The Galiano Club was incorporated as a non-profit society on December 5th, 1924 to:
a) encourage social, recreational and educational activity in Galiano
b) foster agricultural interests in Galiano
c) form a public library
d) build a public hall which shall be used for the above three purposes.
Since the founding of the Club, the objects have been amended to include holding and administering in trust for the community, Bluffs Park and Mt. Galiano. Both properties are zoned “nature protection”. Also added was administration of the Heritage Forest lands, zoned “heritage forest”, in accordance with covenants on that land. In all, the Club is responsible for 830 acres of land on Galiano Island or 5.78% of the island’s land mass.
As well as the three parks, and renting and maintaining the South Community Hall, the Galiano Club also holds an annual fundraiser, the Blackberry Tea, and an annual Christmas Market.
In 2011, the Galiano Players merged with the Galiano Club. With this move there has been a revival of theatre on the island and a place for the many talented islanders to perform. Cinema Galiano hosts a wide variety of quality and accessible movie events.
Club Blog
Active Page Article October, 2023
By Alison Colwell Blackberry Festival This year the Galiano Club’s Blackberry Tea will be on Saturday October 7th. Doors will open at 11am, and you can pick up your pies, or enjoy a soup, or a slice of pie and ice cream until 2pm. We will be accepting pre-orders for pies again this year. Email the galianoclub@gmail.com with your request. We will have Blackberry, Blackberry & Apple, Blackberry & Peach, Apple Cinnamon, or Maple Pumpkin Pies. Pies are $20 each. We will need volunteers to serve and help with the clean up on Saturday. Plus, pie making volunteers all week – contact Alison for more information. The Galiano Club’s New Truck Three years ago, the gleaning coordinator for the Community Food Program, asked if the Club would consider purchasing a truck. Moving the orchard ladders was sometimes challenging, plus hauling the rest of the equipment and the boxes of fruit. “A truck would make life easier,” said Emma. It took two grants and two years but this winter the Galiano Club purchased a work truck.And we never anticipated how much we’d use it, or just how much easier it would make life. It’s being used for gleaning, of course. And the garlic [...]
Active Page Article September, 2023
Annual Blackberry Tea Galiano Island is home to several varieties of blackberries. The native Bramble type is often found on trails and the Himalayan variety (an invasive species) is often found bordering roads and gardens. The Himalayan variety has larger, later developing berries that are more protected by thorns. For decades now, the Galiano Club has been holding a Blackberry Festival on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. The Blackberry Tea is the main fundraiser of the Galiano Club, and the money raised goes to support the community hall and parks. This year the festival happens on October 7th. Volunteers spend the week up to the festival making and freezing a variety of pies. At the Festival you can purchase whole pies, which are fresh or frozen. Plus soup and bread are served along with slices of pie, and ice cream. Last year volunteers made 200 pies. It looks like there will be an abundant crop of blackberries this year. (Thankfully the tent caterpillars didn't get them.) You can help support the Galiano Club by picking blackberries. Freeze on a baking sheet before transferring to a Ziploc bag. (Blackberries can be dropped off on Monday Soup Days, or by contacting Alison.) We also [...]
The Magnitude of All Things
Join filmmaker Jennifer Abbott for a screening of her latest film hosted by Galiano Club/Cinema Galiano and Galiano Library. When Jennifer Abbott lost her sister to cancer, her sorrow opened her up to the profound gravity of climate breakdown. Abbott’s new documentary The Magnitude of All Things draws intimate parallels between the experiences of grief—both personal and planetary. Stories from the frontlines of climate change merge with recollections from the filmmaker’s childhood on Ontario’s Georgian Bay. What do these stories have in common? The answer, surprisingly, is everything. For the people featured, climate change is not happening in the distant future: it is kicking down the front door. Battles waged, lamentations of loss, and raw testimony coalesce into an extraordinary tapestry, woven together with raw emotion and staggering beauty that transform darkness into light, grief into action.
Galiano Club Update – March 2022
By Jack Garton Like buds emerging from branches, or green shoots poking up from garden beds and roadsides, community events are making their cautious return this spring. The community hall is starting to host classes, rehearsals, workshops and more. This column does not want to presume too much when it comes to predicting the future, since it has been proven wrong in the past, but it hopes sincerely that this spring will bring with it some of the things we’ve dearly missed. The hall has been hosting a winter farmer’s market every second Saturday, which will continue until the summer market starts up again. It’s a great place to connect with local artists, musicians, and craftspeople, and enjoy hot chocolate, coffee, or pastries made on the island. The public is also invited to participate in ping pong every Sunday at the hall from 3-5pm, and the community Soup and Bread lunches every Monday from 12:30-1:30pm, where a suggested donation of $5-10 buys a bottomless bowl of soup and fresh bread. Soup can be many things besides just soup; it’s sustenance, comfort, a lifesaver, and a social glue. In this case, it’s also the first blossom of our vibrant schedule of community events [...]
The Community Hall Shed
For as long as any of us can remember there has been an old wooden building located next to the Galiano Community Hall. It is a simple enough four-sided structure, thick wood boards nailed to unfinished posts rooted into the ground, sloping corrugated metal roof. A single door, no windows. The floor is made up of packed soil and one very old tree stump. One side of the structure seems to have been left open (to receive firewood?) and was eventually covered over with a number of reused wood doors. Originally built in 1931 as a “wood shed", the structure has been used as a general storage shed since at least the late 1950s. Stage props, food stuffs, archival papers, garden tools, excess lumber, retired furniture, kitchen pots and pans, sandwich boards and much much more, all found temporary and even long-term storage there. In the last few decades the outer walls became a place to post old event signs (in the days when these were still made of wood with hand painted letters), signs that advertised a wide variety of Hall functions: dances, art shows, craft markets, etc. While the building probably served very well as a wood shed, it was [...]