Calling all Alumni! Come join us for a amazing camp weekend of magic and memories. It’s Glen Mhor’s 80th Anniversary and we want you to come to Glen Mhor, bring your families and help us celebrate!

Our Alumni Weekend will give you an opportunity to see how the site has evolved, play on our toys (like the zip line, the climbing wall, the throwing blanket and the aquajump), eat fantastic meals, stand on your benches to sing in the dining hall, lead your favourite songs at campfire and reminisce about the good old days at camp.

The entire weekend costs only $80 per person and goes from Friday, September 10 at 7:00 PM until Sunday, September 12 at 2:00 PM. You can register online at http://ilovecamp.org/registration/register-for-camp. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call the camp office at 705-767-3300, or send us an email at info@ilovecamp.org.

We can’t wait to see you all back at camp! Pack your bug spray, your excitement and your memories, and get ready for an amazing time!

July 4 – 10, 2010

This camp is an incredible opportunity for young women aged 15 & 16 to come together and empower themselves and each other. We all know that women can do anything, so come and prove it to yourself by gaining new skills, engaging in meaningful discussion and reflection, having fun, playing hard, building strong friendships and showing the world what great female leaders can do.

This won’t just be a week of sitting around, we’re going to empower these young women with hard skills, time to reflect, initiatives, debriefing, facilitation tools, leadership strategies and chances to exercise their creativity. The week will allow for discussions about what it means to be a woman in today’s society and technological age and provide encouragement for ways that young women can enable themselves to make positive changes in the world. There will be singing, there will be laughing, there will be playing and cheering and learning and growing. Most of all, there will be an opportunity for lots of young women to come together and share in a truly unique week together.

For those campers who have attended Girls’ Camp in the past, Young Women’s Leadership Camp is the perfect extension. Young women will find that moving from Girls’ Camp into YWLC camp a natural and logical option. Of course, this week isn’t just for old Girls’ Campers, any young woman can join in and find a welcome place amongst new friends.

The Pay It Forward camp session will offer campers aged 15 and older the opportunity to earn up to 30 hours of their Community Involvement Activities for high school graduation. Campers will pay a minimal fee to cover their room and board and will be set up with volunteer activities on a daily basis. These volunteer activities will be supervised by our trained camp staff. Each volunteer activity will be chosen so that it offers a maximum amount of benefit to our camp community, as well as providing our Pay It Forward campers with life-long lessons, skill development and a sense of self-worth and achievement.

Volunteer activities might include: painting cabins, creative projects (like designing and painting a mural), extending our camp community to help at the local library, helping to develop a camp fundraiser, working on new environmental initiatives, helping to plan and run a worship service, or acting as an assistant to staff with camp activities, games and events.

Spaces are limited, so register soon!

Photo by Travis "Zoic" Allison

Have you seen what Abrigo (Spencer Blake: Adventure Programmer at Cairn this summer) is doing to raise money for Cairn’s Campership Fund?! It’s great! Check it out:

Abrigo is raising money for camp in the most awesome way. If you give $5 to Cairn’s Campership Fund then he’ll send you 4 (or more!) music tracks that he both wrote and recorded (Abrigo is an amazing singer and guitar player). Campers need your help so they can attend camp, and with 4 tracks by an amazing singer/songwriter as a bonus, why not donate right now?!

Just go to http://www.canadahelps.org, search for Cairn Presbyterian Camping and make sure your donation of $5 or more goes to the Cairn Music Campership Fund in order to get your Spencer Blake music! Music will come to you via email so that you can download the tunes and add them to your ipod or mP3 or burn them onto your own disc to listen to whenever you want!

This is an incredible gift that Abrigo is giving, so please, take advantage of it and help send deserving campers to camp and support an amazing young artist! We are extremely proud of Abrigo and all the effort he is going through to help fill our Campership Fund. You rock, Abrigo! To find out more about Abrigo and his music, go to his Facebook fan page here or his MySpace page here.

A little bit about our Cairn Campership Fund:

At Cairn we keep a Campership Fund. This fund is used to pay up to 50% of the cost of a camp session for those families who need financial aid. It’s only April and our Campership Fund is already empty. There are still more families out there that need our help. We have families on a waiting list, eager to hear if their child will be able to get a summer experience at Cairn.

Thank you for your consideration; you could make a camper’s day!

It’s at this time of year that we often think of the last three verses and chorus of this song:

Lord of the Dance

I danced on the Sabbath & I cured the lame
The holy people said it was a shame!
They whipped & they stripped & they hung me high
And they left me there on a cross to die!

I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back
They buried my body & they thought I’d gone
But I am the Dance & I still go on!

They cut me down and I leapt up high
I am the Life that’ll never, never die!
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in Me -
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!

Dance, Dance, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said He!

So go forth and Dance! Let Him live in you, and give thanks for all He has given! Hallelujah!

To get us started off, I’d like to share some of my own camp memories. My second last summer as a camper (just before I became a LIT) was in 1999. I started the summer at Girls Camp and ended the summer as one of the first-ever Pre-LITs. While at Girls Camp, my counsellors, Zazoo and Pyra, made everyone in my cabin a notebook so that we could write notes to each other and exchange addresses, emails and phone numbers. 11 years later, I still have my notebook. Here’s what it looks like:

It was an amazing week and although I no longer understand all the inside jokes written by my cabin-mates, I still remember most and find myself smiling when I read through them. Especially the parts about swing dancing. Karen and Holly taught us how to swing dance and I think that’s all we did that week. We had to be asked to stop swing dancing in the evenings because all the bouncing around in Whispering Pines kept other cabins up–even if we didn’t talk and only danced!

Later in the summer, when I returned for Pre-LIT, I brought this notebook along and asked my Pre-LIT pals to write notes in it, too. I also asked my Pre-LIT directors to write something. Here’s part of what Leaf wrote:

Interesting how what your counsellors say can absolutely come true… Thanks for the confidence, Leaf! And really, thanks to all of my past counsellors, cabin-mates, directors and campers; they’ve all helped guide me from Becky, the eight-year-old at camp for the first time, to Palais, the Cairn Co-Director. And I certainly cherish all the memories I’ve gathered along the way!

So, what are your camp memories? What have your counsellors said to you along the way that helped you out or made you more confident? When were those moments where you laughed so hard you cried or when everyone sang so sweetly it sent shivers up your spine? Let us know! Add your comment below.

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Being a Leader In Training at Cairn is a wonderful way to develop leadership skills that will benefit you at camp, at school, in programs and activities and within your communities.

As a LIT at Cairn, you can spend a month living at camp and learning hard skills, such as canoeing, tripping and belaying, as well as soft skills such as leading TLC, running camp programs and nurturing campers.

This is definitely one month of camp that you do not want to miss! Plus, being a LIT is an important and useful step to take before applying to be a staff member at Cairn.

If you’ll be 16 years of age by December 31, 2010, you are eligible to apply to Cairn’s Leader In Training programme. Applications can be found on our website, or by clicking here. Applications are due on Friday, March 19, 2010, so if you’re looking to experience the best summer of your life, apply now!

Please also note that there is a mandatory LIT Day for all LIT applicants on Saturday, March 27, 2010 at Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church in Toronto. Hope to see you there!

Mark your calendars! May 14-16 is our annual Work Weekend at Cairn’s Baysville site. This is a great way to come out and help camp while having a ton of fun! Come and meet new friends, work on new projects and even take some time to sit and sing by the campfire. No experience is necessary; we’ll find a job to suit your needs and abilities.

Bring yourself, your youth group, your choir, your friends, your mens’ groups, your ladies associations, your Sunday School teachers, your session, your elders, your family. . . join us to help make improvements to camp’s site. Some of our projects this year will include: woodchipping, canoe repairs, putting in the docks, fixing up the Thicket, building some kybos and painting the lodge.

Arrive when you can and we’ll hook you up with all your meals and a place to sleep. All you need to bring is yourself, your sleeping bag and, if you’d like, your tools; we’ll set you up with all the rest.

For more information, email Palais at palais@ilovecamp.org

Looking forward to seeing you there!

All of our staff for this coming spring and summer at Cairn have been hired! After an amazing Resource Hiring Day and an exciting Counsellor Hiring Day, we’re sure that Cairn has the best staff this side of Echo Lake.

Want to know who you’ll see where this summer? Click here to go to our blog and check out a list of our Cairn Staff of 2010!