Muskoka Woods

On May 21, I departed to Muskoka Woods camp with Mauricio and Cailean. We left at about 7:20pm and arrived at approximately 8:30pm. When we arrived Theresa Jones met us at the front gate and showed us to our room. After we dropped our bags off, she gave us a quick tour of Muskoka Woods and told us a few safety things. She showed us back to our room, and said we had to be back there at midnight. We stayed in that night, and got settled, played music and cards. The next morning we went to breakfast, and had a warm welcome from the OREC staff! at 9:30 am, we went to the main office to go over paperwork with Melissa Tilley. She gave us a staff manual and asked that we would read it before Wednesday. We had the morning off so we talked to the staff and made friends. In the afternoon, schools started to arrive. Our job was to smile and be very welcoming, while unloading their gear so they could take it to a storage place. After we took all their gear to a storage place, they would eat their lunch and then we would do 3 afternoon activities. We would then have dinner, and then do evening activities. My group for the first week was Aloa. It was their grade 8 trip, and they had 3 different groups. The first week, I shadowed an OREC leader named Kayla. She would lead some activities, and let me lead some activities. She was also in charge of keeping the group together and moving them from spot to spot.

Also there are many different animals throughout the property. One day we saw a bear wandering down one of the roads. It then decided to climb a tree. We also saw a groundhog underneath a bench and we fed it. The day that we arrived we were put into teams: Link, Yoshi, Starfox/ firefox/ cheatfox, and the best of all; Kirby. I was put into team Kirby, Mauricio was in Yoshi, and Cailean was in Link. Every team had duties throughout the week. Every team had to do dishes twice a week, and usually had 1 or 2 closes which included running games, campfires or dances for the school groups. The school groups for the first week stayed all 4 days and we saw them off on Friday. On Friday we ran 3 morning activities with them, then we had lunch, and packed their luggage on their buses. In the afternoon, we had Work projects (aka Work parties) where we would get in a small group and do something around the camp. In my group we had to find and setup 150 chairs in the music hall for a Christian group gathering. On the weekend, I helped out with the Young President's Organization (YPO) which is any self-made millionaire under 40. In the morning we showed them to paintball. I was a ref and showed them the course. In the afternoon we could tag along with anyone so I did zip ladder which is staying on the ground, and taking people off the zipline after they have gone. We had a pirate themed dinner that night, and we mingled with the families and talked. After that the staff threw around a frisbee for a bit and watched a few movies. The next morning I slept in so that I would be well rested for the ultimate frisbee tournament with other camps in the afternoon. Our team did extremely well and won our first game 11 to 3. We came second overall due to some timing interferance with the ref.

The next week we had 1 school group come Monday afternoon and leave Wednesday monring, and had a school group come on Wednesday afternoon and leave Friday morning. After the second school group left, we had a few small work projects, and then Kirby and Starfox were on call for when 800 girlguides plus their leaders arrived. They arrived at 7pm in the pouring rain, and we had to unload 22 buses from 7pm to 10pm. We all got soaked, and we were still on call to 11pm. After we unloaded the last bus, I ran to my room to change into dry clothes and do laundry. We were then called to move some groups who weren't in cabins into cabins because of the rain. The next day we were placed to run certain activities. In the morning I was runnint the zip ladder, and in the afternoon I was running initiatives which are team building games. They camped out Sunday night, and left in the morning. We stayed to the afternoon and helped out and hungout with the leaders. Then we left and ended the best 2 weeks of camp ever to be had.  

- Alex Dunlop