5 months at Camp Wahanowin

You may have been wondering what has happened to me over the last 5-6 months since I last posted. It seems a little unfair to jam 5 and a bit months into 1 short journal but I'll try.

I've been working at a summer camp called Camp Wahanowin. It's about an hour and a half north of Toronto, just outside Orillia. Camp was divided up into probably 3 main parts so I'll deal with them seperately.

When we first arrived at the beginning of May, we had 2 weeks of maintainence where the entire camp had to be set up. It was so ridiculously cold for those weeks that at breakfast the seats in front of the heater were hot property. I think that my down sleeping bag paid for itself in those couple of weeks. It didn't take long for it to warm up though.

The first 2 months, called Core, was basically school groups coming up during the week where we would run activites and evening programs for them. We had about 60 staff, mainly Canadian uni students on their summer break but also a bunch of Aussies that came across from Big White. I ran activities on the waterfront which basically meant running hour long canoe and kayak lessons for the groups of kids that would come around. We would end up working some rather long days, sometimes up to 15hrs with really only meals as breaks, but you get into a groove with it so you can almost just run on autopilot.

A good as Core was, the camp only really kicked into high gear when the main summer camp started at the beginning of July. It went from around 60 staff to about 250 staff in the space of a couple of days. It was a bit of a shock to most of us because it had been our camp for the last 2 months and all of a sudden it was being overrun by cliquey Jewish staff who had been going to the camp for probably 10 years at least.

For the summer I was a canoe tripper which involved taking kids out on week long canoe trips on the lakes that are everywhere north of the camp. Our weekly schedule was pretty much the following:

Sunday: Spend most of the day packing food barrrels, ulility packs, tent packs and help the campers pack their own stuff.

Monday: After breakfast we'd pack our own gear then drive up to the lake where we would be camping. We'd then unload everything and wait for the campers to arrive on the bus. When they got there we'd paddle out to where we were camping and set up camp. After setting up camp and cooking dinnerwe would usually make a campfire and cook smores (chocolate and marshmellow between cookies, or biscuits, or crackers, whatever you want to call them) then put them to bed when the sun went down at about 9:30ish.

Tuesday: We usually waited for the kids to get up before we would in the morning. By telling them that they could sleep in as long as they want we usually got a bit of a sleep in as well. Once we made breakfast we'd go swimming then have lunch and do the same in the afternoon. We'd basically just let the kids choose what they wanted to do, most of the time they just wanted unstructured time to just relax.

Wednesday: After getting up early and packing up all the campers stuff, we would paddle back to the put-out and wait for the bus to arrive with new campers and food. Once they arrived we would swap them over and head back to the camp site and do the same thing as on Monday afternoon.

Thursday: Basically the same as Tuesday.

Friday: Once again we would get up and pack up the entire camp early before heading back to the put-out. Once all the kids were loaded onto the bus and the canoes on the trailers, we'd head to a restraunt for some lunch and then back to camp to clean up all the gear from the week. We were usually finished by about 4pm, after which we were finished for the week.

Saturday: We'd usually wake up fairly late before heading into Orillia for some breakfast and shopping, then back to the camp to go for a swim, sleep or whatever we felt like.

That was pretty much what I did for 2 months, so it wasn't a bad life by any standard. In addition to regular canoe trips, we went on some special trips to Kilarney National Park and Silver Peak with the 'Counsellors in Training' (CIT's in camp talk) as well as taking them white water rafting on the Ottawa River.

The fall season was run pretty much the same as Core, except with only about a 1/4 of the staff. This meant that the groups that came up were much smaller and we ran pretty much all the activities instead of being in just one specific area like waterfront.

I've left out a lot of stuff, but hopefully this kind of gives you an idea of what I've been up to. I'll post a heap of photos as soon as I can get to a computer that will let me.

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