ALL ROADS LEAD TO CAMP

Chapter II: This One Time, At Summer Camp

 

I never attended summer camp as a kid, and for good reason, I was attending auto racing events every weekend in the summer months with my dad from the day I was born. At the age of nine I was provided access to my own private campground on a 10-acre riverside property, backing onto hundreds of acres of bush, with our family’s move from the city to the countryside.

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And while that kind of access to nature has greatly influenced my current journey to overnight wilderness summer camp ownership and direction, as I shared in my previous blog post entitled “Of Nature & Nurture”, an equally influential overnight camp experience as an adult has contributed to my desire to undertake this project.

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In the spring of 2005 I had been a business school graduate for less than a year, and was working a retail job to make ends meet. A co-worker there mentioned that her friend was the Director of an international overnight kids ESL camp on the University of Western Ontario campus in London, Ontario, and that she thought I should apply to be a counselor because of my zest for life.

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As it turns out, I was offered and took the position, having no idea heading into it just how impactful the three summers of work with Tamwood International Camps would be on the rest of my life.

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That first summer was incredible, the bonds that were made with campers, group leaders and fellow counselors is something you simply can’t describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. Add to that an increased dependency on us as counselors, that came with the language barrier that existed for many of the campers who were from locations such as France, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Russia and Turkey.

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And while the two summers I spent on the campus of UWO in London were wonderful, it was my third and final summer working at Tamwood that provided the most enduring memories.

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That summer, myself and two of my best friends, still to this day, boarded a Greyhound bus in Toronto, to begin a 73 hour trek across the country to Vancouver. A few moments stand out from that ride that I imagine will never leave my memories of that summer.

It took more than 24 hours, with all of the stops in small town Northern Ontario, to exit our own province.

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Halfway across the plains of Manitoba, our bus decided it was no longer enthused about carrying us the rest of the way to Calgary, where we were scheduled to transfer busses for the remainder of our journey. The spot that we broke down was like something out of a movie. Nothing but flat fields as far as the eye could see, with a massive grain elevator and a tiny little diner marking the T intersection we found ourselves stranded at. That diner may well have had it’s best and worst day of business in history that day, with the two-person team of cook and server scrambling to accommodate the bored and hungry state of 35 bus passengers. They did a bang-up job, all things considered.

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After what seemed like hours waiting for the new bus to arrive, and despite our drivers’ best efforts to catch our transfer before it left, we made it to Calgary in the late evening, only to be harpooned again, this time inside of the Calgary Bus Station. What happened next is something you could never plan. We found ourselves in the bus station café, which had already closed up shop for the evening. That café did however have a jukebox, which provided some entertainment for my two buddies and I, plus a couple from New Zealand who, as it turns out, were the only two other people making that same trip from Toronto to Vancouver in one shot. We bonded, shared stories, and even convinced a local pizza joint to deliver some pies to us, inside the bus station café.

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The sunny afternoon that we rolled through the Okanagan Valley was another major highlight of the cross-country bus trip. It was as though someone took a paint brush and did their best Bob Ross impersonation, creating a mural of gorgeous scenery across the bus windows, which completely captivated me in the moment.