Sale of Camp Marwick marks sad day for Scouting in Cochrane

Scouting in Cochrane has been active since 1921, giving the community 105 years of scouting history.

The land for the camp at Silver Queen Lake was donated to the Cochrane Scout group by the Marwick family in the 1940s or early 1950s.

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The scout camp used to have an old school house as the dinning/kitchen hall and youth would sleep in tents. Later, old rail cars were brought in to serve as bunk houses.

Then, in the mid-1980s, our Cochrane Scout Group fundraised 100 percent of the funds needed to build the current camp building. And volunteers from the community built the camp.

Sometime in the late 1990s, insurance requirements changed within Scouts Canada and ownership had to be transferred to the Ontario Incorporated Board (OIB), which is the legal entity that holds property for Scouts Canada in Ontario.

There were groups like Kapuskasing that did not transfer property. They sold everything and closed their programs, but Cochrane chose to transfer the land and continue to run an excellent scouting program.

In the 1980s and 1990s (and the years before), Camp Marwick at Silver Queen was a great place for a scout camp.

Getting to Silver Queen for weekend camps was a reasonable distance and back then the areas surrounding the lake was less developed than its current state.

Scouts had freedom to explore and use the surrounding land around the lake for scouting activities. The forest and bush surrounding the lake provided numerous opportunities for scouts to go hiking, learn bush and trail craft skills, build numerous shelters, etc.

As progress happened, Silver Queen Lake became more developed, camps turned into cottages and then into permanent residences.

The vacant lands saw new cottages or homes being built and the trees were logged clearing the forests that the scouts used

Talk surrounding the fate of Camp Marwick began roughly 15 years ago.

The major contributing factor to the fate of Camp Marwick was the quality of the program we could offer.

As a scout group, we questioned the quality of the program we could offer at Camp Marwick and Silver Queen Lake.

The Beaver program, for youth age 5-7, was the only one that Camp Marwick met all their needs. The older sections Cubs (age 8-10), Scouts (age 11-14) and Venturers (age 15-17) struggled with providing opportunities for those youth to learn and practice skills that needed more forested areas.

Scouters made best of the situation being wise in the use of their resources and did our best to offer quality programs for the older youth over the past 15 years. But unfortunately, Camp Marwick no longer provided the older sections a home/camp base conducive to developing scouting skills or activities.

Another factor in the decision process was the number of active volunteers the Scouting Group has/had.

During the past 15 years, our volunteer base has significantly decreased, leaving current members to take on multiple roles to keep the group open.

I am the only ACTIVE member with the Cochrane Scouting group left who remembers the old camp with the cook house and railcars as bunk houses and can remember being in the way as a kid as the current camp was being built.

There are many people in the community who helped build the camp and who support(ed) our local scout group, but maintaining active volunteers has been a constant struggle in recent years.

We are actively recruiting for volunteers, as running our youth program may have to stop after Christmas due to lack of volunteers.

We also want to be clear that financial strain was never a contributing factor in the decision of the fate of Camp Marwick.

Thanks to the generous people of Cochrane, whenever, we have needed financial support for the camp or scout hall, the people of the community have been there.

The Cochrane Scout Group was able to 100 percent fundraise or receive donations for the funds to build and maintain Camp Marwick over the past 80 some years.

Ongoing discussions with Scouts Canada about the fate of Camp Marwick began before COVID-19.

We also had discussions with the Marwick family. We 100 percent would have liked to inform or involve the Marwick family in the process prior to us finding out the camp had been sold.

Unfortunately, the open communications between Scouts Canada, the OIB and our scout group was very minimal in recent years.

We were just as shocked as everyone else in the community has been to learn that it was sold. We feel that the community should have been more involved and aware of the sale of Camp Marwick.

The sale of Camp Marwick is an unfortunate end of an era for the scout group in Cochrane, however, we hope it is not the beginning of the end for scouting in Cochrane.

We hope to be able to provide quality scouting programs for the youth in our community for years to come but we need our community’s support in the form of volunteers.

The scout group is in desperate need of volunteers to continue operating the Cochrane Scout Group into 2027 and beyond.

We hope that this will bring attention to the number of volunteers an organization needs to successfully provide quality programs for youth in our community.

We need volunteers to work behind the scenes in roles such as treasurer, property (scout hall) maintenance, administrative help, fundraising coordinators, community liaisons and volunteers to provide youth programming.

Those interested in volunteering can reach out to the scout group by email: 1stcochranescoutgroup@gmail.com.