At the old Sylvan site on Landsend Road there was a Cooper-built storage shed (as in massive, solid and constructed without any identifiably recycled materials) beside the lower parking lot which was somewhat buried in the trees, and which housed all of the donated materials that turned up at camp over the years. I should say it housed almost all of the donated materials, because over the embankment below Chilkat cabin, there was another dumpsite, where we threw the donated items which could not be repaired, salvaged or legally disposed of anywhere else.
Church leaders know that when some item becomes so old and decrepit that it can not be sold at a garage sale, it gets donated to the church. When it can’t in good conscience be given away to the poor, the church janitor loads it into his truck and drops it off at the camp in the middle of the night. That’s why camps really have caretakers: to keep church janitors at bay.
Thinking of this reminds me of a story I heard many years ago about Raymond, an unfortunate cook’s assistant at an off-season rental camp. In those days, Sylvan Acres was a popular destination for school and scout groups, and the camp employed kitchen staff to work at these weekend and week-long camps. They were usually former Sylvan staff who knew the layout of the kitchen and could help the cooks find everything they needed, and more importantly, put everything back where it belonged so it could be found by the summer cook, who was really the most important person in the camp. Ray had only been at a couple of summer camps, but he had been a wrangler, and had done his fair share of pitching things over the Chilkat embankment. The money he made at these off-season camps helped pay for his first year of University, and working with kids would be extra credit to help him secure an eventual transfer into the Social Worker program.
The night in question was the last night of a particularly rowdy Grade 7 weekend camp combining two classes from different elementary schools in nearby Saanich. The kids had gotten to know each other quickly, and it was the time to do things that could get you kicked out of camp, because you were going home in the morning anyway. Just like summer.
Ray was asleep in his van in the lower parking lot, but was wakened by flashlights and the sounds of young boys running around the campfire pit clearing well after curfew. It was fairly clear what they were up to. All of the girls were in Tsimsian, Kwakuitl, Salish and Chilkat cabins, and the boys were trying to draw them out. Raymond didn’t intend to do anything about it because it wasn’t his responsibility, and he had to get up early in the morning to get breakfast ready. However, as he looked out the van window, a group of the boys heard teachers coming, and dashed down the narrow space at the back of Chilkat, with their flashlights waving wildly. Then one of the flashlights went over and down the embankment, still in the camper‘s hand.
Knowing this to be a long steep slope of broken dishes, pottery, dishwashers and electronic parts, Raymond did not hesitate. Running to the scene, he heard the apparently uncrippled camper scrambling among the trees away from the bottom of the slope. His friends had abandoned him, and were racing away through the trees behind Kwakuitl and Salish, also seeking their own ways back to the safety of Haida, Nootka or Bella Coola as the case may be.
Ray’s thoughts about how they would manage to get there were interrupted when he was caught in a brilliant triangle of light as three teachers arrived at the side of Chilkat above him. Standing outside the girls cabin in only his tighty-whities, Ray’s career flashed before his eyes. Hesitantly, he pointed at the embankment and explained what he had seen. Only now there were no boys, and no sounds other than Ray’s own heavy breathing.
I guess the teachers knew that the boys had been there, and they scanned the nasty litter of rubble at the bottom of the slope to make sure they had indeed escaped alive. Chuckling, one said that there would undoubtedly be someone with scrapes they wouldn’t allow themselves to complain about in the morning, and they went back to their coffee in the lodge. Perhaps they remembered their own camp experiences. But nothing was said about Ray, and he scurried back to the safety of his van.
Ray didn’t come back to camp the next summer, and to the best of my knowledge no one at camp ever heard the story. It passed through the Saanich School District though, for a few years, before I heard about it when I mentioned my connection to Sylvan Acres to my practicum teacher.
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