Legacies & Lessons – Getting Back To Our Green Roots – Caring For The Environment

Knowledge of the past enlightens the present and, like a flashlight, discovers paths to the future. – Dr. Mary Northway, OCA Honourary Life Member

In this monthly message, the Archives Committee will focus on a current issue impacting camps and share knowledge from past camp leaders that you can find in the Trent Archives and use to “discover your path to the future”. Our purpose is to provide insight into our rich history to ponder and apply to the challenges OCA members are facing today. 

We would love to know what you think and hear your stories on the subject. Please use the email or chat links provided below.

Getting Back To Our Green Roots – Caring For The Environment
Vol.1, No.3: November 2024

As camps close their books on 2024, a common observation is that this was the first year that camp felt almost ‘back to normal’ since pre-covid.  For many OCA camps, that ‘normal’ includes a rich legacy of caring for the environment.  As we turn our focus to 2025, this month’s article showcases OCA’s environmental legacy as stewards, educators and leaders of sustainable environmental practices over the past 50+ years and some key takeaways and resources that you may find helpful in shaping your camp’s next environmental legacy.

On the front page of the May 1997 OCAsional News, a full-page article appears, Promoting Environmental Stewardship. Then Board Member, Kate Moore (HLM*), challenged the OCA to consider our environmental responsibility. In the growing field of corporate environmental management, businesses were centering their efforts around an Environmental Management System (EMS). This involved setting a wide range of environmental standards for a company including energy consumption, transportation, waste reduction and recycling, use of toxics, monitoring and reporting, and purchasing.

The article, written by Jane Inch, PEng and Environmental Consultant, further challenged the OCA: “As an industry the OCA could provide leadership both by example, in business operations, in program operations and directly via education.”   Since then, OCA Standards have and continue to address this challenge and many OCA camp leaders have been long standing ambassadors in environmental stewardship. Presently, from making ‘greener’ personal choices, to camp policies, practices and investments, to local advocacy, we are proud of the work that many of our current camping leaders are also doing in this field.

Since the 1970’s many OCA educational events have also focused on caring for our environment.  In the OCA Archives at Trent University, you can find a number of conference digests on a wide range of environmental topics, such as: No Trace Tripping, Concerns on Private Water Supplies, Private Sewage Disposal Systems, Recycling for Environmental Survival, Environmental Activities, a workshop on Renewable Energy,  Camping, the Environment and the Government, Standards and Guidelines for Outdoor Wilderness Programs, Environmental Awareness, Acid Rain, Energy Conservation and Renewable Resources, Current Environmental Issues, Environmental Site Planning, and The Woodsmanship Code.

In 1977, the entire OCA annual conference, Energy ’77,  focused on the environment and camping.  Kirk Wipper (HLM) wrote in the Foreward to the Conference Digest, “Camping is in the vanguard of forces promoting a harmonious relationship between people and the world around them. When history is written, regarding the impact of the camping movement in the twentieth century, it is hoped that it will be identified as a far sighted and responsible medium, in such a significant undertaking.”  Would Kirk be happy with our record and progress today?

Three years later at the OCA Annual Conference, Craig Copland, Environmental Concerns Committee Chair, presented Environmental Guidelines for OCA Camps, which included site management, waterfront management, energy conservation, waste reduction, waste disposal and tripping.

In addition to education and standards, many individual camping leaders have and continue to contribute significantly to OCA’s environmental legacy.

In 1962, Sam Hambly  (HLM) founded Camp Allsaw with a strong conservation ethic. He introduced composting and organic gardening into the camp’s program, demonstrating to the campers that their actions today have repercussions for tomorrow. In 1994, Allsaw’s director at the time, Kate Moore (HLM), introduced a new program, Can-New, building on Sam’s conservation principles, to foster a stewardship mentality in their camp community. In eight one-hour slots the campers made minor repairs to canoes and made their own paddles. The comments from campers’ journals revealed that it was hard but rewarding work. An Allsaw tripper, Andrew Fransden, noted that there is a certain sense of completeness achieved in this program …in order for individuals on a wilderness out trip to see the beauty of the outdoors and also see the problems which currently threaten the environment, they first have to maintain the canoe that they are kneeling in and propel it with a paddle that they made.

Peter Gilbert  (HLM) was a Nominingue camper who became the camp’s Canoe Trip Director, an organizer of the 1967 CCA Centennial Canoe Trip, an OCA Board Member, and architect by profession. For many years, Peter worked with camps designing buildings that were environmentally friendly and energy efficient. He began by visiting the site, considering water flow and wind and sun direction to determine the optimum location for the building to maximize natural cooling and ventilation and minimize disruption to the natural environment. He was an early promoter of steel roofs, which though more expensive, lasted much longer than shingles and were fireproof. Shingles, he argued, are an oil-based product, which when removed become hazardous waste in landfill sites. He suggested sizing rooms to coincide with standard lengths of lumber to minimize waste.  Well before energy saving technologies, Peter recommended dimmers on lights to save power and lengthen the lifetime of the bulbs. He favoured large porches or screened verandahs as cool gathering places in hot summers and ramps so that  “we can all enter the building together.” In sessions at Annual and Facility OCA Conferences, he promoted “a fourth R” – REFUSE, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  “If you don’t need it don’t buy it”!

Today, camp leaders such as Joc Palm (HLM) of Glen Bernard Camp are pursuing Kirk Wipper’s vision. The GBC camp motto, Live Lightly, has been instilled in generations of campers.  In 2017, Joc branched out from girls’ camping and opened the Near-North Enviro-Education Centre (NNEEEC) in Sundridge, Ontario with a mission “to help empower rural communities to become models for sustainable living by providing access to education, information and hands-on learning opportunities focused on three pillars: environmental sustainability, economic security, and social diversity.” NNEEC Symposiums have addressed issues such as Climate Change: Are We Ready?  and Our Health: Taking on the Environment.  Presently, NNEEC is partnered with the Phragmites Working Group: Lake Bernard, which is leading the quest to eradicate this invasive species from Lake Bernard. Also, since 2017, NNEEC has been providing opportunities for employment and educating young leaders while providing an active, educational, and fun day program with swimming, canoeing, sailing, arts and crafts, sports, and games for children ages six to fourteen.

As Jane Inch concluded in her 1997 article, “In the end, environmental responsibility is a way of ensuring that there will always be a place in nature for summer camps!”

For further reading about Environmental practices and camping, contact Karen Surrtamm, Archivist Trent University at the link below.   Some current research, conducted in conjunction with American Camping Association,  “Going Green”: Investigating Environmental Sustainability Practices in Camp Organizations across the United States  is published in Volume 15, No. 1 of the Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education and Leadership,  2023.

– Catherine Ross, OCA Archives Committee

(* HLM – OCA Honourary Life Member)

Pondering the past, present and future…

  • How is this information from the past relevant to you now? How can you apply it to future actions?
  • We invite you to add your comments, share your camp’s story on staff issues, or ask your questions by contacting the Archives Committee at OCAarchivescommittee@gmail.com. 
  • To learn more about these and other valuable OCA camp archives, visit OCA’s Archives at Trent.
  • Find tips on archiving and donating items about your camp history to the Trent Archives. 
  • Keep discovering and making our history matter!