MAY 24 - 25, 2025
Kootenay EcoFest
A festival focused on building community by reconnecting to nature through engaging workshops, tours, demos and fun activities.
Festival schedule
The WORkshops & Tours
Elemental Health
Wildcrafting Walking Tour
Cannabis for Wellness
Explore how our health and wellness is connected to the Elements of Nature with Emily Enright. You'll learn how you can reconnect with nature through lifestyle practices, rituals and nutrition for truly holistic wellness.
Cannabis for Wellness
Wildcrafting Walking Tour
Cannabis for Wellness
Terese Bowors will explore how to cultivate a sustainable, intentional relationship with cannabis for healing, growing, and making your own medicine.
Wildcrafting Walking Tour
Wildcrafting Walking Tour
Wildcrafting Walking Tour
Join Keith Davis on a walking tour of the local forest and learn how to identify plants and wildcraft correctly.
Intro to Herbal Infusions
Wildcrafting Walking Tour
Wildcrafting Walking Tour
Tracey Green will guide you through the basics of making herbal infusions for aromatherapy, massage oil and other body products.
Sustainable Fashion
Fungi Networks in our Forest
Fungi Networks in our Forest
Join Chloe Roberts, artist-in-residence at KSA, and learn visible mending techniques and transform old textiles into stunning new creations.
Fungi Networks in our Forest
Fungi Networks in our Forest
Fungi Networks in our Forest
Identify fungal networks in our ecosystem and learn an understanding of forest ecology with Heather Scott.
Bear Spring Farm Tour
Fungi Networks in our Forest
Sinixt History and Culture
Join Marvin Work on a farm tour of Bear Spring Eco Retreat introducing you to pesticide free gardening and more.
Sinixt History and Culture
Fungi Networks in our Forest
Sinixt History and Culture
Learn about the Sinixt peoples and how Rich Desautel defied Canadian law to prove Sinixt people were never extinct.
Fungi Networks in the Forest
Introduction to Spoon Carving
Fungi Networks in the Forest
Identify fungal networks in our ecosystem and learn an understanding of forest ecology with Erik Hrabovsky.
Intro Tincture Making
Introduction to Spoon Carving
Fungi Networks in the Forest
With Patrick Kooyman, a practicing herbalist, learn to make tinctures using wildcrafted medicinal plants and fungi.
Fruit and Nut Trees
Introduction to Spoon Carving
Introduction to Spoon Carving
Cultivating fruit and nut trees with Lucas Rivard.
Introduction to Spoon Carving
Introduction to Spoon Carving
Introduction to Spoon Carving
Join Jack Radford, carpenter and green woodworker, to learn the basics of carving spoons using hand tools.
Wayfinding Nature Wander
Wayfinding Nature Wander
Wayfinding Nature Wander
Join Andrea Fox on an "Elemental Journeys" and an exploration of the four directions. Learn compass and navigation skills, interwoven with land based teachings, reflections, and games!
Botanical Printing
Wayfinding Nature Wander
Wayfinding Nature Wander
Learn to imprint with locally grown plant materials with local fibre artist, Tracy Fillion, and take home an eco printed bandana. Learn about dye gardens and ethical foraging too.
Bat Habitat Tour
Wayfinding Nature Wander
Bat Habitat Tour
Elodie Kuhnert is the Coordinating Biologist for the KCBP. She coordinates the Kootenay program, conducts site visits, participates in bat counts, and will be your tour guide on this tour of bat habitat.
Basic First Aid
Wayfinding Nature Wander
Bat Habitat Tour
Learn basic first aid skills with Darcy Lutz of Responsive First Aid training. Darcey is keen to increase community skills related to first aid.
Festival Activities
LOCAL MARKET
An intimate group of 12 local vendors selling handcrafted, recycled or foraged products and services. Vendors include Blue Lotus Botanicals, Thrift the Kootz, Marla Doherty, Luna & Venus, Wild Things Forest, Heather Taylor, Trading Post, Halcyon Mushrooms, Central Kootenay Invasive Species Society, Sassy-Fé Praliné.
REPAIR CAFE
Bring small appliances, sports gear, toys, bicycles and clothing for repair and mending.
Four fixers, an electrical engineer, a bicycle mechanic a seamstress and a cobbler, will be on hand to repair your items, mend clothing, or make minor shoe repairs.
MUSIC JAM
Alex Leffelaar, a founder of Moonflower Collective - a thriving hub for artists, is hosting the stage at this year’s EcoFest and welcomes anyone who would like to join in or share any music. Performers will be provided with a free lunch but, you must sign up by May 20th. Send an email to sign up: info@bearspringeco.ca
MoritzFR75 DEMO
Joern Wingender of Tetradition will demonstrate his low impact remote controlled equipment providing small scale forestry, tree service, landscaping and agricultural solutions. See his equipment in action at the festival.
BIKE THE BLOCK
A Citizen Science Scavenger Hunt
Saturday, May 24th, 2 pm to 5 pm
Meet at the Smallwood trail head parking lot for a FREE interactive, on-the-ground, exercise in understanding the effects of forestry on the land and water. Win great prizes! All mountain bikers welcome. Enjoy beer in the barn (cash bar) after the hunt at EcoFest from 5 pm to 7 pm. Please bring ID.
This is a fundraiser for West Kootenay Watershed Collaborative.
SCIENCE PUB
Sunday, May 25th, 5 pm to 7 pm
Join Joe Karthein of Save What’s Left and Jacqueline Stoeckler of West Kootenay Watershed Collaborative in this “end of the event” conversation intended as a general overview of greenwashing rhetoric and the impact on our conversations and understanding of our current context.
Note: This is a licensed event. Please bring ID. Maximum 60 participants. Cash bar, all proceeds going to the West Kootenay Watershed Collaborative. Beer provided by Torchlight Brewing.
A special shout out to our sponsors!
