Staff Relations

The key to any camp is its staff.  The most incredible physical property, the multi-million dollar facility, the most majestic setting  with the most amenable weather systems, cannot compete with a dilapidated inner-city gym and office cubicle dorms, if the better staff is in the gym.  Any camp wanting to improve has to spend its money on staff.

Not necessarily on salary, though.  The secret is in spending on the selection and training process.  Staff who are hired for their positive attitude, teachability and willingness to sacrifice their personal interests for the benefit of the camp will have an infectious and contagious effect on each other, and on everyone who comes in contact with them.  From that point on, the summer will be a success.  It cannot be otherwise.  Any obstacles, disasters or hurts will be overcome by the group operating in unison and mutual support.  Staffs have collapsed despite huge paycheques through a lack of unity and group fulfilment, while others have stuck together without paycheques because the members want to belong to the group and accomplish their goals together.

I have experienced an outstanding staff environment today at Camp Caroline in southern Alberta.  I volunteered for three days out of the summer, at a camp where my daughter is attending her first overnight program, and I know it would be easy to come and go without ever being noticed by the summer staff. 

However, I was given a staff T-shirt, a name badge, and a steady stream of sincere welcomes from every staff member I met throughout the day.  The camaraderie, support for each other and commitment I have seen today blows my mind.  It reminds me of Sylvan Acres, and the staffs that I was blessed to be part of.  I had mourned the loss of that camp, but am delighted to find that there is a camp my children can go to where they will experience the love and example that I wanted for them.

The Water Weenie Goes Abroad

This is surely one of the highlights of my life!  Last week I got to partake in a water fight in Calgary, and had the priviledge to introduce the water weenie to the head of a large youth organization who was visiting from Europe.  When he saw me bring it onto the field he was curious.  When he saw it in action, he wanted one.  Not just to use, but to take home with him.   "I have a water fight at camp in Ireland next week, and this will be awesome" he enthused.  And so it goes.  A new class of weapon, unleashed on an unsuspecting culture.  And one that can be pretty much built intuitively on sight. Europe is about to enter a new age.  The Water Weenie Age.  And I got to initiate it!  Yeee haaaw. (Calgary, remember).

I remember the day the water weenie came to Sylvan Acres.   I was blessed to be the first to receive one, shortly before lights out on the last night of the Senior Teens weekend at the end of a long summer.  My friend Ed handed it to me, and I have to admit that it wasn't very impressive.  But then he produced a garden hose, filled it and showed me how far it could shoot.  He had obtained an industrial grade surgical tube that had to be three inches thick, and four feet long.  I have never been able to find its equal.  But he had two of them for me, and two for him.  They each wrapped around me three times, and I had to wear a heavy coat to protect them, but I ended up with a pen sticking out of each sleeve, and a 30 foot no-fly-zone around myself.  With Ed similarly equipped, we headed out into the woods to hunt.

It was providential, and I believe Ed was a guardian angel straight from God, because that night the Senior Teen boys decided that they had only one raiding goal.  To get me wet.  Anything they accomplished after that was gravy, but they were not going to sleep until they had hunted me down, held me down, and dumped buckets of water on me.  Apparently I was seen to be personally responsible for a great decrease in their after-curfew fraternizing with the Senior Teen girls, and they didn't like me very much.  Now, they were ready to exact revenge.

I heard about their plans, of course, and took a more introspective approach to raid watch that night.  Ed and I stayed in the trees and tried to pick them off when they split up, but they eventually caught sight of me, and circled in for the kill.  The first streams of water freaked them out, because I didn't have a weapon in sight, but the water seemed to come from everywhere.  Ed stayed out of sight in the shadows and provided suppressing fire in the confusion.  It cut an escape route through them like a knife through butter, and I was off into the trees again. Running away from campers is usually a cardinal sin for a night watch, but I reasoned that while they were chasing me, they weren't technically raiding, since everyone else was asleep and undisturbed, and while they weren't catching me, they weren't succeeding in their mission, which was my ultimate goal on any other given night, so I was really winning by retreating.

The second time they caught me, and got me pinned in a sitting position near the lodge, I immediately started hosing them down with some very impressive water pressure.  They were no longer surprised by the soaking, but a 30 foot stream of water that only travels two feet has to be pretty uncomfortable as a direct hit to the chest or anywhere lower, and soon they were all too busy trying to grab my arms to be actually holding me down, and when the water bucket arrived and was thrown, I was able to roll quickly to the side. To this day, I don't believe that any water got on me that didn't bounce first off of one of them after leaving my water weenies so I didn't consider that they had accomplished their goal.  Once again I escaped by outrunning them, with my hands on my shoulders shooting water behind me at my pursuers, until they all dropped away.

They lost heart after that, and went to bed frustrated, as they had on most of the other nights at camp that week.  Too bad really, but that's the idea of night watch.

Take A Chance

It's pseudo-spring in Calgary - that time of year when the seasons take turns tormenting us with alternating hope or despair.  As I was driving home yesterday afternoon, I saw thick smoke pouring from behind a garage on an alley.  I pulled a uturn and drove up the alley to see a man filling a burning barrel with leaves and grass cuttings.  It was the red flame showing through the holes in the side of the barrel that reminded me suddenly of the large burning barrel on the far side of the washroom block at Landsend.  Did you ever fill it?  Do you remember the sheer joy of stuffing matches into small holes in the bottom of the barrel, lighting it up, and watching the flames grow until they shoot through the heavy metal screen laying across the top of the barrel to keep the embers from reaching the nearby trees.   My enduring memory of the barrel was that metal screen, with edges so sharp that they sent one passing camper to hospital for stitches, and so hot that they burned my fingers on more than one occasion.

That's what I loved about camp - the chance to do things that I didn't get to do at home or through the rest of the year.  Like setting barrels of garbage afire, and watching the flames shoot out of every available opening.  Like running full-speed through the woods at 2 in the morning without a flashlight.  Or leading a cabin-full of kids to accepting Christ.  It was an intensely short time, in an intense time of life, and thankfully, back in the day, we didn't have the paranoia or over-protectiveness which sanitizes camp experiences nowadays.  We could throw 5 or 6 staff members (or even campers) into the back of an open pickup truck and race up and down a winding dirt road from the beach, or down the back roads to the Astrophysical Observatory, without seats, let alone seatbelts.  Certain risks were acceptable, certain injuries to be expected, and many things forgiveable which now would be cause for lawsuits or worse.  Like that razor mesh on the burning barrel.  Now there are color-coded recycling bins, and composters, and nothing is burned in deference to the ozone layer.  But what's the fun in that?

The best prank ever played at Sylvan Acres

I have been asked what the best prank ever played at Sylvan Acres was, and I wish I could say that it was one of mine, but I have to give the credit for that to two brothers from Port Alberni, Alvin and Dietmar. 

It was a March break camp, and the weekend stretched from March 30 to April 1.  April Fools days at Sylvan were very rare, and the boys decided to make the most of it. 

It started for me when a camper came to me and asked what they should do if they knew that someone at camp was breaking the camp rules.  I asked if there was a chance that someone could get hurt, and they said that they thought so.  I asked for details, and then went to speak to Alvin and Dietmar.

They were campers in Haida Cabin, and for some unknown reason they had brought a large footlocker to camp, with a padlock on it, and it was sitting at the foot of the bed.  I pulled the boys out of lunch and asked them to open the locker, as I had heard a rumor about what was inside.  I was very disappointed to see that it was true, and was trying to figure out how I was going to deal with it without getting them banned for life, when Alvin offered his explanation.  After I was done laughing, I agreed to keep their secret.

Late that night the sound of loud music started to float down from the top field and over the camp.  This was before there were any houses in the area, and as the music got louder, the director was finally forced to come and investigate.  What she found was her whole staff, and more than half of the campers, up on the field with music and beer.  Enough beer to keep them going for the rest of the weekend at least.   Alvin and Dietmar had brought fifteen cases, along with the stereo and lights.  It was a camp director's nightmare, but with one difference.  The beer bottles were full of apple juice.

Apparently, their father had a home brew operation, and they were able to collect enough bottles and fill them with juice and cap them so they were indistinguishable from regular beer until you opened a bottle and tasted it.   Alvin came over to offer Bev a bottle, and eventually got her to take a drink to put her out of her misery.  It was brilliant.  I really wish I had thought of it.

A Trap Door with a Flag over it is still a trap door

        One of the things you learned at Sylvan Acres after a few weeks was that there were trap doors in the ceiling of the lodge.  Why they were there was a mystery to the uninitiated, because there was a large door going from the staff room above the covered area into the lodge attic, and it was much more convenient for putting things in storage.  Come to think of it, there was precious little ever stored in that space, but the trap doors were a godsend. 

        The attic was like the crawlspace above Diggory's house in the Magician's Nephew.  You could start in the staff room, push the fridge out of the way (it wasn't a big fridge), and step into the darkness.  There were cross beams to stand on, and narrow boards laid across the beams for those who weren't confident about stepping from beam to beam while bent over at the waist.  The story was that if you stepped between the beams by accident, you might fall through into the room below.  I doubt it, since the Cooper family helped build it, and Coopers never built anything half-way.  But that was the story we were told.

        So, you step from beam to beam, bent over at the waist, or walk quietly on the narrow boards, trying not to make them creak under the weight of you and the bucket of water you're carrying, and soon you come to the trap door.  It is in the middle of the meeting area of the lodge, before you get to the dining area, and this is where people tend to stand around if they don't know better.  And if you are careful about not making any noise when you lift the trap, you can dump a bucket of water on them, get out through the staff room window, and be over the roof and into the woods on the far side of the lodge before they can figure out what happened and come after you.  

        The trap played a frequent role in skit nights as well, but as more and more staff got soaked, less and less of them stood around where they could be targetted, so the game got more challenging and less likely to end in success, particularly if you were after someone like Wayne, who rarely walked through the middle of the room for precisely this reason. 

        It was Senior Teens 1986, and the theme for the summer was tied to Expo 86 in Vancouver.  Wayne had obtained large flags from a number of countries around the world, which he draped by their four corners from the ceiling of the dining hall.  It was a striking display, and was very effective, but it was while he was doing the after-lunch announcements (delayed by choruses of "Why are we Waiting") that I looked at the flag above his head and thought to myself that I vaguely remembered there being a trap door right under that particular flag.

        I checked it out late that night, and sure enough, there was a trap there, but you couldn't get to it from the staff room because the attic was divided into two separate rooms by a wall inside the attic above the kitchen door.  In order to get up there, someone would have to climb through the ceiling and wait, and afterwards they would not have any escape.  It was a suicide mission, particularly considering the target, but one well worth the cost.  A perfect assignment for one of the boys in my cabin.  I told them of my discovery, and was proud to see that every single one of them was ready to step up and face the wrath to come.

        The next day I helped my two chosen volunteers get up through the trap during free time before lunch, passed them a large bucket, and replaced the flag over the opening.  They were more than willing to miss lunch for this, and waited through the whole lunch for Wayne to start his announcements.  I gave one cough to signal ready, and a second cough for go.  The flag dropped behind Wayne and the water hit him as he looked up.  It was a beautiful thing.  The camp went wild, Wayne took note of the grinning faces looking down on him, found me in the crowd, and wordlessly communicated that vengeance would be swift.  But, as I said, it was well worth it.

Music over the Water

One of my favourite memories of Sylvan Acres was a combination of music and water.  During the 1980’s we had a regular program feature called the Antiphonal Sing.  It was traditionally held in the evening, as part of a campfire program where we would light candles, attach them to small pieces of wood and carry them, lighted, from the lodge to the waterfront.  There, we would float them out into the water, and gather in three or four groups and sing campfire songs back and forth between the groups.  It was always amazing to watch the thin line of candles float away out of sight and listen to the other groups singing as their voices carried along the shoreline. 

One night we had a large senior teens camp, with well over a hundred campers, and when we walked down to the beach it was necessary to stop traffic on Landsend Road so the campers could continue in an unbroken line down to the waterfront.  Landsend wasn’t a busy road, but there was some traffic, and I think we made the drivers a little nervous as they came around the corner and saw a stream of candle-bearers, most wearing hoodies because it was a cold evening.  However, no one panicked, and they were able to drive quickly away as the procession ended. 

                The other night that I remember most at camp was a night we camped on a small island off the coast.  The whole staff packed up for pre-camp training, and took over a few campsites at a campground on the island.  I had my recorder with me, and after supper I went for a walk along the beach, and heard someone playing a penny whistle on one of the cabin cruisers anchored in the bay.   I ran back to my tent, got my recorder, and when I got back he was still playing.   So I waited for the end of his song, and then played Amazing Grace on the recorder.  For the next hour we traded songs back and forth.  When we finished, I called out to him and told him where we were from, and how to find our camp near the ferry terminal.   I listened for him when we got back to camp, but he didn’t search us out.  It was a neat experience.

                What was your favourite memory of music at camp?  Was it singing in the lodge, campfire songs, or music at the waterfront?  Post a comment and share your experience.

Dont Answer Phones after Midnight

          Pop quiz.  It’s just after midnight on  the last night of a camp at Landsend Road and you are standing beside the office door at the main lodge, when the phone rings.  These are the days before call display.  Without picking up the phone, who is it?

          Only a rookie would answer the phone of course, because at that time of the night it can only be a neighbour, living in one of the new houses bordering the camp property.  They want to talk to the director, immediately, about the air horn that is blowing intermittently through the woods.   More specifically, they want the noise to stop, because they paid a lot of money to build  their dream house right next to a summer camp, which by the way has been here for the past 40 years and hasn’t made a secret of its presence.  They don’t want a lecture, though.  They want action.

          How are you going to tell them that the director is on top of the situation.  That she is, as we speak, running around in those same woods, and in fact that if the neighbour would care to follow the sound of that air horn to its source, they could tell her to stop in person.

          The simple fact is that no one rises to the rank of camp director by being the type of person who would confiscate an air horn in the dead of night, the last night of camp, and then NOT give the guilty counsellor 10 seconds to run away before they became the hunted in this ancient game of freak-your-socks-off-by-sneaking-up-and-blowing-the-horn-in-your-ear-as-you-run-past.  And once that counsellor had escaped or begged for mercy, who wouldn’t go after anyone else who happened to be in the woods, since it is too dark at that time of night to tell who you are picking on anyway.

          Camp needs a buffer zone; a treed area between the camp and its neighbours, both to keep the neighbours happy and to discourage them from deciding to participate in camp life.  This was seldom a problem at Sylvan but there were a couple of occasions when teenagers from around the area wandered onto the camp grounds at night, looking for a little adventure. 

          Male staff lived for this.  We generally kept good track of any cabin groups or staff members who wandered around at night, and despite using flashlights, those of us who patrolled at night had exceptional night vision and could recognise staff when we were chasing them.  If we started chasing someone who wasn’t staff, we would have all male staff out of their bunks within minutes, and you wouldn’t want to be caught by them.

          One night, very early in my camp career, one of the girls said she saw someone on the trail below Salish Cabin.  She screamed, he ran, and the staff mobilized, but we didn’t catch him.  After a while everyone went back to bed, except me.   I slept that night in the clearing beside Salish.  My counsellor told me to go to bed, but I declined, and Wayne told him to let it go.  The girl who saw the intruder took a lot of teasing because everyone knew I had a crush on her, but I would have done the same for any of the girls on staff.  A few nights later Wayne called me out and let me help him do night patrol, and I was hooked.   

          I would happily sleep during the day, missing most of the camp activities, just to prowl around until early morning, looking for anyone out of bunks.  I’m sure that I spoiled some fun (my friend said my motivation was probably that if I wasn’t getting any goodnight kisses, then nobody was) but I know that sneaking around at night wouldn’t have been any fun at all if Wayne hadn’t been out there trying to catch us, and I just tried to provide the same experience for the next generation.