Revelstoke's Corrine Lynn Cancelliere and Danny Baresinkoff love mushrooms. They love searching for them, identifying them, eating them, painting on them, and teaching other people about them.

Cancelliere's parents taught her to identify mushrooms and she's been picking them since she was two. When her husband died in a boating accident on the Columbia River south of town in 2019, she wanted to channel the terrible event into something good, so she started the North Star Survival School. The idea is to teach people how to take care of themselves in the woods to take the pressure off search and rescue.

It's also to show people the bounty of the forest, and to teach them about the food and medicine that's available in plain sight, if only you know what to look for.

Now Cancelliere and Baresinkoff live off-grid near Peachland. But in September, prime mushroom picking season, they make the trip to Revelstoke every weekend to take people out foraging. They teach them about every plant them come across, and try to find mushrooms to take home and eat. Proceeds from the lessons are donated to the Search and Rescue Volunteers of Canada.

They leave every Saturday at 8:40 am from the Southside Market parking lot, and are done by 2 pm. It's possible to find chanterelles, pine mushrooms, lobster mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, chicken of the forest, and more.

Click below to hear a report from a foraging trip that aired on StokeFM on Aug. 31.