as although the vehicles themselves are over half a century old, they are still used all over the world as one of the most dependable bush planes ever built.

This documentary by Arwen Hunter of Gamut Productions tells more about the little plane that could, with testimonials from plane enthusiasts including Harrison Ford. Filming roamed from Victoria all over North America for the story.

Also from this coastal production company is a story about women and the beauty that lies within... or below. Petals is a documentary about women, their self-esteem, and their vulvas. The title is an alternative to the vulgar names for this part of human anatomy, and it also hints at how beautiful they really are. Photographer and "sex-doctor" Nick Karras produced a series of photographs of vulvas which show how each woman is unique in ways they never thought of, and then compiled these into a book. The film, now showing in mid-November at the Swedish Film Festival, gives more insight into the book, it's material, and the fear society seems to have for this area.


Check out Petals the Movie Trailer and Check out Gamut Productions

The above Youtube video is a slideshow film put together by Duane Burnett from his huge collection of coastal pictures. On his home website and supplemental page on Flickr you can find over 5000 images of life on the Sunshine Coast.

We at Going Coastal plan on letting the world know about the Sunshine Coast and how fabulous it is thanks to the people and nature. Not only are we available online with articles, pictures, and information listings, but we also have a monthly print format distributed from Langdale through Powell River and into Lund. Email us if you'd like to request a copy by mail! goingcoastal@telus.net

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