After 18 years, the Lake Cowichan Salmon Mushroom Festival Society has decided to call off its annual festival.
The creation of mycologist Ingeborg Woodsworth, the festival attracted hundreds of people each year who came to celebrate the large variety of mushrooms that grow in the Cowichan Valley, and the many species of salmon that are also here.
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Woodsworth said she is now 84 years old and decided that “enough is enough”.
She said the festival, which had grown to be a two-day event each September that included mushroom tours, a full kitchen operation and two floors of vendors at Centennial Hall, had grown too big for her to handle.
“I thought that since this was my baby since day one, it was time to end it,” Wordsworth said.
“I do intend to carry on with my [mushroom] workshops because a lot of people depend on them. I expect that I’ll be into mushrooms as long as I live.”
Woodsworth said the mission of the festival has always been to share and educate the public about Vancouver Island’s natural resources.
“As a non-profit society, one of the festival’s goals was to provide a scholarship to a local student desiring to further their education in environmental studies,” she said.
“In dissolving the society, we decided that a donation will be made to the Georgia Klap Memorial Fund.”
Woodsworth said in a previous interview that she was first intrigued with the variety of different mushrooms that grow in the Valley during a visit from Germany more than 20 years ago.
She said there are approximately three times as many mushroom varieties in the Valley as in central Europe, where she was from, and she counted 73 different varieties that were collected during one of the festivals.
“There are a lot of swampy and moist areas here, and that’s perfect habitat for mushrooms,” Woolworth said at the time.
“I decided it would be my dream to retire here, so I moved to the Valley and, since then, I have been teaching courses on mushrooms at Vancouver Island University campuses on the Island.”
robert.barron@cowichanvalleycitizen.com
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