Summer Camp..One more time....
Life is just not a chain of unconnected events. Things happen for a reason and what appears to be random chance actually begins to look like a pattern if you reflect back over time.
Summer Camp holds this place in my universe. Imagine a driftinf 18 year old...out of school, working in a mill and basically living from one party to another. This person was me in 1976. I was full of big ideas but with absolutely no focussing mechanism and no mentors to help me channel the "potential" everyone was continuously throwing in my face.
Camp Wilvaken had been a place that my mum had worked at as the "shopping" person and as an 8 year old I had spent a few uncomfortable days there trying to fit in as an outsider in a boarding camp. As fate would have it Mum had been asked to pitch in again and as an aside the Camp director mentioned that they needed a cousellor as a last minute replacement. It was financial suicide really as I was planning to return to school but...I`ve been committing finacial suicide all my life so I gues in retrospect I was beinf consistent.
The rest is history. Wilvaken was where I honed my interpersonal skills. I learned to get along with fellow workers, I learned that it was fun to work with children, I learned about romance and I started to really see who I was and what I wanted to become.
It was at Wilvaken that I discoverd the wonderful solitude of climbing a mountain and trekking along the long trail. I discoverd inner strngths I never knew I possessed. I gained confidence and I was able to build on my mistakes to become at better person.
These values are central to my career. In the winter I teach my classes with the spirit of a summer camp shining from me. I see in the lost souls that come my way the same need to find an anchor to build their lives around. I understand that life is full of phases and that just one positive experieince like Wilvaken was for me could change their lives.
Since those days I have been blessed with the opportunity to work in many camp settings. I was a teacher at BCS summer language program, Stanstead College gave me the honour of founding their language advernture and more recently I have bee the director of Camp Vivre Anglais and immersion language camp now situated in Sherbrooke. In every instance I have had the pleasure of working with Staff Members enjoying their own eye opening experience working with young people. IN many instaces I have enjoyed seeing the same transformation in them that I experienced as a young cousellor. It has been a wonderful ride and it has been a culture that I have been able to share with my own children who, as they grew up, have been able to share the same experieinces as I have. Just yesterday, I called the Stanstead College Language adventure and there was my son Rob`s voice on their message. The same night my younger son Jamie pulled in to D.J. the Dance at our Camp, and until this year my wife Louise, was director of the Stanstead`s Camp.
IT has been a tie that binds and I`m not sure what the future will hold as I make plans not to work at Camp next summer. Not bad 1976 until 2006 as a glorified Camp Consellor. Maybe I`m ready to own my own camp.. I`ve got the Family expertise...Maybe my brothers are ready to invest in another of my business ideas....Yes...I think I`ll have to give this some serious consideration....Life without camp would be like life without chesse slices..... see ya.....gotta go and dream for a while...
Summer Camp holds this place in my universe. Imagine a driftinf 18 year old...out of school, working in a mill and basically living from one party to another. This person was me in 1976. I was full of big ideas but with absolutely no focussing mechanism and no mentors to help me channel the "potential" everyone was continuously throwing in my face.
Camp Wilvaken had been a place that my mum had worked at as the "shopping" person and as an 8 year old I had spent a few uncomfortable days there trying to fit in as an outsider in a boarding camp. As fate would have it Mum had been asked to pitch in again and as an aside the Camp director mentioned that they needed a cousellor as a last minute replacement. It was financial suicide really as I was planning to return to school but...I`ve been committing finacial suicide all my life so I gues in retrospect I was beinf consistent.
The rest is history. Wilvaken was where I honed my interpersonal skills. I learned to get along with fellow workers, I learned that it was fun to work with children, I learned about romance and I started to really see who I was and what I wanted to become.
It was at Wilvaken that I discoverd the wonderful solitude of climbing a mountain and trekking along the long trail. I discoverd inner strngths I never knew I possessed. I gained confidence and I was able to build on my mistakes to become at better person.
These values are central to my career. In the winter I teach my classes with the spirit of a summer camp shining from me. I see in the lost souls that come my way the same need to find an anchor to build their lives around. I understand that life is full of phases and that just one positive experieince like Wilvaken was for me could change their lives.
Since those days I have been blessed with the opportunity to work in many camp settings. I was a teacher at BCS summer language program, Stanstead College gave me the honour of founding their language advernture and more recently I have bee the director of Camp Vivre Anglais and immersion language camp now situated in Sherbrooke. In every instance I have had the pleasure of working with Staff Members enjoying their own eye opening experience working with young people. IN many instaces I have enjoyed seeing the same transformation in them that I experienced as a young cousellor. It has been a wonderful ride and it has been a culture that I have been able to share with my own children who, as they grew up, have been able to share the same experieinces as I have. Just yesterday, I called the Stanstead College Language adventure and there was my son Rob`s voice on their message. The same night my younger son Jamie pulled in to D.J. the Dance at our Camp, and until this year my wife Louise, was director of the Stanstead`s Camp.
IT has been a tie that binds and I`m not sure what the future will hold as I make plans not to work at Camp next summer. Not bad 1976 until 2006 as a glorified Camp Consellor. Maybe I`m ready to own my own camp.. I`ve got the Family expertise...Maybe my brothers are ready to invest in another of my business ideas....Yes...I think I`ll have to give this some serious consideration....Life without camp would be like life without chesse slices..... see ya.....gotta go and dream for a while...
Comments
That is a quote that I will forever remember. That line made me laugh out loud!
I've been missing camp this year! This is the first summer in a LONG time that I haven't been involved with a camp in some way shape or form.
My first camp experience was in 1995, with the Bishop's Basketball camp, followed by Stanstead College Language Adventure since then! I loved spending months getting hyped up for three weeks of running around, gleefully stressed, handling one problem after another, sitting around camp fires and dining hall tables, ending with the smiles and tears on everyone's faces on closing night, the last night that this exact cast of characters would ever share the same breathing space.
Hopefully I'll have the freedom in a few years to spend my summers involved with some form of kid related activity, preferably camp-oriented :) For now, I'll work on getting a paycheck :)
2008 is our 50th anniversary so be there!