CAMPS PROMOTE VALUE OF TEAMWORK
He had only been on the tall ship for a few days when 15-yearold Oliver Dyment nearly killed the entire crew. He had been charged with hoisting one of the sails when he accidentally let go of the rope, allowing a large wooden mast to nearly crush the crew below. It was a scary start to his voyage and also, ironically, one of the lessons he was there to learn: Teamwork matters and
everyone needs to do their part. Dyment’s voyage was part of the Bytown Brigantine program, a summer camp in Ottawa, Ont., that offers tall-ship excursions where teens learn basic sailing skills such as navigation, and how to weigh anchor, haul lines and set the sails. But the camp is really about much more than that, said Laura Franks, executive director. “The benefit of a tall-ship environment is learning about yourself, working with other people, and being a part of a community,” she explained. Camps like Bytown Brigantine are unique in that kids share experiences in very confined quarters. “You’re together all the time,” Franks said. “You work together, you help to prepare meals together, and you clean up together.” That kind of proximity induces co-operation. Participants basically have no choice. “On the boat it’s a very confined space so you have to get along with 30 other people. Unless you feel like swimming you can’t really get away,” said Dyment, who spent three weeks on the Fair Jeanne tall ship last July. From the time the kids leave the dock, everyone has a job to perform. More importantly, they all have to do their tasks in concert and be aware of what everyone else is doing in order for a specific manoeuvre to work successfully.
“You work together, you help to prepare meals together, and you clean up
together.”
Laura Franks
Those lessons will serve his son well later in life, said Dyment’s dad, David, who sees being on a tall ship as a metaphor for life and for the workplace generally. “You think you’re learning about tying knots and navigation, but what you’re really learning is being tolerant of other people and conducting yourself in such a way as to be effective,” he said.
Teaching kids the value of teamwork and how they can apply those skills to life in general is precisely what Gaston Gingras is trying to achieve through the Gaston Gingras Hockey
Camp in Dollard-des-Ormeaux. A former Montreal Canadiens defenceman, Gingras is all too aware of the value of teamwork — both on and off the ice. “For me, hockey is a life tool. You learn discipline and respect,” Gingras said. His hockey camp stresses that while scoring is all well and good, passing the puck is just as important. So while the camp teaches the fundamentals of the game such as skating, passing, shooting and stick handling, a lot of time is also spent on teaching the value of playing as a team. And for Gingras, that means “they have to make three passes before they score.” Gingras, who joined the Canadiens hockey club in 1979 and went on to win a Stanley Cup with the team in 1986, said he has had many career highs but also plenty of career lows. “I’ve been booed in front of 17,000 people.” But that, he said, just taught him to be stronger and to be true to himself. Today, he shares those learning experiences with the junior hockey players he helps coach, but back when he was just a rookie, he was the one getting advice from none other than hockey legend Jean Béliveau. “They had sat me out, so I was in the locker room and Béliveau came in and said: ‘When it’s going well don’t be too high but when it’s going bad, don’t be too low.’ And then he left. It was awesome.” It’s advice Gingras has never forgotten. Such memorable pearls of wisdom are what team-based camps like his seek to impart. While, on the face of it, the kids just seem to be having fun, they are in fact learning valuable leadership, teamwork and communication skills. Michelle Powell, manager at Paddle Foot, a whitewater canoe paddling summer adventure camp in Baysville, Ont., is quick to attest to that.
“For me, hockey is a life tool. You learn discipline and respect.”
Gaston Gingras
Paddle Foot teaches whitewater paddling skills, but a big focus of the camp’s programs is leadership and teambuilding. They also place a strong emphasis on decision-making skills. Their leadership program, for example, teaches kids how to evaluate if a rapid is safe, whether everyone has the skill level to run the rapid, if there is a good portage, whether it’s too dark, etc. “There are a whole bunch of different decisions to be made in the process of just doing one task of running the rapid,” Powell said. And while the kids may not readily recognize that these skills can be applied to everyday life, Powell maintains they absolutely can. “They really learn how to analyze a situation completely, rather than just jumping the gun and not thinking about the consequences,” she said. In fact, parents regularly tell Powell how much their kids have changed after coming off the canoe trip. “They’re more mature and think about things before they do them. And that’s what we really try to reinforce,” she said.
“There are a whole bunch of different decisions to be made in the process of just doing one task of running
the rapid.”
Michelle Powell