Camp Nominingue

Grant Nominingue, Director

I arrived at Nominingue as a thirteen year-old in 1972. I have left many times - to teach, to travel and to live across the country, but I have always returned to my summer home. While camp has changed over the years, I have changed more...and camp has been instrumental in many of those changes.

Camp Nominingue provides an outdoor living experience - sleeping in tents, learning outdoor skills and setting out on canoe trips. Nominingue also encourages boys to take advantage of all the opportunities that are provided: choices of instructional activities; to practise one's English or French with the other campers or staff; to make use of the free time that is provided; to make friends from around the world; and to have lots of fun.

Camp Nominingue works because its program establishes the right balance of structure and freedom, adventure and fun, to enable the boys who attend to thrive, gain confidence, to grow in independence and to develop their sense of responsibility. Nominingue becomes, for most of our campers and staff, their second home...a place that they want to return to, year after year...

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My Son’s Nominingue

When I walk into my son Liam’s room, there is not any direction in which you can turn without stumbling across a Camp Nominingue artifact.  There is his shield (not yet mounted on the wall), his “2009 Most Athletic Camper” award which is lying upside down on a remote shelf, several Camp Nominingue group photos is various stages of “flatness” which consume his desk space (well, one is still in the tube) and his medal for his 5th year at the camp.  The medal was on the floor, tucked up against the leg of his bed and under a stack of books that are either un-read, read or re-read. 

This degree of neglect might seem to   indicate how unimportant the Nominingue memories are for him.  Take the 5th year camper medal as an example.  Shouldn’t it be up next to a large group of soccer trophies, engraved hockey pucks or lacrosse pendants?  Those things aren’t in Liam’s room but Camp Nominingue is.  It’s everywhere in his room through his shield, through his medal, through his pictures and through the exuberant, impulsive interjections that begin with, “Mom, did I tell you about the time at camp that we…”

No, Liam’s medal has not been misplaced due to insignificance.  I have another interpretation.  He was probably holding it while pretending to fall asleep on a school night.  If I know Liam, he might even have had his flashlight on while he was reading and then his eye happened upon the medal and he grabbed it just to feel it again.  Just to be pulled back to that campfire ring or that day on the sailboat or that moment that his teammate carried him to win a leg in a race because, “Hey mom, I’m light and when you have to carry one of your team members to win a race then having a ‘small and light’ team member is all GOOD!” 

From Liam’s first summer at your camp, he has found a family that only finds good in him.  The depth of nurturing that he experiences there literally fuels him for the other days of the year and other arenas of his life where success, competence and athleticism are often more narrowly defined.  We are overjoyed to have the Camp Nominingue community as part of our family that is raising Liam to fly beyond his wildest dreams and to set those visions on his own rather than allow others to paint that horizon for him.

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In Praise of Summer Camp

As we waited for the camp bus to arrive, I wondered how had Jake, our 8 year old, survived his two weeks at sleep-away camp? Had he been homesick? Did he make friends? Were the other boys kind? Did he miss us? Had we made the right decision, sending our 2nd grader to sleep-away camp?

The bus finally pulled up and boys started pouring down the steps. In an instant, I could see that it had been the right call. As Jake climbed into the car, he started regaling us with tales of capture the flag, thunderstorms, and earning “feathers” in canoeing, orienteering, campcraft. Each story was interspersed with a shy smile and the comment, “Um, yeah, and well, camp was fun, really, really fun.” Within the hour he was beseeching us to let him go for three weeks next year.

Camp wasn’t part of my childhood, and I’d been hesitant to send our 8 year old to sleep-away camp for two weeks. One week seemed more reasonable to me. Why not start slow and easy? But my husband, Erik, had been to camp as a boy and convinced me that post-second grade was the ideal age to start camp and that two weeks was better than one. “I went when I was 7, for a month, and I loved it every year!” “Right, and in winter you walked 2 miles in the snow, uphill both ways,” I grumbled. “He’ll love it, trust me.” And so I did.

Camp Nominingue was the camp Erik had gone to. It is a boys’ camp on 400 forested acres in the Laurentians, just north of Montreal. It has a gorgeous lakefront, the water is warm and the boys live in platform tents with canvas walls that roll up to let in breezes and views of the lake and trees. No TV, movies or iPods, just canoe trips, wilderness skills, games, crafts and lots of dirt between the toes.

The previous summer we’d taken the whole family to Nominingue’s Family Camp to get a taste of camp life. After our first day there whatever latent West Coast, progressive prejudices I harbored about the idea of an East Coast boys camp that had been running since 1925 truly disappeared. The counselors were kind, supportive of the boys, full of joy and reverence for the natural world. They were wonderful teachers of outdoor skills and exemplars of responsibility; just the kind of young men I hoped our sons would someday grow up to be. I suddenly realized how the summers Erik spent at camp contributed to his appreciation of simplicity, his deep self-reliance and resilience. And now, filled with pride at the new things he learned at camp, Jake seems to be on his way as well.

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Camp Nominingue Memories

To a North American kid, the word camp is hugely evocative. But Camp Nominingue isn’t just any camp: to those of us who attended and returned to Nominingue year after year, it is the only camp. Once you’ve been, you’re part of a family and tradition that you want to return to as often as possible. The memories of the good times you’ve had, the friends you’ve made, the skills you’ve picked up, these never leave you. Now, as a parent who gets to bring his son to Nominingue, I still get excited every time we drive up. It starts as you pass the Nominingue golf course and round the bend, where the old fish signpost points the way. Soon, you arrive at the venerable totem poles that guard the entrance to the camp proper, and slowly and carefully come up “Honk Your Horn Hill” hugging the right side.

Questions churn inside your head: which friends will be there, which counsellors, the feathers you’re going to work on, the canoe trip you want to go on, the route you’ll take, the type of paddle you’ll make...

Camp Nominingue, through the traditions and lore it maintains, is larger than life. The respect for nature and others that Native Americans had is inculcated in us through Camp, and passed on. As we play and learn from each other at camp, we learn about life itself, about ourselves, how to work together, learn new skills, have fun outdoors, challenge our own limits and build confidence in ourselves.

I thank my dad for perpetuating a tradition in his family and allowing me to attend and enjoy Camp Nominingue (even though we lived in France at the time), and thank all those who have made it what it is over the years. I’m thankful too that my son is able to enjoy that same experience today. And when he returns from his adventures away, he returns happy, energized and fulfilled, with canoe trip stories that make us all laugh. And if I’m busy trying to build a totem pole today, I blame Camp Nominingue too for inspiring me. That’s one thing I never learned to do at Camp, and should have... I would be a lot closer to completing it than I am now! On the other hand, my Indian-head plaque and cherry wood paddle are tangible reminders of achievement. And all I have to do is put my hand on the beautifully-shaped grip to have the memories flood back...

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Real Fun for 10 Year Olds

Welcome, everybody! I am proud that I was at camp Nominingue for two years. During those years, I got tons of feathers, for camp craft, cooking, improvement, canoe trips and a lot more stuff! You can be a three weeker or a two weeker. If you stay three weeks in August you can enjoy the voyageur games where you spend two days working with with the same team! On canoe trips, there are all sorts of activities. You learn to make fires and cook food; you can swim, go see some rapids, catch crawfishes and paddle for a long, long time. There are two tents, one for staff and another one for the campers. The kids can tell each other scary stories at night and in the morning, you get wood deep in the forest. There are approximately five kids on one canoe trip but I can say the tents are pretty big. When you return to camp, I am sure you will miss the island you ha€™ve visited! If you stay the last three weeks, on the last day of camp, you will have a great banquet with delicious food and a magnificent cocktail that tastes like the best drink you ever had! There is also a tennis court and a craft shop where you can carve wood. Last year, I had a challenge: the lake swim. To do it, you need your deep water feather. The deep water is 10 times the length of the senior swim and 5 minutes treading water. The activities are fun. There is theater, riflery, archery, cooking, crafts, camp craft and a lot more! If you come at Camp Nominingue, you will have real fun! See ya! 

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Learning Leadership

After three weeks of almost non-stop workshops, debriefs and tripping, there was no doubt in my mind of the importance of the program I had just completed. The LIT program allowed me to get a better sense of what being staff would look like: when I look back at my favourite session, two of my favourite parts were the canoe trip and the camper practicum. Working at Nominingue, these are two of the most common things to be done. Over the course of the program, I learnt new things, but also, and just as important, I gained new confidence in the skills I already had. As a counsellor, it is important to know that you can portage on a canoe trip, you can cook a meal over an open fire, and you can, if required, stop two eleven year-olds from "killing each other"!

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A Nominingue recipe

A recipe for a fail-proof stay at Camp Nominingue 2 cups of good weather per day. 16 oz. of good friends 1 team of athletic, energetic counsellors 3 cups of bug juice 4 bandannas and 2 sets of adventure games 1/2 cup of entertainment night 1/8 teaspoon of tetherball 1/4 of canoe tripping and 2 paddles a pinch of competition and a load of fun as many feathers as you can get 101 clean toilets! Mix it all together and spread evenly over 3 weeks of fun!

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The northbound train

In the short summer period of my first summer at Camp, my life changed forever for the better. I had just climbed aboard the northbound train to Nominingue that late June Saturday, a shy, overprotected kid. Eight weeks later, I boarded the southbound train for Montreal that late August Saturday with greater confidence, now more a leader than a follower, with more skills than I ever dreamed of acquiring, I was at ease in the woods and had learned to be self-sufficient without my parents to lead me every step of the way. In that summer of 1939, without me being aware of it, several routine activities surreptitiously etched themselves into my psyche and became, for all time, my touchstone to what Camp Nominingue was then, and is now.

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The adventure begins

After a year's absence, I found myself back in LaVerendrye Provincial Park for this session's 10 day trip. I can clearly remember how, even a few years ago, I would sit at council ring watching with a mixture of awe and respect as that year's 10 day trip told us of their ups, downs, laughs and tears. And I find it hard to believe that in a few weeks I'll be the one talking, while others listen. All this was racing through my head as we drove up to our drop-off. At Le Domaine, we waved our goodbyes and took off into the headwinds of Lac Marrais. After an hour or so of paddling, we were fortunate enough to get a strong tailwind once we turned onto the river. Quite snaky and very rocky in areas, Riviere Marais was extremely rich in wildlife. In three hours, between a floating lunch of granola and hot rods, we saw a moose, several herons, as well as a majestic bald eagle. Add to those the two deer we saw leaving camp and we have seen more animals than one would see for a year in my home in France. We arrived at our campsite on Lac Granet at four, which allowed us to set up camp, be able to relax and simply enjoy our surroundings. Writing this on a rock, watching the sun show itself after a week-long struggle with rain, setting over a beautiful lake, I am struggling very hard to think of a place I would rather be. Here's to canoe tripping at Camp Nominingue!

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