Family Camp Adrian Taylor Assistant Business Manager 2012
Summer after summer, I watched my older brother Arthur go off to Camp Nominingue, and return with enough stories of counsellors, trips and Tribal Games to last until the next summer. Six years ago, it was my younger brother's first year at camp. It was also the summer we learned about Family Camp; something Arthur had failed to mention for the past several years.
This year will be my sixth year going to Family Camp, only this year I am returning as a staff member and joining the team of staff that has made this week so special to me every year. Nominingue Family Camp has become somewhat of a tradition in my family, and the retelling of Nominingue stories and memories is a frequent occurrence around the dinner table.
My favourite memory of Family Camp took place in my second year when we went on an All-Day canoe trip to the falls. We ended up being caught in a storm, making an unplanned campsite, and giggling so much we were instructed to stop paddling because we were slowing down the group on the paddle home.
From the All-Day canoe trips, to the spontaneous music jams and beach parties, to the epic games of Spot at the end of the day, Family Camp has something to offer to everyone.
In 2012, we will be holding our 29th Family Camp, from August 18th until August 26th. Guests come for the whole week or for just a few days. We hold a number of special events such as: a steak and corn roast, a M'shwee, Celtic music night, CN film festival, alumni weekend and a final council ring. On the 25th of August, the alumni association will be holding their annual meeting. We hope that you will join us in August.
En 2012, nous célébrons notre 29ième camp familial, du 18 au 26 août. Les familles viennent pour toute la semaine ou seulement pour quelques jours. Nous tenons plusieurs évènements spéciaux : un repas de steak et blé d'inde, un M'Shwee, une soirée de musique celtique, le festival de films CN, la fin de semaine des anciens et le dernier « Council Ring » de la saison. L'association des anciens auront leur réunion annuelle l'après-midi du 25 août. Nous espérons vous voir au mois d'août.
School Essay
Liam Käufer Camper 14 years old
The water rushed by my neck. My rain jacket was already full of the crystal clear liquid and my life jacket was straining to keep me above the surface. Then my foot touched bottom. I pushed with all my might. The canoe inched forward in the strong current. I reached out with my other foot, pleading silently with the roaring river. One of my beat up track shoes struck a small collection of rocks on the floor of the river. I rooted it in the riverbed and battled the current. With the force of an atom bomb, I exploded outwards and gathered myself slowly out of the deeper section of the stream, pushing the fragile canoe with me all the way. At last, I dragged myself to a point where I was only waist deep in the water, then knee deep, and finally to a point where I could turn around in victory and stare at the river that lay squirming through the luscious green Canadian wilderness. I had made it through.
I was on a five-day trip during my sixth consecutive year at Camp Nominingue in Canada and it was the morning of the second day. We had just claimed the first segment of an almost five mile long upstream river drag. Given the varied and relentless nature of the Canadian lake system, sometimes the only way to get from one point to another is to drag the canoes through narrow, unviable little streams. This time, we were hoping to get to Lac des Sept-Frères by three o'clock, so that we could set up at a campsite near the ten meter tall jumping rock nicknamed Acapulco. Excitedly regrouping, we were filled with delight but knew that more challenges lay ahead before we would take our first Acapulco jump.
After almost two hours of dragging, we were getting back into the canoes to paddle across Lac Édouard, a small lake on the path of the river drag. As we were boarding, my friend Matt, fourteen years old at the time, slipped and twisted his ankle. Because we were about to be paddling, he didn't make a big deal of it. But about fifteen minutes later, we were getting back out of the canoes when he noticed how much it hurt. With about two miles of dragging left and the weather changing for the worse, his aggravated limp told me that he wasn't going to make it. For the next drag, it was my turn to be paddle boy -- the easy job. I was relieved to know that. But when I noticed the way he had been limping under the weight of the sixty-pound food pack, I gave up my paddle boy shift and took the pack from him. He thanked me, wincing his way upriver.
Around the next bend, a tree had collapsed across the river forcing us to portage (carry the canoes and packs along a forest path). As we stepped onto the small trail, we instantly noticed that though short, the hilly portage was muddied by the now driving rain. Matt was struggling up a mud-soaked slope when he dropped his paddles. I was right behind him and picked two of them up, holding one in each hand. He gestured for them back, but I shook my head, "Go ahead. You're hurt," I said. He gratefully nodded, continuing up the slope. After many muddy portages, white water rapids, and treacherous trip insanity, we had completed the riverdrag in four and a half hours, twenty minutes less than the record set by a previous group who had been going downstream as opposed to upstream like our group. The adrenaline we needed for that frightening first Acapulco jump was already flowing from the strong sense of success that was pounding through our veins.
When we got in our sleeping bags that night, I sat thinking about the course of the day. Though it had definitely taken a physical toll on me, I felt strangely relived about the way that my muscles ached. I knew that a few years ago, I would not have been able to accomplish this task. I had once dived for the lightest pack and was known as "The Paddle Boy". But after today, I felt like I had crossed the line from being the receiver of help to being the giver of help. With this act, I catapulted myself from being just one person to being one of the whole. As I drifted off to sleep, I had no idea that I would later be nominated for a leadership award. However, when I received the nomination, I realized that this award was not about ticking boxes off of a prescribed list. Rather, it's about others seeing you stretch your limits and move outside of your own comfort zone. The choice of leadership is like jumping off of Acapulco. You are resistant to the idea at first; but once you try, you can no longer stop. You give in and enjoy the sensation, loving its bubbly and happy ending. Knowing that this is the beginning of a new habit, you have become a new person.
Solo Max Dugan-Knight Camper, LIT, Counsellor 2012
When life is making me crazy, the memory of Lac des Zouaves, a lake in Northern Quebec where I spent 24 hours by myself, brings me a moment of peace. Each of 10 Leaders-in-Training (LITs) did their 'solo' in the woods several miles from camp. We were dropped off at 3:00 PM and picked up at the same time the next day.
Kucer, the LIT counselor, insisted that we do as little as possible. He didn't want us to distract ourselves from the purpose of the trip: being alone. On our earlier 8-day canoe trip, Kucer had kept a twenty-dollar bill in the map case where we could all see it. He said it was to show how useful it was. My every-day obsessions: writing my extended essay, making the varsity soccer team or talking to a cute girl were as insignificant as Kucer's twenty-dollar bill when sitting entirely alone, in the Canadian wilderness.
The beauty of this expedition was that there was really very little to do. After waking up, I soon began a very leisurely brunch of cold chicken out of a can (the leisurely pace was due at least in part to the taste and texture). For five hours that day I sat on a cedar tree, leaning out over the water and focused on doing absolutely nothing. In truth, I wasn't very good at it. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this.
Reading my journal, it's pretty clear to me that I went a little nuts. I wrote grandiose metaphors comparing myself to that cedar tree that was my perch, poems about water bugs and sweeping statements about what made a good life. Reading this writing now it seems comically self-indulgent and immature but there is a power to it that reminds me of the raw force of this experience and the way I saw the world differently in those hours.
Camping, unplugged: Connecting with nature and doing without devices
Ian Howarth The Gazette (Montreal) Feb. 25, 2012
You won't find portable electronic devices on the What-to-Bring-to-Camp list sent home to prospective campers and their parents. That list has, for decades, included mosquito repellent, a toothbrush, rain jacket, flashlight and other essentials, but the latter does not include a cellphone or iPod. Directors of overnight camps have deemed them leave-at home items since the ubiquitous electronic device age became an issue camps could no longer ignore.
Camp Nominingue in the northern Laurentians has been around since 1925, when the closest thing to a cellphone was two empty tomato soup cans connected by a string. Founded by F.M Van Wagner, it is still a familyrun camp that values the outdoor experience for boys ranging in age from 7 to 15. "It's a rustic environment," said Elisa Van Wagner, Camp Nominingue's business manager. "We want kids to appreciate the sounds of nature. Be in the here and now.
They wouldn't be able to do that, plugged into some electronic device or distracted by a cellphone."
William and Patrick Greiss have been Nominingue regulars for the past four years. Now 13 and 12, respectively, they buy into the no-electronic-device policy without reservation. Karen Greiss, their mother, buys into it as well. "They know they're going to the great outdoors (when they go to Nominingue)," she said of her sons. "That's what camp is about. My sons are as connected as any of their friends, but it's not a huge crutch that they can't do without at camp." William has had his own cellphone for more than a year, but has no trouble with the idea of leaving it behind when he begins his three-week session this summer at Nominingue. "There's always lots of activities and plenty to do," he said. "I'm not complaining. I can always catch up on emails and texting when I get back."
Van Wagner and other camp directors agree that for some kids there is actually some form of withdrawal involved when they come to camp for two weeks or more, completely unattached to any electronic device and without Internet access. No wonder, given that a U.S. study by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that young people 8 to 18 years old spend an average of 7½ hours per day watching TV, using a cellphone or logged in to various forms of social media, music and video games. "We have seen some campers going through a kind of withdrawal at first before they settle in," Van Wagner said.
Gabrielle Raill, director of Camp Ouareau, a bilingual camp near St. Donat in the Laurentians for girls 6 to 15 years old, has noticed some campers have a kind of glazed look in their eyes during their first few unplugged days at camp.
"I get the sense that, for some, there is a kind of detox involved in not having access to an electronic device," she said. "Their cellphone is like a kind of security blanket. Even the parents have some anxiety over not being able to get in touch with their children."
Girls, Raill said, tend to be more social than boys, so Camp Ouareau makes sure its programs promote a healthy kind of communication: the good old face-to-face variety. "(Not allowing electronic devices) works for us," Raill added. "Not being distracted means the girls learn how to deal with their problems on their own."
Venerable co-ed Kamp Kanawana, another Laurentian camp with history, uses social media of its own to combat the problem of digital-camera distraction by putting up photos and videos on Flickr. This summer, Kanawana will have a full-time social-media photographer and videographer to capture special camper moments for each two-week session. "Kids get tons of screen time at home," said Camp YMCA Kanawana's director, Sean Day. "Campers will get plenty of themselves on the screen at home after they have left camp." Day said cellphones occasionally somehow work their way into camper's baggage, whether by someone unaware of the rules or at the hands of an anxious parent sending a child to sleepover camp for the first time. "Some kids feel more disconnected than others," he said. "We'll hold the cellphone for them if they happen to pack it.
"Camp is about building relationships, even if they happen to be short, summer ones," Day added. "If they need to communicate at camp, we believe in face time rather than screen time. Rather than texting, we encourage them to use their feet" - to seek out fellow campers with whom to chat, or make their way to whomever on staff is holding the phone and might be persuaded to relax the rules.
Tumpline Submissions - Soumissions pour cette lettre de nouvelles
We are looking for submissions for our newsletters from campers, staff and parents... from this summer, as well as from recent and less recent alumni. These submissions may be general memories of camp experiences or specific memories about a canoe trip, about a favourite program or a funny experience. Please send your submissions to grant@nominingue.com. You may submit your stories and memories in English, French or Spanish.
Nous sommes à la recherche de textes de campeurs, parents et de moniteurs de l'été 2011... et de souvenirs de nos anciens campeurs et moniteurs des années récentes et moins récentes. Vos textes peuvent décrire vos expériences en générale ou une excursion de canot, un programme favori ou une expérience drôle. SVP envoyez votre texte par courriel à grant@nominingue.com. Votre texte peut être écrit en français, en anglais ou en espagnol. |
