The Williams Lake Girl Guides wish to thank their sponsors and encourage more girls to join their numbers as fall approaches.
At Tyee Lake Girl Guides camp last Saturday 50 girls from across Williams Lake got to enjoy what could be one of the last sunny and warm days of 2018. Laughter and chatter echoed through the woods as the girls marched to the lake after pitching their camp well ahead of schedule.
Girl Guides leader Christine Constable said that the girls were out at Tyee Lake to enjoy the fall weather while learning important camp skills like tent pitching, fire starting and cooking over the fire.
“Girls enjoy being in nature, they have fun with one another. They don’t need their phones or televisions to have fun,” Constable explained.
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While the Tyee Lake Camp’s name is a bit of a misnomer, lakeside access being located roughly a 20-minute walk away; Constable said the facility is still ideally placed for their purposes. The most recent camping trip had gone very well, despite many of the girls “never having lit a match before, according to Constable.
One of the activities the girls got to do was a photo assignment where with a collection old cameras, point and shoots and their cellphones, the girls were tasked with capturing various shots utilizing the rules of thirds from around the camp.
“Kids love taking pictures of themselves doing interesting things… we want, of course, to let the community know how much fun guiding is and they will be our ambassadors within the community,” Constable said.
Constable said that the group will begin selling the iconic Girl Guides Cookies soon, as they remain Guides’ primary source of fundraising. Money raised from these sales help pay for trips, activities and facility maintenance, all with the end goal of enhancing the girls experience.
In that spirit, they’re always looking to add more girls to their numbers, with a particular interest in girls at the seven to nine at the Brownie level.
Their Girl Guide groups, nine to 11, are quite full at the moment with one numbering 30 strong while the other houses 22, though Constable declared they’ll always make room for more.
Kaydence Glanville is an enthusiastic and bombastic member of Williams Lake Girl Guides. Glanville likes going to camps like the one this past weekend for the amount of activities she gets to take part in and the skills she gets to learn.
“We do all these activities like ‘Oh today you guys are going to have to take a picture and go find a rock and take a picture like this. It’s really fun, I think,” Glanville said. “I just love the outdoors and how we do all these crazy activities at camps we get to go to one every one or two months.”
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One of the highlights for Glanville this year was a five day summer trip to Camp Olave where they got to visit Vancouver, ride a ferry and do tons of activities that she said were a lot of fun. She said she always has fun at camps thanks to the presence of her friends and the fantastic leaders.
“Guides have taught me how to knit, sew, how to tie knots and the culture of guiding,” Glanville said. “You learn important life skills.”
Montana Waters, meanwhile, has been with the guides program for six years since Sparks and intends to continue to do it all the way up to Rangers. She even is considering becoming a leader herself one day, though that is a long ways off.
“I’ve learned how to care for your community and we get to learn about all sorts of different cool things and how to help people,” Waters said.
Waters has gone to many camps over the years where she’s learned how to make fires, how to pitch tents and the general basics of camping.
She feels these skills could be important when she’s older, as knowing how to properly care for a fire is an important skill while camping recreationally.
In addition to camping skills, Waters feels the program as a whole is a good way for young girls to learn important life skills and thinks more should become involved with Guides for that reason.
Constable said the easiest way to sign your child up for Girl Guides is online by going to the national website, girlguides.ca, which allows parents to easily select the age appropriate group available within their community.
patrick.davies@wltribune.com
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