Hakai Institute
The Tula Foundation is based on Quadra Island on the British Columbia coast, which to some people is a remote and wild place. We have however always been drawn to the much wilder coast to the north of Quadra Island, to what has been known traditionally as the Central Coast, and more recently as the Great Bear Rainforest.
The Tula Foundation started working on the BC coast with the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) in 2002. We helped finance land securements through the NCC at Princess Louisa Inlet (which is south of the Central Coast) then at the Koeye River and at Wuikinuxv Village in Rivers Inlet, and finally at Ellerslie Lake.
We soon realized that land securement was only the start of the difficult process of protecting and managing ecosystems, so we became involved (again through the vehicle of the NCC) in land stewardship and remeditation. (We were involved in such projects nearer home also, such as the remediation of the Campbell River estuary.)
Then, because we wanted to ensure that stewardship and remediation were informed by science, we began funding research on the Central Coast by groups from Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia.
Finally, as we got to know the Central Coast and its people better, we saw the role that we might be able play in supporting community wellness via nursing, education, and job creation in the land stewardship, remediation and scientific research.
Once we saw how complex and mulifaceted our involvement on the Central Coast was becoming, we realized how much more effective we could be if we had a base of operations there to plan, coordinate and monitor our various programs. When the fishing resort at Hakai, which is right in the center of the Central Coast became available, we purchased it as our base.
The base at Hakai has now taken on a life of its own. We have established a new non-profit organizations, the Hakai Institute, declared that its mission is to be a 'teaching, research and conference center serving the Central Coast', and delegated to it responsibility for all activities previously pursued by the Tula Foundation on the Central Coast.