“What really amazed me was the first year we went to family camp in 1998.” says Dennis Hill, who was a camper in the 1970s and returned later as a family camper. “The feel of the camp was still there after more than 20 years. Although the physical part of the camp had changed it was still the magical place I remembered as a kid. I can recall walking through the camp that first time in that first summer back, going through Fenton Hall, remembering all those childhood memories and thinking this place is really something special.”
Though there were lots of changes, concerns, and challenges over the years, campers largely didn’t notice any of that. For them, camp was simply magical. Dennis Hill says, “I remember one year, the whole camp went out to Umbrella Island. It was night time and we had torches. One person in each canoe was holding a torch—just a pole with a coke can stuffed with a rag. I think we had a campfire out on the island or maybe we just went around it. But it was really quite memorable seeing all these canoes with the torches. It was really quite a sight.”
Pirate Day, Amphibian Day, days on the lake, trips, Haliburton civic parades—though camp was different than it had been in 1953, the experience was nevertheless just as idyllic and just as wonderfully removed from life at home. “I remember as a young kid they used to tell us ghost stories,” says Dennis. “One time they told Big Foot Stomp with the lumberjack. I think I was cabin 13, just to make things more interesting. Anyhow, I had to go to the washroom about three o’clock in the morning. I come out and there’s this ground fog. The kybo was down about two or three cabins. You wouldn’t believe how fast I ran. And all the time I’m in the kybo I’m thinking an axe is going to come crashing through the kybo wall.”
“When I was a kid,” recalls Sarah Powell, “when you arrived at camp the first day the first thing you asked your counsellor was: ‘Is Charlie Hogg going to come and tell us a ghost story?’ I’m sure he was busy every night of the week at two different cabins telling stories – either with a funny ending or the-hook-across-the-floor kind of thing. And then when I became a staff member, we had Monday night meetings up in Fenton Hall and you had to run around with your blank schedule trying to fill in your days. Charlie always had the biggest line-up. To get him to do a ghost story for your kids was a challenge. He’d say, “I can’t do it Tuesday from 7 to 8, I can only do it at 8:15 to whatever.’ He was always fully booked. And his stories were freakin’ scary. They were so scary. He’s this big man and he’d have this candle. He’d hit the candle out at the end and it went black. You’d all go ‘AAAHHHH!’”
Mark “Rock” Blackett was a camper in the 1980s and, in the 1990s, became a core member of the staff. “I remember on night patrol, you’d get a coke and chocolate bar from the tuck shop and then go sit out in the middle of the forest somewhere. Your whole job was to literally catch kids out and scare them. It was boring if you didn’t catch kids out because it was no fun. There were some things the kids never realized when they were in the cabins. They never realized that you could hear through walls. You’d be standing outside and you could hear absolutely everything, including the whispers. Kids never really caught onto that. You could side outside the cabin when they were planning to sneak out. They’d step out the door and you’d be standing there. They’d go ‘we’re just going to the washroom’ and you just go ‘of course you are.’ Campers never really realized that counsellors were campers at one point too.”
Sunship Earth
In the 1980s, the camp expanded its long-standing tradition of woodslore and outdoor learning through the introduction of Sunship Earth. Developed in 1979 by Steve Van Matre of the Institute for Earth Education, the program was implemented in 1986 as a new approach to environmental education. Rather than treating nature solely as a subject for scientific study, Sunship Earth encouraged participants to experience the natural world directly and to understand their place within it.
Designed primarily for students in Grades 5 and 6, Sunship Earth became a four-day fall program within Wanakita’s outdoor-education offerings. Through exploration, observation, and sensory activities, students encountered the forests, wetlands, lakes, and other living systems of the camp. The program was organized around seven ecological principles—energy, cycles, diversity, community, interrelationships, change, and adaptation—which provided a framework for understanding the connections that sustain life.
Sunship Earth also reflected a broader shift in the camp’s educational philosophy: from simply learning about organisms and their environments to developing a personal and lasting relationship with the Earth. Participants were encouraged to see themselves as both “passengers and crew” aboard a shared vessel of life, with responsibilities toward the systems that support them. Alongside related programs such as Earth Keepers and Sunship Three, it helped establish environmental awareness and stewardship as enduring elements of Wanakita’s identity.
Stevie!
Change, ultimately, can be a very hard thing to bear. “Every major change creates opposition,” says Steve Heming. “They don’t want it to happen. They’re worried about losing what is Wanakita.”
Everyone wants the camp to remain as it was during their own formative experiences there. But time marches on, bringing new challenges with it. “Certainly, in today’s environment, expectations are significantly higher than they were even back in the 1970s,” says Wayne Perkins. “I’ve often said to staff, if you did what I did as a staff member I’d fire me.” There was a time when smoking wasn’t just allowed in camp, but you could buy cigarettes—provided you were 14 years of age or older—at the Tuck Shop. In that, and so many other ways, the staff members of today are simply held to a different standard. As well, notes Wayne, there is perhaps a greater understanding of responsibility and it’s flipside, liability. “It was one of those things where, in what I would call almost youthful naïveté, you really didn’t understand what you were responsible for. If you really stood back and looked at it and said ‘somebody said I’m responsible for these 300 kids and 60 or 70 staff … I’m supposed to be looking after them and making sure that they’re getting fed and that they’re healthy…Yikes! But you never really thought about all that.”
“I think largely Steve Heming is responsible for the shape of the camp in the last 15 years,” said Dennis Hill in 2002. “His visions, taking chances, it’s really wonderful.”
By 1987, Rob at been at camp for 17 years and was looking for new scenery and new challenges, and he found them just a lake away, at Bark Lake. The opportunity was a brilliant one, because it would allow Steve to remain at camp. he had been looking at moving to Pinecrest, the Toronto Y camp. He had interviewed for the position, and the directorship of Pinecrest was literally his for the asking.
When Steve Heming took over the directorship—like Al, Wayne, and Rob before him—he brought a willingness to really look at things from a distance and to find areas of improvement. The main challenge ahead, as he and Rob had noted, was the camper return rate, which still dipped into the red.
Part of the problem was a lack of identity. When campers came in the 1960s, their sense of identity came from the camp itself, which was then small enough that it felt cohesive. With a larger camp, that feeling dissipated. One solution was to develop the sections. Steve recalls that, “the thinking back then was that we wanted to bring stability to each section, so that each section had an identity unto its own. … We brought in full-time section directors because we felt at that time that we needed to create sections to help get a sense of place for campers.”
Programming was developed within the sections, and because campers would spend two or three years in each section, there had to be an arc of experience. “That was hard when you had roving section directors every two years because they would be learning more than they would be establishing.” All the camper singing and banging in the dining, with each section with its own chants, began.
Under Steve’s guidance, the programming was also shifted away from a macho culture of achievement—going on long push trips for example—to something more inclusive, something more attuned to value than achievement. While it’s not as impressive to older campers, the intermediates and their two night overnight is just as big and just as important as the 10-day trip that goes out. Seniors were no longer required to go on a trip, and could opt to stay in camp to focus on their skill levels. Tripping is important, though Steve notes that “you have to share the time with other things that are just as important.”
Woodslore was always an important part of the camp, and in the late 80s and early 90s it was packaged into a number of formal programs: Sunship Earth, Earth Keepers, and Sunship Three. Where woodslore had been primarily scientific in its gaze—where campers learned about organisms and their relationship, the Sunship programs, says Steve, were more relational. “It’s more touch the earth, feel the earth. It’s the large concepts of the earth. You acclimatize yourself to the earth. … Nobody can identify a maple tree anymore, but there is a broader appreciation for the outdoors.” Concept trails were developed, and campers would walk into the woods with a concept in mind, testing it and developing ideas around it as they toured a series of pre-set stations.
“The Outdoor Centre and what we learned there influenced the summer program and vis-vis-versa. We kept learning.”
Still, the most noticeable change in the late 1980s was size. Wanakita, which by then had reached capacity (600 campers per summer) was looking to expand. Previous directors had long coveted the Hockey Haven property, and the purchase of the site was one of the objectives listed in the YMCA’s 1987-1993 strategic plan. When Wren Blair phoned Steve Heming in 1988 to offer the property, Steve jumped at the opportunity.
But, it required money. To fund the purchase, the camp launched its first major capital campaign. The goal was to raise $1 million during the first phase by the end of 1990. The YMCA officially took possession of the camp on Oct. 21, 1988 and, with it, added 34 acres of waterfront property, 1,200 feet of sandy beach, and 22 buildings—a truly significant addition by any standard. “In keeping with the YMCA’s commitment to youth and youth leadership development, the purchase of the hockey camp will allow us to expand our youth leadership program,” Rusty Davis, chairman of the camp committee at the time, told the Hamilton Spectator. With East and West established, the Camp Wanakita facility now comprised 70 buildings. Wanakita originally owned 30 acres of land but has grown to a size of over 1000 acres. Its largest expansion came from a private donation by a landowner who felt that the camp was a positive presence on Koshlong Lake.
As the decade came to an end, staff and volunteers were working harder still to maintain the camp feeling and to preserve the many old and new traditions. Into the early 1970s, each camper met with the camp director to pick their skill options. During his tenure as camp director, Wayne Perkins set up a system of sign-up stations–section directors were stationed at picnic tables by the basketball court. During their orientation, kids would drop by the appropriate station and select their skill options.
But by the mid-1980s, even the station approach was becoming ungainly. The solution was to have campers pick their skill areas at home, sending it in with their registration forms. “By the time they arrive at camp, they are already slotted into their skill groups.” Says Heming, it wasn’t idea. “We’ve lost a little bit. During orientation you used to be able to walk through camp on your first day, see everything, feel everything and go “I want to do archery, I want to do swimming’ and then you sign up.”
Going Home
by Wanakita counsellor Rebecca Lees.
With camp-smoke in my hair,
I head back to the city,
to the “real world”;
the land of Grown Ups.
And I do not mourn my departure;
for as long as I love dragonflies,
and messy hair,
and tired, sunburnt smiles,
and sand between my toes,
and the sudden laughter of children,
and the music in a thunderstorm,
and photographs of silly, scowly grins,
and the challenge of true friendship,
I know that I will take camp with me down
every road I travel.
Glasnost on Koshlong Lake
In 1990, Wanakita invited some Soviet teen-agers to visit camp, and this story about that visit ran in the Globe and Mail on August 13 of that year. It’s an amazing story in large part because of when this occurred: remember, this is just 1990, the first summer after the wall fell. Russians then were as exotic to us as we were to them. And what did they take home with them? In answer, one camper said, “First we shall speak about the people.”
by Martha Perkins
Under the canopy of maples and with Koshlong Lake shimmering in the distance, a girl is playing a guitar and singing.
Her song is like many across the country as thousands of teen-agers bid farewell to summer camp.
What sets the scene apart is that the girl and her song are both Russian.
“People live far away from one another, but a time will come when we will make friends,” 14-year-old Valentina Afanasjeva sings.
The 100 or so Camp Wanakita campers gathered in the forest clearing can’t understand a word. Yet they’re transfixed by the sound of the language and the presence of the Russian visitors.
Valentina, Anna Yolushko, Andrei Yukhov and Mikhail Yousjev are all young teen-agers from Leningrad. Members of the Central Council Pioneer Organization, they are accompanied by their supervisor, Andrei Tjulubajev, and translator Elena Afinogenova.
Saturday’s visit to Camp Wanakita was part of a two-week stay in Ontario, the first of its kind organized by the Kitchener-Waterloo YMCA. Since Aug. 3, they have sat around the campfires of several YMCA camps, including Wanakita and Muskoka’s PineCrest.
“It’s important children of different cultures meet each other and make friends,” Mr. Tjulubajev said. “Children are our future; they will run our countries.”
“It’s important that all countries are closer to each other and there is peace and openness,” says Anna, 13.
“The Cold War was hatred, a huge wall between states, and we don’t need it, especially children.”
“Those who were initiators of war were wrong,” Valentina adds. Asked whether Soviet children viewed North Americans as enemies, they say the idea is foreign to them.
Andrei and Mikhail – his friends call him Mischa – are more interested in Canadian sports, although they will talk politics, as they enjoy their picnic lunch.
“It’s a good country. People are very friendly and open here,” Andrei says in English. “You haven’t visited a city, have you?” one of the Canadian campers quips. The boys break into laughter.
Later, Andrei talks about home: “It was a very different country before (Soviet President Mikhail) Gorbachev and (Russian President Boris) Yeltsin.” While not everyone is enamored of Mr. Gorbachev’s economic restructuring, perestroika, everyone loves Mr. Yeltsin, who seems to speak more for the Russians themselves, he added.
“Do your parents take politics seriously?” a Canadian asks.
“My father is in the Communist Party,” Andrei replies seriously.
“Our children are different; they’re a bit reserved and there’s less self-confidence,” Mr. Tjulubachev says.
“We admire the freedom of children here and the relationship between children and leaders,” adds Mrs. Afinogenova. “They are good sportsmen, very strong and healthy. And on the children’s faces, we always see smiles.”
“All the people are open and smiling, as if we have been close friends all the time,” says Anna, who smiles often herself.
Mrs. Afinogenova says Soviets aren’t ready to totally embrace North American ways. “We don’t know how to use (glasnost),” she says, adding that they’re not ready for democracy.
“Now we’re criticizing everything, silly things. It’s too bad.”
“People expected it to go much faster and we haven’t achieved much,” says Mr. Tjulubajev, who says he will lobby his government to spend more money on camps.
However, they’ll have only fond words for Canada and their visit when they return home on Saturday. “First we shall speak about the people,” Mrs. Afinogenova says.
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