Co-founder Shivon Robinsong traces her Hollyhock roots.

Shivon Robinsong Photo: Tony Bounsall photo/design

Growing up as an Irish immigrant in Winnipeg, I felt a disconnection from the land, and a longing for the community of extended family. Some of my friends were blessed with the experience of going to the family farm for a holiday, and returning, robust and well nourished by the land, the garden, the air, and grandmother’s grounded wisdom. How I envied them.

After completing a psychology degree at the University of Manitoba, I was fortunate to be part of a two-year training in Confluent Education, a progressive education movement that had grown out of Esalen Institute. I attended workshops at a convent retreat, a beautiful rural refuge outside Winnipeg, where learning went hand-in-hand with contemplation by the river, and nourishing food fresh from the garden. I was beginning to experience holistic learning, where body mind and spirit were treated as one, in the context of nature.

A few years later, I had moved to Kitsilano, and was wondering what to do with the rest of my life. There I met Rex Weyler, Greenpeace activist and writer, who said "Why don’t you join the revolution?" My artist husband Lee Robinsong and I joined Rex in publishing the Greenpeace Chronicles for the next few years. During that time, we often imagined building a rural lifestyle that brought together the various threads of our lives –– work, art, environmental values and family.

When shifting Greenpeace politics moved the centre of the organization from Vancouver to Europe, our magazine folded. Rex moved to Boston to work on New Age Journal. Lee and I and our baby Erin Skye moved to Cortes Island, but we stayed in close contact with Rex. When he visited us in the summer of ’81, he had just been told by a gypsy fortune-teller at the Vancouver Folk Festival to "look out for red hollyhocks growing high above a hedge". As we were showing him the beautiful overgrown garden at the former Cold Mountain Institute, there in the middle were the tallest, reddest hollyhocks we’d ever seen.

This seemed to be an important sign – but of what, we wondered? The place was for sale, but the price was far out of our reach. (Lee and I had a net worth of $600). Nevertheless, we were all struck by the numinous feeling that we were being asked to buy this land and steward it. Together, we began to imagine how we might arrange the purchase, what we would do there, and what friends we could invite to join us.

Above all, I wanted Hollyhock to provide that sense of ‘coming home’ so many city dwellers yearned for. We knew that the land, ocean, forest and garden, could provide deep nourishment, R&R for those in the front lines of work. Hollyhock was also a place for us to live in community and raise our families. Our second daughter, Kaeli Joy, was born in 1982, a month after we purchased the Hollyhock land.

In 1983, we opened our doors for our first summer program. We offered "A Holiday that Heals" - workshops in the practical, creative and healing arts. The first workshop was "Singing for Everyone", led by Susan Osborn. Little did I know how this would set the course for my life to come.

For the first seven years, I was running Hollyhock and raising two daughters. We were a loving community of friends living our dream, complete with all the trials and challenges of a new venture. With very little experience in running a business, we found ourselves muddling through, trial and error being the main teachers. It was all-consuming. I was planning the programs, greeting all the guests, and overseeing the running of the kitchen and housekeeping. This eventually took its toll on my health and family life.

My marriage to Lee ended in 1989, and that same year my role in Hollyhock was interrupted by a diagnosis of breast cancer. I suddenly had to drop everything and attend to my own healing. This was an extraordinary period of grace in my life, where I was given the great gift of time - time to assimilate all I had learned over the past years, and to explore new directions.

In being forced to step aside from the day-to-day running of Hollyhock, I let go of the reins in a way that is so often difficult for founders. The decision was made for me by my health crisis, and I have never regretted it. Looking back, I see that it was essential not only for my own health, but for the health and evolution of Hollyhock as well.

By 1996 I had remarried and moved to Victoria with my daughters and my husband, Bill Weaver, a documentary filmmaker. A passion for choir directing that began on Cortes, blossomed into a full-fledged career that fills me with more joy and energy than I ever imagined was possible in one’s work. I founded The Gettin’ Higher Choir, which has grown to over 300 voices, now directed by myself and talented composer/arranger, Denis Donnelly. I teach singing workshops at Hollyhock and elsewhere, helping people find their voices, and seeding new community choirs. I also work with groups of activists through the Hollyhock Leadership Institute. (Coming full circle, in 2001, Greenpeace International invited me to animate their AGM in the Netherlands with singing.)

I now serve on Hollyhock’s Board of Directors. My daughters Erin and Kaeli have grown into beautiful capable young women firmly on their own paths. Hollyhock too has come of age. I love my life in Victoria, but it is Cortes Island that I return to, again and again, for deep soul nourishment.

Shivon’s website, www.shivon.com lists her upcoming singing workshops and Getting Higher Choir concerts.

Oriane Lee Johnston,
Hollyhock Program Director

Babatunde Olatunji with Oriane Lee Johnston and Devon Johnston at Hollyhock, July 1994

The first six years of my life were spent in the wildness of the BC coast, in and around Ocean Falls. Salmonberries, black bears and the immense greenness of mountains and ocean inlets are the most vivid memories. A longing to return to the wild led me to Cortes Island in the mid-80s. Bringing a background in academic psychology and adult education, a fervent interest in personal and global transformation, a love of the arts, and a child to raise, we settled at Linnaea Farm.

I became aware of a dichotomy between an earth-based ecology movement which had yet to learn how to sustain itself and its work, and the more introspective seekers who were focused more on their own growth and healing and had yet to find practical applications of this to benefit the broader world. Add to the mix my recognition of the value of spiritual practice and it’s no surprise that Hollyhock came into my life. My response to that dichotomy can be found in the programs we’ve evolved over the last 13 years.

In 1990, my first year as program director, Babatunde Olatunji came to Hollyhock for the first time. Baba is the legendary Nigerian elder, master drummer and cultural ambassador who believes that African culture is to be shared with the world. It was a poignant moment, walking down to his accommodation by the ocean, as he was overcome with remembrance of his boyhood home in coastal Nigeria. In that first ground-breaking workshop Baba captivated us all with his stories and wisdom. I participated with my then 8-year-old son. It was a riveting and life-changing time, finding myself playing drums and performing dances of a culture that had intrigued me since childhood. Baba’s week was a highlight of over ten summers, with a whole generation of children growing up with his music.

And now Baba has passed away: on April 6, 2003 near his home at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. The tradition carries on. Cortes Island multi-generational drumming ensemble Island Rhythm, under the direction of Gordy Ryan, has performed in Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Portland, and many times at Hollyhock. I play in the band and can say that drumming has been of immense practical value in three ways.

If I can learn to drum by simply showing up to class and practicing, then I can learn anything at any age.

As a meditation concentration practice, drumming has strenghtened my ability to focus and sustain attention in my endeavours.

And finally, in both rehearsals and performance one needs to be ready for anything, which has developed my capacities in life to stay alert, to improvise, and to respond enthusiastically to change.

During my first years as Program Director in the early 90s, a family with four young children came to visit and the father "auditioned" as a workshop leader by telling some stories one evening. We were spellbound. Little did I know he was then Secretary General of the Sufi Order International, and apparent successor to Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. This teacher, Atum O’Kane, later took a different path and has since presented programs of spiritual wisdom in many traditions over the last decade at Hollyhock. I completed his two-year training in spiritual guidance myself. Atum has a ‘teaching home’ at Hollyhock and it seems that the people who attend his programs here and in Europe remain part of a lovely inclusive community.

The third turning point came in 1998 when I joined Joseph Goldstein, Michele Mcdonald-Smith (who have taught meditation at Hollyhock) and Mirabai Bush, at the Kyaswa Monastery in Burma. I was honoured to co-manage the January retreat at Kyaswa for two years. Being in a place where "it feels like the Buddha just walked by", as Michele says, brought a sensibility toward the traditional monastic conditions for deep meditation practice back to Hollyhock.

I must say that I’m amazed at how strongly my interest, indeed passion, for this work and my role in Hollyhock remains. In May we are hosting the International Gathering of Holistic Centres. It is deeply satisfying to spend time with colleagues from other centres and organizations, to share stories of success and struggle, and to look deeply at our roles and our social responsibilities at this gripping time.

After 13 years behind the scenes at Hollyhock, in June myself and Greg Zelonka, program director for Omega Institute in New York, are co-presenting a workshop called, what else, How to Produce a Successful Workshop. It is very rewarding and a lot of fun for us to pass on the knowledge and ‘inside stories’ from many years in this business. The foresight of an early colleague who said, "This work will be the making of you," has certainly been borne out.

I feel incredibly blessed, especially as I remember Baba whose spirit remains as fierce and loving as ever inside me now.