4.07.2012

Powell River’s Skookum Food Provisioners' Cooperative and its Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Club

Another neat thing happening in my new hometown of Powell River is the The Abundant Pantry Bulk Buying Club that's part of the Skookum Food Provisioners' Cooperative. They have just started up in the past few months and are now a fast growing operation run by an energetic group of volunteers and their Coordinator Wendy Pelton.

They have a great website with an online shopping cart system for ordering from their list of over 2000 items which is expanding all the time. The website also has a FAQ page full of all the information a person needs to get started in the bulk buying club. If you want to participate in Powell River’s Abundant Pantry Bulk Buying Club it's easy and you can sign-up to become a member of Powell River’s one and only non-profit cooperative at the website too.

Powell River is full of interesting, energetic folks who are using the semi-isolation of Powell River as a platform to build unique community centered solutions. It occurs to me that having lived so long on the Southern Sunshine Coast near Roberts Creek which, because of its proximity to Vancouver's abundant services, has reminded me of the many smaller, more rural, associations that we in Roberts Creek once enjoyed but that have largely disappeared as the gentrification process slowly changed the character of that area.

Moving to Black Point south of Powell River has been like stepping back in time in many ways. When i first moved to Roberts Creek there was a rural non-profit co-operative, The Coast Family Society, which was similar to the Skookum Cooperative.  In the old days in Roberts Creek there were a lot more beaters parked outside the RC store and a lot less Beamers just like you see here at the Black Point store now. In Black Point, Lang Bay and Stillwater there's a lot more beer being drank than lattes, every body's got a dog or three, everybody stops to talk-even to newcomer/strangers like me. Seems like old times, or maybe it's just oldtimer's disease eh.