memories that last a lifetime
Since 1953, Camp Wanakita has stood as a testament to the enduring spirit of the community that has grown up around it.
Camp Wanakita was initially designed as a replacement for Erie Heights on Lake Erie which was itself a replacement for Camp Tekahoinwake on the Grand River. Both of these locations were considered too developed, so the Camp Committee of the Hamilton YMCA chose Koshlong Lake as the site for Wanakita in 1953.
Though the location was new, the camp continued in the same traditions of Camp Erie heights and Tekahionwake before it, traditions instilled largely by Taylor Statten, a camp director whose imprint in camping is still felt keenly today. In 1906, Statten, a Boer War veteran, became the full-time Boy’s Work Secretary for the national YMCA. His work was celebrated by parents across the country and he soon established the Canadian Standards Efficiency Training program. This program gave children an opportunity to be rewarded for the development of their intellectual, social, physical, and religious skills.
As he built his children’s training programs, he distinguished them—this was a time when other youth programs were gaining popularity, including those of Lord Baden-Powell who founded the scouting movement—with a focus not in a military model, but rather in a First Nations’ model (at least as far as Statten understood first nation cultures, which he highly romanticized and experienced only in the third-person). Statten, at the private camps that he later established, was known as the Chief, and used a loosely “tribal” (again, as filtered through Statten’s imagination) structure of organization. Camps were given names from First Nation languages, and programs were built around teaching woodcraft, nature lore, and an appreciation of self-sufficiency, personal skill development, and the natural environment.
One of those camps was Tekahionwake, opened just outside Paris, Ontario. The camp took its name from the poet Pauline Johnson, whose Mohawk name was Tekahionwake. Johnson wrote and performed poems, the majority of which were based in a romantic reading of her cultural heritage (she was born to a Mohawk father and an English mother). Like Statten, if we want to be frank, her presentation of that culture clearly bore the imprint of her own imagination, and her theatrical readings as well as her writing were intended for non-aboriginal audiences who, for one reason or another, ate it up.
It was that milieu which added so much fuel to the camping fire, both implicitly and overtly. Early camps in the Statten format used real words from real languages as their names, including Ahmek, a camp in Algonquin that is the Statten standard. Soon, however, the links to true first nations culture became more tenuous. The name “Wanakita” was chosen by Keith Smith, though the meaning is unclear. Most likely, it’s a word, like Lagakelo, that was created. The original documents for the camp included a meaning for the word in Ojibwe, though it’s not one that can be confirmed elsewhere.
In any case, it’s interesting to remember that Wanakita was not born in a vacuum. It likewise wasn’t born truly at any specific, utterly identifiable moment. It’s one of the branches of a pre-existing tree.
The town of Donald
These days, the town of Donald doesn’t look like much. There are a few scattered houses, the concrete skeleton of the old chemical plant, a bridge, the tart shop. But in the first half of the last century it was a very different place. Back then, the Wood Products Company Ltd. was in full operation. The plant, which opened in 1908, produced wood alcohol and charcoal, two key ingredients in the production of liquor. It also produced acetate, which was used to make explosives.
Up to sixty men worked inside the plant stoking the ovens, manning the boilers, and tending the giant stills. As many as three hundred others fought off the black flies, mosquitoes, and cold in the surrounding forests to cut and haul the massive quantities of wood needed to keep the facility running. Fifty bush cords of wood were needed each day to keep the place running. At times, as many as 16,000 cords of wood lay stacked and ready in the plant’s sprawling yards.
The plant was the brainchild of R.A. Donald, the town’s namesake. To build the plant, Donald bought 184 acres of land adjacent to the Burnt River and straddling the Grand Trunk Railway right-of-way. After two years of construction, R.A. Donald had built—and owned—the entire town, including the factory, dormitories, houses, a general store, a post office, and even an opera house that was used for entertainment and community events. Close to one hundred people were permanent residents in the thriving metropolis that he had created, and many others commuted to the factory from the surrounding area.
In 1915, Standard Chemical rented the plant and ran it for the next thirty years. But as the surrounding wood supplies were used up, the plant became less viable. It was closed in 1937, re-opened again during the Second World War to produce explosives, and then closed for good in the mid-1940s.
Part of the plant was resurrected during the 1970s for a short-lived tire re-treading business. But much of it has simply fallen into ruin. Today, all that remains is one dilapidated building and the concrete skeleton of a second—an eerie reminder of things that were.
For some very detailed and fascinating information about the Wood Products Co., see Andrew Hamilton’s paper, “Modernity, Metaphor, and Maples: The landscape created by the Wood Products chemical plant in Donald, Ontario.”
Lagakelo
In 1952 Keith Smith, the camp’s first director, was commissioned by the Hamilton YMCA to search for a ‘Northwoods property.’ He travelled all through Central Ontario looking at a number of locations. He found what he was looking for in Camp Lagakelo, a family-operated camp on the shores of Koshlong Lake. He bought the property—all 30 acres of it, including 500 metres of shoreline and two sand beaches—for $50,000.
The property that Smith bought had been running for years as an active and successful children’s camp. Called Lagakelo, it was privately owned and run by the Kaye family from Scarborough, Ontario. W. Alvin Kaye was born in Port Carling in 1898 and attended the University of Toronto, where he earned a teaching degree. In time he became principal of Birch Cliff Heights School in Scarborough, though the idea of owning a wilderness camp for boys and girls had been a cherished dream. In the latter part of the 1930s, Kaye turned that dream into reality when he bought 20 acres of woodland at the north end of Koshlong Lake from Hamilton “Ham” Harrison, a local man who also had rental cottages on the lake. Selling price: a whopping $3,500.
The property was an ideal setting for a kids’ camp. As noted in an early brochure, “Koshlong Lake with its islands, bays and inlets, its pine-covered points and bold rocky shores can well be considered one of the most beautiful in the Laurentian Area … The great expanse of forest and several nearby lakes at once bring to mind possibilities of exploration with the accompanying opportunities for camp craft, wood lore, overnight hikes and outdoor cooking.”
The family worked hard that first fall, winter, and spring. By the summer of 1938, almost half a kilometre of road had been cleared; cabins and an assortment of other buildings had been built. The camp also had a name: Lagakelo, a word created with letters from the family members’ first names. Alvin and Lillian Kaye had three children, Garth, Kelvin and Lois, hence: Lillian Alvin GArth KElvin LOis. With a road, some cabins, and a name that was in keeping with the camp traditions as they had been developing in the province, they were ready to launch their first eight-week camp session.
By all accounts, that first summer was a great success. According to camp literature for the following summer, it was “a glorious summer of camping enjoyed by all.” Enrollment for the 1939 summer season doubled, largely due to the enthusiasm of campers from the first summer who spread the word.
Unlike Wanakita, Lagakelo accepted girls as campers virtually from opening day. That first summer the boys’ camp was slated for the first six weeks of the summer, followed by two weeks of girls’ camp. “As the end of the boys’ camp period drew near,” Garth Kaye later wrote, “some of the counsellors and senior boys asked if they could stay on for the other two weeks. Dad thought that this would be a good experiment and agreed.” It was a bold move, to be sure, given the culture at the time. The trial run worked and the camp remained co-ed until it was sold in 1953. Boys stayed on one side of the swamp, girls on the other, and they all gathered together for meals in a common dining hall.
Accommodations at Lagkelo varied. Junior campers slept in cabins while older campers used cabins or tents. The original cabins were log structures, some of which are still in use today (one of them served as the canoe shed until it was finally replaced in 2018) and boasted modern-day comforts—at least by 1930s standards—such as screens and spring bunks. Programming was also varied, and campers could take part in a wide assortment of activities, including archery, astronomy, boating, swimming, crafts, camp craft, canoeing, drama, folk dancing, music, and tennis. Horseback riding was added in 1939.
The food at Lagakelo, at least as described in the brochure, was fit for a king. “Lagakelo campers know that food is given first consideration in terms of both quality and quantity. Fresh meat, fresh vegetables, and pasteurized milk are included in the daily menu. Chicken dinner and ice cream are served at least once a week.” What the brochures didn’t tell you was that the chickens were raised on site. Perhaps that wasn’t remarkable for the time, so not worth mentioning. In any event, each Saturday, brothers Garth and Kelvin accompanied a member of the kitchen staff to the chicken pens to catch, kill, pluck and clean thirty to forty chickens for dinner the next day.
And what did all that great food and great outdoors cost in the late 1930s? A staggering $8 per week. Parents had to cough up a little more for extras such as horseback riding, laundry, craft supplies and, of course, tuck, a shop where campers could purchase candy and camp memorabilia. Unless you were actually receiving instruction, you had to pay a little extra to use the canoes.
It worked well and the Kaye family quickly built Lagakelo into a thriving operation. The camp was soon bursting at the seams with about 90 female campers, 60 male campers, and a staff of 50. By 1941, Alvin Kaye had given up his teaching job to focus his energy on running the camp. “The camp was growing quickly,” wrote Garth Kaye, “and had strong signs of producing enough income for the family, so [my father] decided to stop teaching and spend all of his time developing the camp.”
Alvin Kaye set aside a section of the camp with a couple of cabins that parents could rent by the day or week. These cabins, which were equipped for two people, rented for $1.50 per day or $8.00 per week. The original Wanakita director’s cabin near the government docks is one of those early cottages.
Kaye then extended the camp season. After spending Thanksgiving and Christmas on site, they realized that there was an opportunity to offer weekend camps during the fall and winter. Of course, moving to year-round operations required some preparation. The only building that was insulated was the hospital, so two of the log cabins that were outfitted with stoves and living quarters next to the dining hall were winterized. Thanksgiving weekend at camp became a regular event for about 10-15 people. Eventually, they offered a winter week from Boxing day to the day after New Year. It can sound bucolic, though those first winter camps presented some very real challenges, not the least of which was transportation. The road to camp wasn’t plowed in those days, so campers arrived by train and were met at the Donald train station by sleighs which took them the four kilometres to camp. Supplies, too, had to make the same trip.
By 1949, Kaye had sold their home in Scarborough and were living full time at the camp. As Garth recalls, “Mom was not happy in this situation.” She had little opportunity to chat with other women, and the bush was no place to garden, something she loved to do. Whether it was concern over her happiness or simply the work of running a growing camp, they decided to sell the property in the early 1950s. Strangely, they didn’t ultimately go all that far. Alvin Kaye bought the Standard Chemical property in Donald, where he opened a prefabricated plank-wall cottage factory, a business he operated on the site until his retirement. He went on to serve as the third president of the Haliburton Rotary Club. Alvin Kaye died in 1981. When purchased by the Hamilton YMCA, Keith Smith moved up to become the camp’s first director, a position he would hold for seven years.
The beginning of Camp Wanakita
Keith Smith later wrote that “in due course, the dream became the reality. And reality became Camp Wanakita—a camp to fulfill the imaginative, adventurous dreams of many boys in the years to come.”
Just six months after buying the property, Wanakita welcomed its first campers. The name derived from Smith’s experience at Camp Kitchikewana in Georgian Bay, which had been founded in 1919. When Smith attended, as now, Kitchikewana was home to Wanakita Beach, and the new camp was named in tribute, perhaps, or simply as a means of creating a thread of continuity among the growing number of YMCA camps in Ontario.
In Wanakita’s first season 373 boys attended and were managed by 38 staff, all of whom came from the Hamilton YMCA. The total operating budget was $18,882.
Interest in the new camp was immediate, and full registration was reached well ahead of schedule. There were two weekend groups that first spring and three two-week sessions. Forty-two of the summer campers were senior boys between the ages of 14–16. Smith felt that attracting a good complement of older boys was an important goal, as it validated the decision to establish a northwoods camp and, equally importantly, it would provide the leadership potential it would need in the years ahead. “This camp,” wrote Smith, “will retain campers through the years until they are ready for counselling responsibilities.”
Still, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. On the very first trip to camp one of the buses slid into the ditch on the final stretch of road from Donald. For the rest of the summer the bus company would not allow its buses to go any further than Donald, four kilometres short of the camp. Campers had to walk the final leg of their journey while a hired truck carried their luggage.
In camp, the staff struggled with facilities and equipment that were unfamiliar to them. There was no electricity on Koshlong, and what power there was came from a generator that, Smith wrote, “caused an endless amount of trouble and concern.” The one camp vehicle was an aging Jeep that spent more time in maintenance that summer than it did on the road. Food deliveries were often days late, and the cooking was all done on a single wood burning stove. This for a camp population of nearly 400.
If the staff were struggling, the campers likely failed to notice it. “The general camp spirit,” Smith wrote in his report, “was at a very high peak throughout the summer. Many of the boys had not even envisioned all the activities and experiences which they found at their new northwoods camp.” The summer was idyllic, filled with boating, canoeing, swimming, canoe tripping, and campfires. “What a wonderful thrill it has been to initiate camping at a new northwoods campsite and at a camp that we can certainly state, within a few years, as being the finest in terms of facilities, equipment, site and program.”
Distances in the 1950s were greater than they are now. A drive north of a few hours today, then it was a haul most often made by train. That underscored the concept of the “northwoods” that crops up continually in the literature of the time. Camp was a bit exotic, new, and played into the adventure aesthetics of the day. It’s hard to appreciate now, given that we see the camp concept as established, old, traditional. Then, it was an amalgam of cultural influences, including popular ones—this was the great heyday for the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and Nancy Drew—and once you got to camp, you felt that you’d arrived somewhere remote. And, given the realities of travel, you had.
The momentum from that first year carried into 1954, a year marked by growth and development. A building interest in the camp, due largely to “the satisfied, happy campers” of the previous summer, prompted the addition of a fourth two-week period. That second summer, Wanakita logged 8,512 camper days, a 26% increase over 1953.
Weekend camping also grew in popularity. The camp hosted five weekend groups in 1954, including two father-and-son groups. To further help boost enrolment, Wanakita got serious about promotion. A 16mm colour film, called “Buddies” was made by Lloyd “Westy” Westmoreland, a key figure on the Camp Committee. Westmoreland was a prominent Canadian radio and television broadcasting executive. Originally from Nova Scotia, he started as an announcer at CKCK in Regina, served in the RCAF, and spent decades as the sales and commercial manager for CKOC in Hamilton and CKCK-TV. [1, 2] The film depicted life at the camp and was shown to groups in the Hamilton area and as far away as Ingersoll. Christmas cards were also sent to every camper, and a camp reunion was held during the winter to renew friendships and kick off registration for the 1954 season. This tradition continued well into the ‘60’s. The reunion was held at the Hamilton Y, and Bill Hughes recalls attending with his father.
Smith firmly held “that a sound and successful program” was the best way to guarantee future participation. Boating, canoeing, swimming, and canoe tripping continued to be the mainstays of the summer program. During the summer of ’54, more than 40 groups embarked on wilderness canoe trips of two to five days. Within camp there were a variety of all-camp programs, including musicals, regattas, amateur nights, Christmas parties and Indian Pow-wows.
When Charlie Hogg arrived at Wanakita in 1962, the First-Nations-inspired ceremonies were, without a doubt, a cornerstone of the camp experience and something he worked to develop even further when he grew into a leadership role. “It was done with great pomp and ceremony,” says Hogg. “We took great pains to do all these elaborate shields with kerosene torches, and we did our own costumes. One year, to add authenticity, we got the Jimmy Sky Dancers from six nations to come up … it was unbelievable in that stockade.”
The stockade was created from the pen that Kaye had used to house the chickens, the same one where Garth Kaye went to slaughter dozens of chickens each week. Hogg recalls that Smith was the one who masterminded the creation of the stockade as a centrepiece for programming.
The programs worked in the way that they were intended: to create a sense of place and shared purpose. And it was, in a word, elaborate. Says Hogg, “There used to be an entry platform over the entry to the stockade and the camp had a huge drum, a log drum, that was played. Somebody would be up there playing the log drum, and the campfire is in the middle, and sometimes it wasn’t started. But the torch lights all around it, and the light play in the trees again added to the magic, the mystery of it, the suspense with the whole thing, the atmosphere. As you came in dressed in your robes and took your place by the shield for your particular [tribe] you were already hyped by what was going to come on. And then as the great chief came, you know, you’d turn to the great west wind and say [something like] AY-YA-KINWA-NUN-WAY, ‘spirit bless this,’ spirit descend upon this.’”
“I remember we had a trick for lighting fires,” says Gary Furness. “We had some guy sit up in a nearby tree and he would have a toilet paper roll that had been soaked in kerosene.” Robin Connor, the archery instructor, was typically the one in the tree. “Charlie Hogg would get the campers going and they’d be yelling to the fire gods to light the fire. It would be pitch black and nobody could see anything. Suddenly, up in the tree the guy would light the toilet paper. Then he’d let the thing slide down this wire. Of course it hits a pile of wood that has also been soaked in kerosene and poof, instant fire. The kids would go ballistic. They’d all be going ‘Wow!’ Of course, the guy up in the tree had to sit there all through the campfire so nobody would see him hoping he didn’t light himself or the tree on fire. Those are some of the neat things we did. We used to try to impress the kids with all kinds of stuff.”
While some traditions take somewhat different forms today, from the very first year there was a spirit that was established. “It’s the place,” says Hogg. “It’s the attraction of the community, of the people who are there. Some colleagues at other camps I know didn’t have the same experience. And there was a couple years I worked at Camp Candalore and it was an entirely different mood.”
Canoe Trippers
by Don McCreesh
Canoe tripping really became a core activity and a goal for most senior campers during the mid to late 60’s. While “in camp” programs were always at the heart of Wanakita, gradually canoe trips, for many of the senior campers anyway, became the “goal” and reason for coming to camp. From the early 60’s when the trips I was involved with as a camper focused on the Gull River (West Guilford to Minden to Fenelon Falls) and the southern tier of Algonquin Park, by the late 60’s trips ventured throughout Algonquin and by the time my three sons, Chris, Tim, and Mike were canoe trippers in the 90’s the trips had moved on to Killarney, Temagami and northern Quebec. But not only had the destinations evolved, but canoe and camping gear had as well. No longer were campers dealing with waterlogged seventy-pound canvas cedar strip canoes, tents with no floors and limited mosquito netting. Now forty-pound aluminum canoes, waterproof tents with floors and stoves to cook food were standard!!! May I never have to go back to the good old days!!!
I was a senior counsellor/canoe tripper in the late 60’s. Some of the other memorable “trippers” were Ed Gordon, Gav Cooke, Mike Tilson, Carl Sneyd, Serge Metikosh, and Dave Ingham. These were leaders who were excited about exploring new routes, taking longer and longer trips and going where others at Wanakita had not ventured to date. In the late 1960’s it was common for the most senior campers to arrive at camp off the buses, report immediately to outtripping, meet their tripper counsellors, review the maps of where they were going and begin packing food and supplies. This was back in the day when Period “A” was three weeks. The next morning they would load up their canoes and gear and be taken far away to begin a 19 day trip returning only the day before departure. They attended opening and closing campfire. Otherwise they were out of camp for 19 days of their 21 day session.
I can recall three of those trips in particular, two of which occurred in 1967. In one, Mike Tilson’s cabin, including future staff member Don Lancaster, was joined by a photojournalist to record a canoe trip down the Ottawa River that went on to be front page story on a Canadian national magazine to celebrate Canada’s centennial.
The second 1967 trip was one in which I was a senior cabin counsellor for a cabin group that included future staff member Russ Thompson. This trip established a new breakthrough as we trail blazed a route that started at Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park and came all the way back to Wanakita. For a group of one staff and five campers it was an amazing adventure that we thought would take up to 10 days but we completed it in three days. On four stretches we literally had to bushwhack between lakes and rivers where there were no portage trails – on the first one in the Park why was I was not surprised to find a carving “Ed Gordon was here” on a sign – and, of course, we had the eight mile portage from Lake Kashagawigamog, through Lochin to the old store on Koshlong on the final day. We wanted to surprise everyone back at Camp so we camped that last night on Umbrella Island and in the morning snuck up to the government dock to wait until the flag raising ceremony. Much to the shock of all the staff and campers who weren’t expecting us back for another week, we emerged from the morning mist to give a “Wanakita Canoe Salute” to the flag just as the camp was finishing singing “O Canada.” While I enjoy thinking about what we accomplished, I continue to be amazed at the impact that trip had on the campers. To this day Russ Thompson still relates to the trip as being one of his significant life events and another participant, John Chennery, came to his first Wanakita reunion 45 years later with the sole purpose of finding me, telling me what an impact that trip had on him and showing me a photo that he took on that trip. His wife, who also came to the reunion, then related how she “had been listening to the stories about that trip for the last 45 years, now hopefully he’ll finally shut up.” All from a three day canoe trip.
But that’s not the end of the “Canoe Lake to Camp” story. The following summer we had an extremely accomplished group of student counsellors who in the view of many of the senior staff needed to be “pushed” to be their best. Included in this group were Don Lancaster, Dave Glennie, and future camp director Rob Heming. I was “volunteered” to take them on their “graduation” canoe trip during which I would evaluate them for future staff roles. They had heard about the Canoe to Camp trip of the previous summer and wanted to go one better. So for this talented group we put in at Kiosk, the north end of Algonquin Park—way up past North Bay. We made it through the park to Canoe Lake in four or five days, but now they were tired and weren’t sure if they were up for the final stretch back to camp. Fortuitously, we bumped into Russ Thompson, he of the previous year’s trip, as we paddled down Smoke Lake. And Russ lay down the challenge that they weren’t up to finishing what a group of senior campers completed the year before. Well not a group of individuals to back down, they took up Russ’ challenge and, I’m proud to say, made it back to camp in an unbelievable two days, stopping only overnight at a campground on Hwy 35 just north of the Ranger station on Lake St. Nora. All of those future staff members on that trip still tell stories of that adventure to this day.
I don’t believe either one of those trips have been replicated to this day by anyone at the camp.
Many of the counsellors and campers of those days continued canoe tripping after leaving Wanakita. In the case of my family I had the pleasure 35 years after leaving camp of taking a 14 day canoe trip down the World Heritage Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories with my three sons, Chris, Tim and Mike, who experienced their first canoe trips at Wanakita in the 90’s.
"Wanakita," by Glen Herbert, written for the 50th anniversary of the camp and performed at the anniversary weekend closing campfire
Next: Growing interest
The Wanakita Heritage
1969
Camp becomes co-educational, admitting girls to the summer program. It also introduced family camping, initially as a short end-of-summer session.
1973
Wayne Perkins becomes director, program expanded beyond summer camp by offering an outdoor-education program during the spring, fall and winter.
1986
The camp introduced the Sunship Earth environmental-education program, emphasizing ecology and relationships among living systems.
2003
For its 50th anniversary, Wanakita invested approximately $3 million in new cabins, landscaping and facilities, helping make family camp a full-summer program.
Connect with Us
We invite you to reach out to learn more or to share your experiences as part of the Wanakita story.