Robson Valley Mushroom Festival
About Us
Sharing our passion for mushrooms and nature.
The Robson Valley Mushroom Festival (RVMF) was founded in 2024 by Terry Winkler and Steph St Laurent. Terry and Steph recognized the need for an event in the Robson Valley region, to provide a place for mushroom enthusiasts to gather, share, and learn with each other.
Our Story
Terry and Steph met Tyson Ehlers at the Sicamous Fungi Festival, an event held annually in the Shuswap Country region of south central British Columbia, Canada. Tyson told the best variety of stories about his times in the Robson Valley doing species diversity work on the ground. Also, sharing his desire to do more mushroom adventures in the area! This got Terry and Steph talking. "What if there was a similar event closer to us in Dunster, BC?" "What if we invited Tyson? What if we just did it?" It was in the fall of 2023 that Terry chatted with his friends and approached Steph with the idea of starting up a similar festival in the Robson Valley. And so, the Robson Valley Mushroom Festival was born!
The first step was to create a non-profit society to be the official hosts of the festival, and to serve as a year-round resource for local mushroom research, advocacy, and public information. To this end, Terry founded the Dunster Mushroom Society.
The purpose of the Dunster Mushroom Society is to:
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Provide a place for mushroom enthusiasts to get together, network and exchange information about edible and non-edible mushrooms in the Robson Valley;
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Provide workshops and seminars for local and regional mushroom enthusiasts;
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Provide training opportunities on field identification and collection of mushrooms;
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Gather and document information on the variety of mushroom species growing in the Robson Valley.
Meet The Board
Terry Winkler
Founder & President
Terry is a former National Park Warden who has recently moved to the Robson Valley and is eagerly expanding his knowledge on mushrooms of the areas. When not learning about mushrooms, Terry enjoys hiking, horseback riding, fishing, gardening, beekeeping, and ranching.
Monica Zieper
Secretary
Monika is a rugged "back to the land" backwoods farmer who has been in the Robson Valley for the past 20 years. She and her partner live off-grid and manage a property with cattle, sheep, and a wide variety of small livestock. Monika is a longtime beekeeper and loves to explore for mushrooms.
Teresa DeReis
Director
Teresa is an avid nature-lover and foraging enthusiast who has been learning and exploring about mushrooms and other wild edibles with her partner Steph for the past 12+ years. Teresa loves foraging, gardening, crafting, cooking from scratch, canning, preserving, soap-making, and writing about these experiences in her blog Adventures in Self-Sufficiency.
Steph St. Laurent
Co-Founder & Director of tomfoolery
Steph is an avid recreational student of the science and practices of mycology and has been studying in earnest for the past 15 years. When not at mushroom festivals, reading about mushrooms, or talking about every aspect of mushrooms to anyone he can, he’s out hunting, fishing, and foraging for other wild foods.
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Rob Mercereau
Treasurer
Rob is a permaculturalist, backcountry enthusiast, gardener, wildcrafter, and writer. He has harvested many varieties of edible fungi on the North Coast, where he spent most of his life, and he is now gaining familiarity and experience with the local fungi of the Robson Valley.
Our Partners
Robson
Valley Septic
