Notes From an Intentional Community: Introducing CoHo Landing
I wonder how many people in British Columbia have had the fantasy: “Let’s buy property on a Gulf Island with friends and all live there together.” From what I hear, quite a few. It’s one of the iconic Gulf Island archetypes.
Like all archetypes, this one holds deep human desires: the ardent wish to get back to the land, the craving for a lost sense of community, the urge to live an authentic life. And like many archetypes, it can feel more like the stuff of myth than of real life.
I’m here to tell you it can be real. My partner and I and a bunch of friends actually did this. We co-founded our 15-member land cooperative about 12 years ago and are still there now, so I can tell you, it’s not a myth.
So what is it, then?
Chomsky meets Rockwell
One of our community members aptly described our project as “Norman Rockwell meets Noam Chomsky.” “Norman Rockwell” because we’re a neighbourhood, much in the way cardigan-clad Mr. Rogers used that term. Children roam free-range, creating dens in thickets, climbing trees, watched over by all. Doors are left unlocked. You might find a gift of freshly picked chanterelles on your back porch, or a neighbour might do the rounds with a tray of smoothies. It’s wholesome.
And it’s also badass — that’s the “Noam Chomsky” aspect. There’s a rebel feel to our project. It’s not business as usual but rather a deliberate disruption of classic capitalist approaches to land, development, and social relationships.
A bad investment
The land is owned by a non-profit cooperative, not by individual stakeholders. Our rules and regulations take the land off the open market; resale of shares is based on a formula rather than real estate values. That makes us an “affordable housing” project — an unusual one, since we finance, plan, and develop it all ourselves, with no government funding, grants, or professional management.
I remember explaining this approach to a relative, who later took me aside and said, with furrowed brows and lowered voice, “Laura, you can’t do this. You’ll be putting money into this and you won’t be able to make a profit when you sell! The land won’t appreciate. It’s a bad investment!”
“I know,” I said. “You’re right about the money. But it’s a great investment — into a way of living that fits my values. It’s an investment into community, into sustainability, into a meaningful dream that can come true and is worth supporting.” Idealistic? Maybe. But it works.
An introductory tour
Picture a map of the Salish Sea. Denman Island is at the northern tip, cuddled up next to Hornby Island. Pretty much right in the middle of the island is our 88-acre property. If you’re driving along Denman Road you’ll recognize our driveway by the hand-painted yellow-and-red wooden sign inscribed with the words CoHo Landing.
Heading up the driveway you pass a clearing on your left — our communal garden and orchard, still a work in progress but providing more and more abundance every year.
Further up the driveway is an access lane to our well, which we barely use. We decided early on that we wanted as much as possible to leave the groundwater in the ground where it could support the ecosystem. That was over 10 years ago. We hadn’t yet seen the droughts and heat domes that are happening now. These days, I look back on that decision as one of our best. (That, and buying a shared backhoe!)
Water for individual homes comes entirely from rainwater, and we recently dug a pond to irrigate the garden.
The next section of the driveway is the shop and studio zone. Every household has access to a space there. Seeing as Denman Island doesn’t have many conventional jobs, a lot of us are self-employed so this space is essential.
Continue up the driveway and you enter the housing cluster: 15 homes and a common house, together covering about seven acres.
There are two equally important reasons for clustering: 1) environmental sustainability — this way we leave most of the property undisturbed, letting the forest grow back (it was clear-cut about 25 years ago); and 2) community sustainability— everything we’ve read about cohousing and other forms of intentional community says, “Design connection into your project! Make it so that people will be brought face to face as they go about their lives!”
Physical closeness makes us close in so many other ways .Yesterday a neighbour came by to borrow two potatoes. I ran into someone else on the way to my car and we chatted for 10 minutes. I saw the electrician drive by, which told me that our newest members were getting their partly-built house wired, and I was happy for them.
Our houses are all small (our regulations set a maximum of 1,500 square feet) and diverse. Most of us built our homes ourselves, entirely or partly. There are cob homes sculpted from local sand, mud and horse manure, classic wood-framed cottages, hybrids combining both of those, a prefab house, and a few funky converted school buses.
And there’s the common house — a spacious log home — in the centre of the cluster. This is where we gather for meetings, Friday-night socials, occasional potlucks, dance parties and more. It’s a hangout place and a place of potential, since it’s still unfinished.
Work bees, potholes, and shared lunches
If you were here on a Sunday, we might be having a work bee, and you’d see people installing trim, stacking firewood, spreading manure in the garden, operating the back-hoe, filling potholes in the driveway, and/or sharing a communal lunch. Or it might be a meeting day, and you’d see us sitting in the common house, making decisions by consensus.
What might we be talking about? Budget questions, pet policy, composting toilets, the ins and outs of making this project happen, the ups and downs of hard-core do-it-yourself-ism — we have insights and stories about all of these and more, which you can read about in other articles in this Medium publication.
This article was originally published in Folklife Magazine, a premium semi-annual print publication inspired by island dwellers who live close to the earth, move with intention, and craft life as an art form.
