Camp Chief Hector, Alberta

We have arrived in Alberta Province and our first camp was the YMCA Camp Chief Hector where Doug Saul was our host and guide. Very impressive camp with lots of activities. This is the biggest camp in Alberta hosting 495 campers in each Summer program.

In the category of 'it's a small world' at lunch on arrival I bumped into an Australian (that is not unusual as there are a lot of Australians working in camps in Canada - and they are well thought of as well). What was unusual was that I had met her previously in Australia where she was both a volunteer with People Outdoors and an admin worker for us at the Australian Camps Association.

Doug mentioned that in scheduling their programs they plan not to finish a day with an activity like the high ropes - instead they prefer to run a ground based activity that highlights the interactions between the campers.. I really liked this idea.

I also really liked an activity that Doug showed is called Atlatl or Woomerang (seen modelled beautifully at left by Liz - sorry Liz)

This is great fun and I think has some scope for being a substitute in camps in Australia for archery. Doug said it is much cheaper because

you don't lose or break the number of arrows that you do in archery. The arrow is like a large arrow and you launch it by throwing it. It generally can be thrown around 20-50 metres (apparently the current record in the sport is 200 metres). We were thinking about 'atlatl golf' or 'atlatl darts' - you could paint targets on the ground and work your way from target to target scoring at each 'hole' depending on which scoring circle you landed in.

It was great fun.