Getting back to Blue Jay Lake Farm_ A Film by Morgan Tams

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Morgan Tams was an integral part of the Cortes Island community for eight years before he and his partner Carly left in 2024. He recorded part of their experience as members of the Blue Jay Lake Farm community on a documentary that will air at Vancouver's DOXA Festival on May 3 and 9, as well as the Knowledge Network later this year.  Morgan Tams: " It was about five years working on this, not exclusively but of my time. I've had some really great showings on Cortes, which was really fantastic."  "Now to have it play in Vancouver where I think there will be some crossover, some Cortes people in Vancouver, but I think there's a city where people are right now so interested in alternative ways of living. I think partially just the direction the world is going, ideas about community, about being more connected to our food sources, about being connected to one another and being connected to skills like building and growing food are really pertinent topics for our time."  "If this film can give some people some insight or some inspiration, or maybe even make them laugh within the context of all that stuff, then that's great. I'm just so happy that it can screen here in Vancouver and hopefully people enjoy it and we can talk about it after. It's always great to just to hear what people really think."  Cortes Currents: how long were you at Blue Jay Farm?  Morgan Tams: "We were at Blue Jay Lake Farm for almost eight years."  Cortes Currents: Why did you go there? Why was it important?  Morgan Tams: "This would've been way back in 2016. I was on a road trip with my partner Carly. We were driving from Victoria back to Toronto. Our car broke down. And our car was a 1990 Volvo station wagon and, in the middle of Manitoba, it's really hard to find parts. They quoted us three days for a new fuel pump to come. We were holed up in Brandon Manitoba. So we spent three days just hanging around the motel and wandering around town." "We got to talking about our lives in the future and neither of us were really feeling set on Toronto. It's a great city when you're young and we were feeling like as we got older, we weren't really taking advantage of being in the city. I happened to mention that I always wanted to spend time on one of the islands on the west coast of BC."  "Carly had spent a little bit of time at this place called Blue Jay Lake Farm, where she was a WWOOFer. She went for two weeks and ended up staying for two months. So she said, 'oh, well, we could always go to Cortes to Blue Jay Lake Farm and connect with Henry and the rest of the crew there.' So right then and there we decided we were going the wrong direction and we decided to head back out west. I think it was November 1st, 2016, we landed at Blue Jay Lake Farm and we stayed for eight years."  Cortes Currents: So what was it like? Was it a surprise? Morgan Tams: "It was for me. I had an inkling that it was a different way of life, the back to the land thing, the do it yourself thing, and these were all things I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn to build with wood and work on my carpentry skills, and I wanted to learn to be able to fix machinery. I love being in community and connecting with people on that level. I also just love the landscapes of the West Coast. So while it was a big departure from our lives in Toronto, it was a world that I really, really wanted to be in. And I knew from being there for half an hour that somebody had to make a movie about this place."