Despite all the growth, as the new decade dawned Wanakita was in trouble. The camp was struggling with declining enrolment due principally to a succession of directors that had left the camp without a clear sense of purpose. If they were going to stem the tide, the camp committee knew that they had to act quickly, and that the first task would be to find a strong leader who could breathe new life into the operation. They found one in Al Knox.
Knox was a well-respected and intellectual individual who held progressive ideas about camping. As the director at Camp Wakonda in Saskatchewan he had established a track record as an effective leader. When the committee hired Knox they gave him a clear mandate: turn the declining enrolments around. Says Ted Reid, the situation was such that Knox was basically told that if he couldn’t do something with the camp in two years, the camp would be sold.
Knox met his goal and then some. Over a period of three years, he would introduce camper-centered programming, launch a highly successful two-year student counsellor training program, and plant the seeds for Wanakita’s move into outdoor education. Most people don’t realize it, says Reid, but the initiatives of Knox helped save the camp and made Wanakita what it is today.
From the outset, Knox was a strong supporter of camper-centered programming. Well aware of Woods’ flirtation with the same approach five years earlier, he was able to learn from the mistakes that had been made. He took camper-based programming and tried something Woods had not: he imposed structure. Skill groups were offered in the morning, and campers signed up for the camp activities of their choice, everything from canoeing to outdoor cooking. Afternoons were left open for cabin programming, allowing counsellors to work with their cabin to plan group activities. Evenings were filled with either cabin programming or section programming.
“The staff felt there was some structure,” recalls Reid, “but the structure was elastic. In fact, you could even make it transparent.” If for example a cabin group wanted to forgo a section program and do something else, they had that option. “They were not bound by the structure.”
To help with the introduction of camper-centered programming, Knox re-hired Ted Reid. “Al hired me not as an assistant director, but as a section director,” says Reid. “I would go in and run a section based on the new philosophy. And he would use me as the facilitator to run an all-camp program.” If the kids came to Reid and asked if they could have an all-camp program, Reid would work with them to organize the day. “Those kids and I would pull that program together and run it.”
Knox also played a very hands-on role. Because the camp was still relatively small, he was able to meet one-on-one with every camper on orientation day. “Every kid would walk through his office and talk to him about what they wanted to do in skills,” recalls Reid. The kids got to know Knox and he got to know the kids.
The combination of structure and flexibility was a winning formula. It didn’t take long for camper-centered programming to take a firm foothold. Notes Reid: “It began to work really, really well.” Knox and Reid, bolstered by their success, returned in 1971 with renewed enthusiasm. This time, Reid returned as assistant director.
“We wanted to make more moves,” says Reid, and one of the most obvious was the creation of a two-year student counsellor program (four weeks each year). At that time, many other camps offered councillor-in-training programs, one-year programs (eight weeks) that tended to focus on a combination of skills and leadership. But there was a growing recognition that there was a lot of ground to cover in just one year, and that a two-year training program for student counsellors would be beneficial, followed by a year as an assistant counsellor in a cabin with a more senior staff member. That assistant counsellor would be for the whole eight-week session of the summer.
As the program took shape, it was decided that in the first year SCs would be taught basic camp skills, including canoeing and swimming. During the second year, they would focus on leadership skills and theory. It wasn’t an entirely new idea—a two-year model had already been tried with success at a number of other YMCA camps across the country—but Knox was eager to apply it at Wanakita.
To help develop the two-year SC program, Al brought in Wayne Perkins. In time, Wayne would go on to a career spanning more than five decades supporting the YMCA movement, becoming one of the most respected leaders in Canadian YMCA history. He began as a camper at YMCA Camp Wakonda in Saskatchewan in 1954, and that's where he first worked with Al Knox. After Wanakita, he went out to lead YMCA Calgary, and he ultimately served as President and CEO of YMCA Canada. Throughout, Wayne championed youth development, outdoor education, and international collaboration, helping strengthen YMCA communities across Canada and around the world.
Yet, so many of his ideas were first tried, tested, and realized while at Wanakita, particularly what would become the student counsellor program. “Al called and said we have a leadership program that’s a one-year program and we want to turn it into a two-year program,” Wayne recalled. “That was a fabulous opportunity for me. [It was] a perfect fit … It was all about taking the things I had learned as a program staff person and director in Saskatchewan, and as a teacher, and translating it into a program for young people interested in camp leadership.”
The chance to work again for Knox was also a real plus, says Perkins. He had learned a tremendous amount working under Knox at Wakonda and welcomed the opportunity to re-establish the relationship. “I knew how he operated. We seemed to be able to find a line. I was happy being the up front delivery person and he was happier being the back-of-the-house planner and thinker.”
While Al Knox hired Ted Reid as a section director his first summer, he also hired Don McCreesh as the assistant director essentially to play the same role as Ted played five years previously as assistant director to Dick Woods—the “liaison” between the new director and his new ideas and the rest of the staff who had grown up in an environment of traditional programming. While it was nowhere near the challenge of the Dick Woods year, it certainly had its moments and Don recalls delivering his own scaled down version of Ted’s “fireplace rant” (actually in front of the same Long House, formerly the Rec Hall, fireplace) early on in that summer. But by the summer of 1969, the training of the staff, and society as a whole—looking back this was clearly part of the 60’s transition from the structured 50’s and early 60’s to the focus on individual freedoms of the late 60’s—had moved forward and the Wanakita team gradually adapted to the change. “Looking back,” writes Don, “this was clearly part of the 60’s transition from the structured 50’s and early 60’s to the focus on individual freedoms of the late 60’s.”
From the outset, the two-year SC program was a great success. It created a natural progression from camper to first-year SC to second-year SC to staff. By the time kids made it on staff, they would have the camp and leadership skills required and would be well-acquainted with the camp philosophy. From the camp’s perspective, it provided an important mechanism for ensuring a constant supply of properly trained staff. “By the time Wayne Perkins left in 1980, there was a really good staff development program in place,” says Rob Heming, who served as camp director during the first half of the 1980s. “I was a real benefactor of that … I was really lucky to have good staff.”
More than thirty years after its launch, the two-year SC program continues to pay dividends for Wanakita. Both Heming and Perkins can, with pride, rhyme off a long list of SC graduates who went on to be key players in the further development of the camp.
by Dave Black
I joined full time at Wanakita in May 1977 upon graduation from University. During the summer, I was Assistant Director/Business Manager, while Steve Heming was Assistant Director, Programming. In the fall of 1977 I supervised the construction of the Longhouse along with winterizing of some other cabins such as the roofs of the Panabode cabins. There were other projects…but memory fades! By Christmas, the Longhouse was complete (the water system took the plumber about 3 days to prime and get going, just before the buses arrived for the first group between Christmas and New Years.)
In the winter of 1978, I was the on-site manager with Jamie Nicholson as program staff (who, I believe, was on a work term from school). Wayne frequently came up on weekends or for certain groups and I think it would have been Steve Heming (not Rob) who also came up for the program. You note in your history that the duplex was constructed in late 1978. During my full year at camp (the summer and fall of 1977 and winter of 1978) I stayed in the Apartment , above the summer office which became the day camp office in later years. Heat was provided by 2 electric heaters and the apartment never got above 10 degrees C in the winter. While I could have moved to the Longhouse, the Apt had been home for the previous 3 summers (May to August), shared first with Deane Collinson, and then with Steve Heming.”
The first winters at camp
A period of clarification
“Al was a theorist and an academic,” Wayne Perkins once said. “He understood a lot about what was going on. He realized that the camp needed to change and the type of change that needed to occur. Where he lacked, sometimes, was that he didn’t have the persona to be able to translate that stuff.”
Perhaps understandably, as the summer of 1972 drew to a close, Knox began talking about moving on. As Reid sees it, Knox knew he put the camp on the right course, but also knew he wasn’t the guy to take it to the next level. Reid thinks Knox had succession planning in mind when he first brought in Wayne Perkins. He knew Wayne well and was aware that he had an interest in developing a four-season camp and knew he had the skills to take the camp to the next level.
That next level included building out the programming into a year-round model. “If you were to develop a winter program you had to develop a superstructure that would make it run well and make it be comfortable,” says Reid. “Wayne was the guy to do that and I think Al recognized that.”
Starting in 1973, an outdoor education program was offered May through September and on weekends throughout the winter. The basic premise of the new program was that Wanakita would become a living laboratory for education. As an early brochure explained it: “…things that can best be learned indoors should be learned indoors and things that are best learned out-of-doors, should be learned outdoors.”
The camp also tinkered with winter camping. Knox started off offering multi-day sessions for student counsellors over the Christmas/New Years break. Those first attempts at winter camping were very, very rustic and very, very cold. Charlie Hogg recalls hearing the frozen tree branches cracking overhead, something that seemed as ominous as it was impressive. As well, snow transformed the camp into a winter wonderland ideal for skating, snowshoeing, tobogganing and more.
Dennis Hill began attending winter camp in 1977. “When we went up, the Longhouse wasn’t winterized and we had to cut a hole in the ice for water. We used the kitchen in Fenton Hall. I think we stayed in the old hospital because there was some form of heat in there. It was a very cold weekend and a lot of snow. We did that for about four years and every year it got a little easier because they had the Longhouse done in 1978. We could cook in the Longhouse then and had running water. There was an ice storm one winter and we had to hand-sand the road all the way to the forks. We broke camp at about one o’clock and it was about three o’clock when we got the forks. The sander had run off the road.”
Initially Wayne and Pam thought that they would spend the winter in camp and then go back to teaching, which was their profession. Despite the suggestions re succession, it was nevertheless unclear what Al Knox was intending, either to stay or, himself, return to teaching. “We were all fired up about teaching,” says Wayne, though the offer of coming on as camp director remained in the back of his mind. “By about Christmas, I was phoning Al and saying ‘Al, are you still thinking about going back to school? … What interested me was that I thought I could do what needed to be done.”
In the event, they were all back in camp for the summer of 1973, with Wayne taking over the directorship in the fall. When he did, there were three key issues that needed to be addressed immediately: getting enrollment back up to full capacity, moving further into outdoor education, and ensuring that the right staff were in place to make it happen.
To do it Wayne produced a five-year plan. “We did a plan relatively early in the game in order to have it go through the committee and the board.” The goal of that plan was to turn Wanakita into a year-round operation.
The board supported the idea, says Perkins, because outdoor education allowed the camp to serve more people and different kinds of groups yet still maintain the summer as the principle area of programming. With that support, the camp was then able to get some financing for infrastructure and improvements.
Now all Perk needed was the human resources, and as it turned out, he had the perfect staff sitting there right under his nose. The staff group photos from the time present a who’s who of Wanakita in the years prior and those to come. There were two future camp directors, Rob Heming and Steve Heming. Dave Black was there, and would become the first staff to be employed year round. Others, including Deane Collinson, George Hamer, Doug Richards, and Judy Collinson would become key players not only in advancing the culture of the camp, but also driving capital campaigns and reunions. There is also a core of the summer staff that would remain through the decade, including John Lafferty, Leslie Barrett, Bob Thaler, and Bill Hughes.
“There was a whole crew there of people who were good friends and are still good friends today. … They had the history, the tradition, the knowledge,” says Wayne, “plus they were good at it … I recognized that we couldn’t start all over again. I can remember meeting some of those guys very early and saying ‘are you in? Here’s my plan.’”
He also had a promising crew moving up through the ranks of the SC program. “I’d had the opportunity and pleasure of working with the two previous groups of SCs, who now in essence became the core of the new counseling staff. I knew them and they knew me.”
“I went around and talked seriously to the people I thought I wanted to keep,” he says. “That in itself made a statement. People kind of chose to buy in or not.” The result was a strong, dedicated staff that supported a bright new future for Wanakita.
During the New Years’ holiday between 1973 and 1974, Wanakita hosted its first staff winter camp. Most bedded down in unwinterized cabins, oil stoves providing the only warmth. For activities, Wayne managed to scrounge up some old cross-country skiis and a few ancient pairs of snowshoes. And of course, there was the ultimate toboggan run: Cardiac Hill on the W-E road.
The New Year’s winter camp wasn’t the first winter camp at Wanakita, but it was the first that was organized with the intention of building the camp into a year-round operation. As first steps, Perkins began to make greater use of the shoulder seasons, principally targeting school groups to make use of the camp for retreats. Finding campers and staff was, frankly, hard work. There were no permanent staff on site. Perkins was the only full-time camp employee and he worked out of the Hamilton Y from September to June. That meant countless weekend trips back and forth and thousands of kilometers of driving.
“I would have to say that they were some of the toughest times but also some of the best times we had,” says Wayne. “We had to drive to camp in the winter time, get there early, chop a hole in the ice in order to get water, go around and light all the stoves in the cabins and hope you could get all that done before the group rolled in.”
“The stove oil used to be down behind the Longhouse. We used to have to truck these containers of stove oil around on a toboggan. We had to take them around and fill up the stoves the last thing before bed so that the stoves wouldn’t go out during the night.”
On top of trying to run winter camp with part-time weekend staff, Perkins had to promote it and equip it. Initially, there was little money for equipment, so he had to improvise. “Deane Collinson and I decided that cross-country skiing would become sort of the feature program. But we didn’t have any skis and we didn’t have any money to buy them, so we put an ad in the newspaper to see if anyone had any old wooden skis."
Though most of the donations were from the 1930s and 40s, perhaps better fit for museum exhibits than active kit. “Anyway, we went around, got them and fixed them up. That’s what we used the first couple of years. We literally used to haul them back and forth in the truck from the city up to camp every weekend, because we didn’t have anywhere to leave them.”
So much of the activities of camp were done on a shoe-string, if only because it was a period of testing ideas. Then, in 1977, the camp came up with the serious financial boost it needed to transition to a year-round facility: a Wintario grant. The money was used to upgrade the Longhouse. When complete, it included a lounge area with a fireplace, several bunkrooms, washroom/shower facilities, and a garage/workshop. To oversee the job, Wanakita hired its first year-round on-site staff member, Dave (“Blackie”) Black.
Blackie was a long-time summer camp staffer who was graduating from university. Wayne hired him as a year-round assistant camp director. In addition to supervising the completion of the Longhouse he coordinated on-site programming, aided by Wayne and Steve Heming who came up on weekends.
In the fall of 1978 when Blackie left to pursue a career in accounting, Steve Heming took his place. One of Steve’s first assignments that fall was to oversee the construction of the Duplex, a fully winterized staff quarters containing two units, each with a kitchen and bathroom. The next year he oversaw the construction of a new winterized director’s cabin and a ski lodge designed to house the cross-country ski equipment.
And with skis, you need trails. “For a couple of months each fall,” Steve recalls, “I was out there chain sawing, creating the Green Island–Beaver Dam ski trail system.” When the camp secured a special grant to develop its system of trails, a team of four were hired to map out and cut them. They cleared a trail past the beaver dam to the Falls (on the Burnt River), the new Cathy Cole Trail (named in memory of a former counsellor), and a connecting branch to the existing Green Island trail.
International connections
Part of the vision of Wanakita, even from the early days, was to expose campers to ideas and experiences that they may not otherwise have access to. In the 1980s, campers from Soviet Russia came, opening the eyes of everyone to the similarities that people share. An even braver program was an exchange program with Jamaica in the early 1970s. Scott Baldwin counts himself among the lucky CITs who were chosen to take a bit of Wanakita to a number of kids who, in many ways, truly needed and appreciated it.
by Scott Baldwin
In the 1960’s the Hamilton YMCA had an exchange program with the Kingston Jamaica YMCA. About 12 people from both Hamilton and Kingston took part in the program for about two months every summer. I don’t know how long this program lasted, but I would think that the civil war that crippled Jamaica in the 1970’s probably put an end to it. After working as a CIT at Camp Wanakita in the summer of 1969, I was chosen to take part in this exchange in the summer of 1970. The name Jamaica conjures images of beautiful beaches, hotels and palm trees, and that is generally true on the north shore where the tourists go, but we saw very little of that part of Jamaica. It is the most densely populated country in the western hemisphere, and Kingston one of the poorest cities in the Caribbean. It was a teeming city of color, motion, and music, unlike anything we knew in Canada.
The group that I was part of from Hamilton spent a weekend together in a training session before we left so we could get to know one another, but we were dispersed to various YMCA facilities all over the Island and actually saw very little of each other during the summer. We were white kids from a very non-cosmopolitan area in Canada, and we were little prepared for the culture shock of being dropped into this country which was 98% black.
The Kingston YMCA was the main facility in Jamaica and consisted of a run down former plantation house, with a small swimming pool, located at 21 Hope Road. The director was a man by the name of Carl Dalhousie, a man of extraordinary energy and vision. I had the utmost respect for this man and the effort he put in to keep the Y going on less that a shoestring budget. He had a large positive influence on this young and impressionable teenager from Canada.
As I mentioned there were various YMCA facilities throughout the Island, and we rotated through these, usually 1–2 weeks at a time. I started at the Y in Kingston, as a day camp counsellor, and I lived with a family on Border Ave. I had to take the bus into the Y every day, which was an adventure in itself. The fare was 3 cents, and the buses were always packed far beyond anything resembling a legal limit. Each bus had a conductress in addition to the driver, usually a very large woman, who collected the fare and then would push everyone waiting at a stop onto the bus. It mattered little that there was no room on the bus. She would keep pushing until everyone was on. This was repeated at every stop. The buses were not air conditioned, (nothing in Kingston was) and it was in the 90’s with 90% humidity all summer.
I would get off at Half Way Tree, a small public square, and walk up Hope Road to the Y. I was always the only white person on the bus. Jamaicans at the time referred to white people as “pork” (as in white meat). I occasionally heard this term directed towards me on my way to the Y, and decided to take it as a term of endearment rather than derision.
Goats wandered freely throughout the city, and we had curried goat and rice for lunch virtually every day at the Y. Ackee and saltfish was another common Jamaican meal we were all familiar with. The legal drinking age was 16, so most of us were introduced to Redstripe beer and rum as well.
Small shops all over the city would have big old horn type loudspeakers outside their businesses, blaring reggae music day and night. It was impossible to walk anywhere in Kingston and not hear it. Subconsciously you would start walking with a “shuffle” to the reggae beat. To this day I love reggae and have a large collection of reggae CD’s.
My second rotation was at Boy’s Town. This was a walled facility in the worst slum in Kingston: Trench Town. Boy’s Town was sort of a DMZ in the middle of Trench Town, and the local gangs left it alone. We were driven here every day, but we were not allowed to leave the compound. As in so many places in the third world, people were constantly wandering in and out of the place. One day I was talking with a guy about my own age who had wandered in, who told me, matter of factly and without malice, that if I should ever appear outside the wall of the compound, he would have to kill me because if he let a white person live in Trench Town, he would be killed for doing so. Heady stuff for a naive 16-year-old from suburban Burlington.
Nevertheless, I actually enjoyed working here as the kids who came were fantastic. They had an energy and vitality the likes of which I had never experienced before. We played a LOT of cricket here. There was a steel band which practiced here during the day, so the place was always filled with music.
Trench Town was the center of some of the worst fighting during the civil unrest of the mid 70’s. This civil war was little reported in the North American press, but tore the country apart. It saddened me so to hear of the strife, because the Jamaicans I knew had such a lust for life and had the largest hearts of any people I have ever met. To know that there was killing in the streets was heart wrenching.
I have since met Jamaicans who refused to believe I worked in Trench Town.
The Y also had a sleep away camp out in the countryside, where I spent a rotation. A VERY meager facility, we slept in hammocks under a crude tin roof, with the sides open to the air. Mosquitos ruled here, and I don’t think there was a single square inch of my skin without bites. There was a stream running through the area which was our swimming hole. It seems to me we spent more time digging a ditch for a new water pipe than we did doing camp activities.
After that I was sent off to Spanish Town to work at a day camp there. Spanish Town was the Capital during the period of Spanish rule, and there were a number of Spanish colonial buildings there from that time, unfortunately all in ruins. I went off on this assignment with a very nice Jamaican girl, who I wish I had kept in touch with. We had to take a bus to Spanish Town. What is it about buses in third world countries? This bus was right out of a Hollywood movie. Packed with people,crates of vegetables and, yes, live chickens in cages! The top of the bus was piled high with luggage. We were met in Spanish Town by a man with whom we were to stay with during our time there.
The next morning, he dropped us off at the school where the camp was to be held. We both assumed we would just be counsellors and someone else would be running the camp, but we quickly discovered the two of us were the entire staff. The man dropped us off, handed us some keys, a list of the kids enrolled, said someone would deliver lunch later in the day, and left. The keys opened some cupboards where we found some arts and crafts supplies and sports equipment (cricket bats and balls!) 20 mins later the kids started to arrive and we improvised the entire week.
We did some group activities throughout the summer. The best of these was a trip offshore in a small boat out to the tropical reef which runs for miles along Jamaica’s south coast. We landed on a small island (large sandbar) and spent the most wonderous day snorkeling and spearfishing in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It was magical. Unfortunately, I understand that this reef is now badly bleached out from ocean acidification due to the increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
We also took an overnight hike up Blue Mountain (highest peak in the Caribbean) where the view of the Caribbean is supposedly amazing. The hike passed through little villages which time forgot. You felt like you were stepping back 100 years in time. Unfortunately, we never got to see the view as the weather was bad and we had to immediately descend due to an encroaching hurricane, which eventually veered off on another course and didn’t hit Jamaica.
It is impossible to convey just how meaningful this trip was to my growth as a human being. It was an extraordinary experience, and if it hadn’t been for Wanakita, I would never have had the opportunity.
Gaining independence
From the perspective of the residential camp, Wayne Perkins strove to make Wanakita more progressive than it had been prior. He wanted to ensure that there were new and varied opportunities for campers so that they could return each summer and have a new experience. “I always felt that it was critical for a camp to be seen as progressive,” says Perkins, one that grew along with the campers. “If a camper came and had a good experience, they could see what their next experience would be, so they would want to return and have that experience.”
Within that mandate, Wayne developed the seniors’ program, providing increasing challenges as campers moved through the program and into the SC program. He also brought in new activities, such as kayaking and habertism, an early version of high and low ropes.
As well, through Wayne’s leadership, two long-standing traditional elements of the camp were retired: the multi-seater outhouse and parents’ day. The outhouses were the less controversial change, perhaps, though they were missed. Says Don Hambley, “The six seater kybos. I distinctly remember those with great fondness. I used to get the Hamilton Spectator. After dinner, [some of the staff] would wander down to the six seater and we would just sit on the seats. Each of us had a piece of the paper and we’d just pass around the different sections. That was how we spent our post-dinner. Instead of having a sherry or a cigar we would have our newspaper on the six seater.” In any case, the kybos were no longer considered environmentally friendly, and didn’t reflect the standards needed for a co-ed, multi-purpose, year-round facility.
Parents’ day was perhaps missed more, at least by some. In a sense, a day when parents could come to camp, tour the facilities, and to see their children within the camp setting was one of those essential elements of camp life at the time. Certainly, it’s something that continues in private camps throughout Canada, the visitors' day serving an important marketing function. Many private camps have only two sessions, each a month in length. Because of the costs associated with those longer terms, parents want to see what they’re investing in, and, conversely, camps want to have an opportunity to prove their worth to the people who are paying the bills.
At Wanakita, with four shorter sessions running through the summer, the need for a parents’ day wasn’t as stark and it was also much harder to manage. Since the camp began, parents were allowed to visit their kids on the middle Sunday of a two-week period. Few took advantage of the opportunity, though that was probably a blessing. “You’d have parents driving three hours, arrive at camp and find out their kid was in Algonquin Park on a canoe trip,” recalls Ted Reid, a senior staff at the time. “Or you’d spend a whole week getting a first-year camper to have fun and then mommy would show up. When mommy left, the camper would be crying and we’d have to start all over again.”
By 1980, Wayne had accomplished many of the personal goals he had set for himself at Wanakita, and he perhaps felt that a new leader with new ideas could continue moving the camp forward. He began looking for other rich development opportunities in camping, and he found one in Camp Chief Hector, the camp run by the Calgary Y. “During the 70s, I’d had the opportunity to work on a national camp committee,” says Wayne. “I had met the other full-time YMCA camp directors from across the country, [and] I had watched as Camp Chief Hector went through a tremendous renaissance during the 70s. It changed sites, went from being boys only to co-ed, went from summer only to year-round, and tripled in size.”
Still, they had challenges of their own. “Things had not gone very well during the transition and they were losing large amounts of money. The Y was seriously considering whether they would have to shut down the whole camp operation.” Given the kind of potential Wayne saw in the camp, when the director of Chief Hector left in 1980, he headed west. “It was the challenge of thinking okay, I’ve learned a few good things from Wanakita, let’s see if we can put those to work in Calgary. That was kind of motivational.” He was able to have as significant an impact on Camp Chief Hector as he had had on Wanakita.
He also knew that he was leaving Wanakita in exceptionally capable hands, given that Rob Heming had completed his university education and, therefore, was able to take on the directorship of the camp full-time. Says Wayne, “He had hung in there all through the 70s when he was going to school. He was my recommendation and fortunately he was able to get the job.” Rob had been on staff from 1969 to 1974 and his last year at Wanakita had been Wayne’s first summer as director (though Rob had been involved with the camp in the intervening years, especially around the development of the winter program).
In addition, Rob had gained experience in another camp setting, working for Scotty Bowman at the Creative Centre for Learning and Development, a facility in the Wellandport area. Bowman had founded Camp Kewatin to provide camping opportunities to developmentally delayed and children and those with behaviour disorders. Rob started out running an adventure-based program for older kids who had been in and out of jail and then went on to be director, a position he held for three years before heading back to Wanakita in the fall of 1980.
When Rob returned to Wanakita, his younger brother Steve was already the assistant camp director and was living on site year round overseeing camp programming. Together, Rob and Steve formed a dynamic duo. Whereas other brothers may have had trouble sharing the number one and two spots in an organization, these two thrived.
“I think we had a real good division of duties,” says Rob. “I accepted the fact that Steve was the programming person, and Steve accepted the fact that I was the administrative, behind-the-scenes facility person.
Steve ran the Outdoor Centre from September through June and took care of programming in the summer time. Likewise, Rob handled the hiring, marketing, and development. It was much like having two directors on site, and the goal they shared was to continue to work toward making Wanakita a camp that could stand on its own during a time when many camps in Canada and the US simply weren’t. Many of the YMCA camps in the 1970s closed, and often the reason wasn’t programming or marketing, but a strained financial relationship within the urban YMCA organizations they were affiliated with. Says Rob, “The urban Ys got into pretty deep financial trouble due to the issues of recapitalizations. They needed to recapitalize old facilities. To do so, they had to get money. What they would do is sell their camp operations, which were in prime recreational areas, cottage and resort areas.” Given that the Y camps were often the oldest operating camps in Canada—Y camping is the oldest camping organization in North America—the facilities were showing their age and could easily become liabilities. Given an opportunity to liquidate, many urban YMCAs did just that.
“We really needed to place an emphasis on making Wanakita self-sufficient,” says Rob. The whole issue during that period was to stabilize Wanakita. When I took over in 1980 Wanakita wasn’t full yet; it was still not achieving 100% capacity. So, we wanted to build both summer- and year-round programs so that we could become financially independent.”
An emphasis was placed on strategic planning, and working toward that goal of gaining a sound, independent footing and identity for the Camp. Rather than trying to attract campers and groups each year, the dream was to have instead a waiting list for camper spaces. “That would drive our ability to retain revenue,” says Rob, “and if we could retain revenue, we could then begin to have a capital program that allowed us to develop new facilities in the long run.”
By 1983, they’d achieved that initial goal. Where once there were empty bunks, there now were waiting lists. The next goal was growth. While everyone loved the smaller size of the camp—and indeed many opposed growing it beyond the size it had been—it simply wasn’t a sustainable model. Rob had begun to understand that “the only way that Wanakita would be able to earn enough revenue to be able to do anything, and to be independent, was to double its size.” He estimated that, based on the success of other camps in the region, including Tawingo, White Pine, and Timberland, to be able to raise money for capital projects of any substance the camp would need enrolments of between 280 to 320 campers.
Says Rob, “The big thing we were focusing on was improving our return rate for campers. Successful camps have a 75-80% return rate. We were at 55%. So, we wanted to bring that up. And one way to get it up was to get section identity started. When you had section identity, kids would want to come back and be in that section and do different things. Moving up – that whole progression.”
All of that contributed to the overriding goal of financial independence, and ultimately to ensure that the camp was earning enough on an annual basis to replenish facilities and operations, obviating the need to constantly go back to appeal to the Hamilton YMCA for capital. “It’s a hell of a legacy really,” says Rob, “to say that our whole purpose in those six years and two strategic plans was to stabilize camp operations and make it more independent of the Hamilton-Burlington Y,” but that’s exactly what they did. Another legacy Rob left was decidedly more prosaic: he banned smoking and underage drinking. “We agreed in 1983 to institute a no-smoking and no-drinking policy. We gave them two years to understand that by 1985 this is our goal: we have a no smoking and no underage drinking staff. And you will be dismissed if you are caught doing these things. We felt that our staff needed to be an example for the kids in all aspects. … I had to fire seven staff in 1985 the first week because they all went out drinking and they were all underage. … Most camps now have adopted those kinds of policies, but we were one of the first Y camps to do so.” Since 1986 the camp has been financially independent, something which may well have saved its life.
Next: Camp Life
By Don McCreesh
My first step on what has turned out to be a nearly 60-year journey with YMCA started as a junior Wanakita camper a few years after immigrating with my family from England. With the exception of one summer spent working in Banff, it continued as camper and then SC / CIT, counselor, senior section tripper, canoeing director, waterfront director and finally assistant camp director in 1970 at which point I had to get a “real job.” However, due to two events in my final years as a staff member I was launched into a 50-year YMCA “volunteer” career.
In the late 60’s the YMCA across Canada had embarked upon a “youth leadership” drive and as part of that, the Camp Committee wanted the staff to elect one of its own to be a member of the Camp Committee. I recall being elected more by default than anything else, as I was the only member of senior staff who was living in the Hamilton area during the school year (attending McMaster University). Everyone else was going to Western or Queens and wouldn’t be able to get back to attend the meetings.
The other event that occurred was when I applied to join the YMCA full-time following his 1970 summer as assistant Camp Director. I was turned down in my application to join a small YMCA in southwestern Ontario, primarily due to their strict adherence to the “Paris Basis” of the YMCA 1855 (first World Conference), and I chose to embark on an HR career in the corporate world.
As I was now married and had a “real job” and couldn’t attend camp during the summer, being a part of the Camp Committee certainly helped ease the transition to the real world. I recall working with Al Knox on program philosophy and staff training ideas during the first couple of years. Then at age 23 or 24 I was elected Chair of the Camp Committee and had legends like George Thompson and Jim Fenton (he of Fenton Hall fame) looking to me for leadership. What a shock that was.
Around the same time the Hamilton Y was looking for youth members of their Board and picked myself and a downtown youth leader Roy Male to join the Board.
This was the same time that Wayne Perkins took over as Camp Director. Wayne and I bonded quickly and spent many hours working on strategies to position the camp as a priority for funding within the Hamilton Y family. As a result, we were able to fund the initial winterization projects that moved the camp to a year-round operation and to consolidate the multi-year staff training program as a core part of Wanakita’s mission. Substantive leadership development—that only happened through on the job mentoring during my SC / CIT training—became a prime objective, not just a secondary spin off. A few years later my term on the Hamilton Board was to come to an end, but Wayne submitted his resignation to move to the Calgary Y and the Hamilton Y CEO wanted me to stay on the Board to help bring along a new director, one Rob Heming, who I had mentored a decade before as a young camper, SC and counselor.
I eventually stayed to become Board Chair of the Hamilton YMCA, but not before getting frustrated by some of the activity I saw happening at the national level and put my name forward to participate on a national task force. Within two years I was on the National Board and eventually served two terms as National Chair of YMCA Canada. Core to my success was using those leadership skills developed at Wanakita. And to my surprise, I found that many of the national Y leaders (volunteer and staff) also had their leadership roots in camping. Although resident camping is likely only 10% of what the Y does across Canada, it produces a hugely disproportionate percentage of its national leaders.
Based on large part on my Wanakita foundational leadership skills I was asked by the national body to take on the challenge of serving at the world level of the YMCA and to attempt to drive change into the World Alliance of YMCAs. Little did I know this would become a 15-year mission, but I was rewarded at the end with being able to lead a change to the constitution of the World Alliance and fundamental changes to the way the global and regional bodies work.
When elected Chair of the Global Refugee and Rehabilitation Committee I recall having a flash back to my days as a Wanakita camper when we passed the “World Service” collection boxes around the Sunday chapel services while Charlie Hogg played a hymn on the pump organ. I was struck by the fact that I was now responsible for the management of all those funds being donated in 140 countries around the world by young people like us at Wanakita and thinking what an awesome responsibility it was to make sure their donations were being spent effectively and efficiently.
While I attended six World Council meetings (twice as leader of the Canadian delegation) at venues stretching from Denmark to Korea, to Aruba to Cologne and Mexico during my time at World Alliance, I particularly remember the World Council meeting held in England when I was introduced to the Queen as a former Canadian YMCA camper who was now Treasurer of the World Alliance of YMCA. The reason I remember wasn’t just because of the audience with the Queen, but that I was also able to then turn around and roll my eyes at Wayne Perkins across the reception area (he was also attending the World Council meeting, now as CEO YMCA Calgary) as if to say “What are a couple of Wanakita types doing in a place like this!!!”
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Don went on to Chair the Board of the Toronto Y and also provide leadership to the broader Canadian charitable sector as Chair of Imagine Canada and Chair of the Standards Program of Imagine Canada. Helping to introduce change at each of these local, national and global levels where Don never fails to attribute his leadership skills to his Wanakita roots. Don then worked to ensure children who were suffering from childhood cancer would get the same camping / leadership experience that he was able to enjoy at Wanakia. He served as Chair of Camp Oochigeas, later Campfire Circle.
From Haliburton to an audience with the Queen
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