Back from the jamboree

How do you sum up an event that keeps you going day and night, introduces you to hundreds, if not thousands of people and celebrates a 100 years of serving youth?
I could start with the clouds of dust. The Newfy contingent with their samples of seal meat and salt cod. The zip wire dumping you into the water from high above the lake. The thousands of handshakes. Freezing cold showers. A million corny jokes and meals cooked by teenagers. There was the daily mob of kids and adults pouring over badge collections and debating the relative value of ghosts, shadows and bloods. There was the Taiwanese contingent in their immaculate uniforms and prized contingent badges and a U.S. contingent with their 6:30 a.m. Reveille on the bugle.
There was all of these things and more at the 2007 Scouts Canada Jamboree in Camp Tamaracouta, Quebec. To sum it up will take more than one column but let me get started with my first thoughts.
My son Robbie and I returned last weekend from a two-week trip to the national jamboree celebrating 100 years of Scouting. One hundred years ago on Aug. 1, Robert Baden Powell gathered 22 youths at a camp on Brownsea Island, England to promote the skills young men needed to be effective scouts – skills Baden-Powell decided would be useful in their everyday lives. From that camp was born a world-wide movement that over 100 years has touched the lives of millions of young people and shaped the minds of the resulting adults. There is and has never been another organization like Scouts in the world, except, of course, the related Girl Guide organization.
It's not as cool as it once was but it remains strong. There was a time when Scouts was the pre-eminent organization for youth in the world – certainly in Canada. Nowadays, pre-teens and teenagers have a myriad sports to choose from, hundreds of electronic diversions and, at times, a mountain of cynicism to surrender to. In the face of all that, Scouts has seen declining numbers. Once it was all things to all kids but now it has to compete with activities that have a whole lot more gloss and immediate appeal than a dusty old organization with its old fashioned devotion to citizenship, outdoor skills and personal development. It's ironic that at a time when our society needs it most, Scouts is at a low point in young people's esteem.
What other activity still insists that a promise made is a promise kept? That doing service for our fellow man is the highest of callings? That we're responsible for being wise in the use of our resources and that self-reliance earned in the face of outdoor challenge is a skill that can be universally applied throughout one's life? There's no delusive promise of a multi-million dollar contract at the end of your Scouting career. There's no immediate payoff of attaining a pretend higher electronic level or free game. Success is not attained by cheat codes and restarts. You are only as good as your word and your actions speak louder.
It's a favourite strategy to point out famous people who were Scouts: Daniel Radcliffe, the actor portraying Harry Potter; soccer star David Beckham; Microsoft owner Bill Gates; Beatles co-founder Paul McCartney; and movie producer Steven Spielberg. The first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong was a Scout. Out of 241 former and present astronauts, 142 were Scouts.
Over 100 years, Scouting has contributed immeasurably to the world by forging value and ability in young people. Interestingly, one of the main reasons parents cite for putting their children in scouting is the values
Some values have adapted to the modern age. Scouts are now environmentalists. Leave No Trace ethics replaces the drainage trenches dug around your tent and camp kitchens made from branches hacked off nearby trees.
An old Scouting manual once advocated an activity where you build catapults and situated them in a circle around a field. In the centre was a pile of debris that Scouts would try to hit with flaming balls launched from the catapult. Okay, so the insurance companies in today's age of legal liability, litigation lawyers and risk assessment forms forced the end of flaming catapult balls, but they still leave much to capture a young person's inherent sense of adventure and fun.
And fun was the order of the day at Canadian Jamboree 2007 (CJ '07). After months and sometimes years of fundraising and planning, Scout troops from across the country and from other parts of the world, gathered at the oldest continuously running Scout camp in the world for CJ '07. Camp Tamaracouta Scout Reserve was established in 1912 and was the first of many Scout camps established across the country – the closest is Camp Gilwell in the Comox Valley.
I was thinking about the fun as I plummeted towards the surface of Lac Tamaracouta. Actually, I was screaming "Woohoo!" as I faced the prospect of hitting the lake sideways, strapped to a chair with an automobile seatbelt. People who know me know that screaming "Woohoo!" is not usually my style but, hey, when you're suspended 30 feet over a lake, you go with the flow, right?
Our daily routine involved rousting one Scout or another from their tent and dispatching them to the sub-camp HQ to pick up the morning's allotment of food. The bleary-eyed youth would grab the cart and stumble towards the food line and try and stay awake waiting his turn for the morning's supply.
Then the youth would cook breakfast with varying degrees of leader involvement – hey they're learning; the leaders, that is. Learning to stay out of the process and let the youths fulfill their responsibility.
With camp cleaned up, the units would set off to their first activity of the day before returning for lunch and taking in the afternoon's event.
Because attendance at the jamboree required being part of a unit of at least four boys and two adult leaders, I accepted a response to my e-mailed query for a group that had room for myself and my son. We were invited to join the 1st Coldstream Scouts from the Okanagan and boy did we luck out. This was an experienced group that knew how to get the best out of a jamboree trip. It also turned out to have three of the nicest Scouters (adult leaders) I've had the privilege of meeting. Like me, these were three men who had given up two weeks of their annual vacations to get the youths in their charge to experience the camaraderie and adventure of a national jamboree.
The youths were fine young people as well and we all dedicated ourselves to the serous business of having fun. We rode zip wires, we built rafts, we scavenged, we walked backwards down vertical rock faces, we snorkeled for strategically placed metal pipes and we joked and joshed with each other until we stumbled back to our campsite exhausted.
Participating groups were organized into sub camps and our campsite in Blue Springs sub camp was right at the entrance and beside the 'main street.' Which meant our tents were soon covered in the dust kicked up by thousands of feet. In the evening the main street was alive with bands of roving youths roaming free and wired by a day of activity.
A sunrise celebration was held on Aug. 1 in conjunction with celebrations all around the world, reminding us that Scouting is alive and well and one of the most extensive youth movements on the planet. The world of Scouting was united that morning and, as well, ready to face the challenge of today's world.