WHEN DIANE BERNARD led her business-suited sales team into the
boardroom at British Columbia's Four Seasons Resort Whistler in
early June, she opened her black executive breifcase to display
not flow charts but fresh seaweed -- dripping and redolent of
the Juan de Fuca Strait.
Bernard, the "Seaweed Lady from Sooke," is three years into a
crusade that has put Vancouver Island seaweed onto the bodies
and dinner plates of guests at such luxury resorts as the Sooke
Harbour House and the Kingfisher Oceanside Resort and Spa in
Courtenay, B.C.
She hopes getting in on the ground floor at Whistler's newest
hotel will connect her to a much bigger market off the island.
After retiring from local politics in 1999, Bernard sought out
a new career consistent with her belief in sustainable community
development. Her company, Outer Coast Seaweeds, now employs six
people who harvest and process 10 of the 250 seaweeds found
between Sooke and Port Renfrew. Of the several tonnes they
collect each year, about two-thirds are used in spa treatments,
such as body wraps, shampoos and soaps. The rest is used in
salads, soups and sauces.
"I test (for contaminants) each year, because seaweed picks up
whatever is in the water," she says. The area is well flushed
by the currents and tides, sparsely populated and
de-industrialized because of timber-mill closures. Bernard's
bigger environmental concern is ensuring that the harvest
doesn't destroy the natural stocks of seaweed: "That drove
seaweed to the verge of extinction in California."
