It’s been 22 years since we moved to Cortes and our love of this place remains strong. Our favourite things about Cortes are the community spirit, the natural beauty, the resilience of the people and the food we collectively produce. Commuting to Campbell River for work each week provides contrast and reminders of why we love our island home. We are also incredibly grateful that our adult children have chosen Cortes as their home too.

Gathering Place Trading is our family business, which we run out of Campbell River. Currently Ryan and I work full time with a small team of four others - we have a good time! During the month of January 2024 we are moving our office and warehouse from downtown to 1495 Baikie Road in Campbellton. This new facility is 4500 square feet, so we will have room to grow!

For those of you who do not know us, a brief history. We founded our company 20 years ago by trading our camper van for a tonne of Rooibos tea. We started selling single origin Rooibos and soon after Antarctic Pure sea salt. Over the following years we expanded into spices and really saw customers respond to our selection of farmer direct, fairly traded goods. It’s our mission to source the freshest, highest quality organic products from around the world. We value the relationships we’ve built with our partners and give back 1% of total sales to grassroots projects in the communities where our products are grown. Fourteen of our products are Canadian Grown and two of them are grown right here on Cortes Island!

What’s new at Gathering Place you may ask? Our newest products are four Mexican inspired spices; Ancho and Chipotle Chile powders, Southwest Taco Spice and Tex Mex Chili Spice. We were excited to find a family farm supplying Ancho and Chipotle Chile Powders in New Mexico which led to the development and creation of the Taco and Chili blends. Thanks to our family for tasting many different versions of the blends before we settled on the winning combination.

We developed relationships with two new suppliers in 2023. We finally found a direct connection for raw, green, organic yerba mate from Brazil which will arrive in early February 2024. It is currently on a sea freighter making the journey to Vancouver Port, so if you are a Mate drinker stay tuned for bulk pricing and give it a try! Our other new supplier is a pink peppercorn supplier from Madagascar. This small scale cooperative produces the gorgeous sweet berries we use in our new Rainbow Pepper blend, which was another new product in 2023.

In September of this year we were honoured to be selected as a Case Study at Hollyhock for the SVI (Social Ventures Institute) program amongst 120 of our social entrepreneur peers. The insights and connections were invaluable and we feel so fortunate that this caliber of program comes to us here on Cortes Island. A big thank you and shout out to all of the awesome folks who make these programs possible.

We want to thank you dear community for your continued support, your interest in our family business, for purchasing our products and giving us feedback - we appreciate hearing from you! We love getting your recipes and knowing how you use our products - so please share and let us know if we can publish your recipe on our site. The Cortes Natural Food Co-op carries our whole line of products and have been huge supporters of Gathering Place from Day 1, so please support our local co-op! If you are looking for bulk sizing on any product, we sell in 500g and 1kg resealable plastic bags. Just order through our website, www.gatheringplacetrading.com. We’d soon like to honour Cortes Islanders, by offering a coupon code to our online store made just for you. Once we make our move to the new facility, we will drop that coupon code here on Tideline!

With love and gratitude,
Lovena and Ryan Harvey
Whaletown, Cortes Island

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mPWA_ZmV1fQ

The Gathering Place is a sponsor of the Tideline - you can find our business listing here