Julie Côté on Ottawa’s Camp Woolsey, Guiding, and the Power of its Community

Could you introduce yourself and tell us how you’re involved with Girl Guides?

My name’s Julie, but a common thing in Girl Guides, especially at Camp Woolsey, was to use fake names or ‘camp names’. So my camp name is Jaf, and that’s what most of the people involved in Guiding in Ottawa would know me as.

I’ve been a member of Girl Guides for basically my whole life. I started in 1997 when my family was posted in Germany. When my family moved back to Canada, I joined as a Brownie. Girl Guides of Canada has recently changed the branch name to Embers, but originally the branch was named after a type of Scottish Fairy.  After Brownies I did Guides, Pathfinders, and Rangers but took a break when I went to university. When I came back to Ottawa I became a Guider, and have been a Guider ever since, going on 10 years now. 

The biggest reason I stayed as a kid was because of two really good friends, who I met in Guides. They weren’t going to my school, so that was the only time I saw them. The three of us did the leadership training program at Woolsey together, and my first job was working at camp. It was this friendship that kept bringing me back. When I said earlier I took a break from Guides, that was only half true. While technically I wasn’t a member, I still worked at camp. When I got back to Ottawa, the reason I joined again was because some of my friends had a unit and asked me if I could help out. As a kid, I was never interested in working with other kids, but that changed and now I work for the school board.

When I was 12 or 13 there was a big change in the way Girl Guides was run. It became a lot more centralised. No longer did we have “districts” that handle their own affairs, like the Ottawa District for example. It was actually the Ottawa District that first bought and ran Woolsey right from the very start. There have also been program changes and uniform changes. The organisation is always trying to evolve and keep up with the times. 

Could you tell me a bit about the camp itself?

The camp opened in 1937 and ran for 82 years, making it the second oldest Girl Guide camp in Ontario. It was named after Mary Woolsey and her husband Edgar. It was Mary that spearheaded the campaign to raise money for a camp in Ottawa. The property itself is quite old, it was originally a farmer’s field. At the time, there was one farmhouse on the property, which is still standing today. The building is called Pinhey, named after one of the early women, Anna Pinhey, who helped raise money for the camp. It was built in 1824, which makes it 200 years old! 

The first building built after the camp was established was Lloyd Hall in 1937. Lloyd Hall named after Wilmont Lloyd. Since Guides was mostly tenting back then, they needed a place to store food and cook. The original building did fall into disrepair, but they’ve since built a new one in its place.

The first time I ever went to Woolsey was 2003. I was really interested in their canoe program, and even did some canoe trips in Algonquin park. In 2007 I did the leadership program and worked at camp from 2008-2017. I had a whole bunch of different jobs during that time. I was a lifeguard at first, and eventually the Day Camp Program Director (2016-17). Those years we ran a day camp and an overnight camp at the same time. My job was overseeing the day camp staff and campers. In 2018 and 2019 I went back to volunteer for a few weeks because I was travelling during the summer, so I wasn’t available to work. Then the camp closed in 2020. 

Why did Woolsey close? 

I’m not an expert on the behind the scenes part of that, but I can speak to it a little. In 2017, an email was sent around from Girl Guides saying that it was too costly to run the Ontario Girl Guide camps. They said a lot of people weren’t using Girl Guide owned properties. I can’t speak to the rest of Ontario, but in Ottawa, our guides were using Woolsey. However not all the camps ran summer programs and I could see how smaller camps may have been losing money. 

Woolsey’s last summer should have been 2020, but the pandemic cancelled the summer season. The camp was then sold in 2021. Throughout this time, we were told there could be ways to save the camps. For example, if the camps could make enough money, or if people had proposals, they’d reconsider. I honestly don’t know how that went. There were a few proposals, but obviously nothing worked. Woolsey’s last major event was a “Thinking Day” event, which happens on February 27 every year. It’s a day we learn about the history of Guiding. We didn’t know the camp was closing at the time, but it was nice to have that final special event. 

Camp Woolsey has since become a camp ground called Camp Capital, and I actually got to take one of my units there and wake up in Lloyd Lodge for the first time since 2018. 

How large was the camp?

Woolsey wasn’t the biggest camp in Ontario, but we ran a pretty popular program. Usually we had about 200-250 kids a week, and we ran for eight weeks. One of the things about Woolsey was that you didn’t actually have to be a member of Guiding to go to the camp. So a lot of kids would bring their friends who weren’t in Guides. 

Now that Woolsey is closed, each individual unit has a specific place they meet every week. These places could be schools, churches, community centres. We don’t really have a dedicated space in Ottawa anymore. We used to have a Guide Store, but that closed in 2008 or 2009. In terms of my units, my current Spark unit has 20 kids, which is at the limit. My older group, the Trex, is 15 right now, but could be bigger. The older the kids are, the less Guiders you need for the ratio of supervision. 

Do you have any fun memories or stories from your time at Woolsey?

When you work with kids, there’ll always be funny memories. Some of my favourite memories from working at the camp in the summer were the traditions we had. I already mentioned camp names, and it became a game for the kids to try and guess what your real name was. Luckily my camp name is kind of vague, and since my real name is Julie, it was really easy to get away with tricking the kids. If I ever needed to initial a form, they both started with J. For some people their camp name might have been their favourite animal, or their favourite character or food. One of my friends actually convinced the kids her real name was Tortillia. 

One of the other games we played every week was called counsellor hunt and the idea was the counsellors were all afraid of something, and we’d run away and hide. The kids would have to try to coax us to come back to the main space with them, which was called the Council Fire. Maybe they had to figure out what we were scared of, then draw us back, and then we joined their team. There was a series of little challenges we had to do and the kids could vote on which counsellor they wanted to represent them. So we’d do the silly challenge. One of my favourite parts of it was if you could think of a way to cheat in an entertaining way, you could usually get away with it.

My personal counsellor hunt victory was in a game where we had to stack cups blindfolded. We had to make the biggest tower within a certain amount of time. What we didn’t realize was that there was only one stack of cups available. So I grabbed the stack and hopped away from where everyone else was. What I didn’t know was that I had only left 3 or 4 cups behind. I balanced the cups on my head and sat still while the other three counsellors fought over 4 cups! I won that challenge, and it was my absolute favourite moment of the game. 

Another thing I loved about camp was regatta day, where we did a bunch of beach activities. Regatta had this recurring creature called the Swamp Monster, that would show up and try to spook the kids. At the end of Regatta, she would run off the end of our dock and the lifeguards got to chase her. As a kid, I always thought this was really funny, and then I got to participate once I became a lifeguard. I realized quickly it was very difficult to run on our docks because they were floating docks. It was fun to see this happen as a kid, and then participate in it as a counsellor. 

Celebrating Camp Woolsey's 80th birthday

Is there anything else you want to share? 

My friend Emma Kent and I are currently writing a book about Woolsey. We started the project before we knew the camp was closing, so around 2017. We initially created a Facebook page for people to share memories and that’s how we got the inspiration to turn this story into a book. We’re very very close to finishing, and hoping to have the book out this summer.

The Facebook page is called ‘The History of Camp Woolsey’.  

Some historical photos of the camp:

 1947 Pinhey

1948 Hilltop Site

1948 Lloyd Lodge