The
Meadow Lake “Woodlanders” Junior Forest Wardens annual windup
meeting was held June 13th
at Pagan Lake. Club executive, leaders and key events are all in
place for September and we are looking forward to another year of
hands-on outdoor learning. Here are some highlights of the year
just ended:
June
2011
saw about 650 JFW members from BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and
Newfoundland gather at Hinton for a week-long National Camp. This
event is held every 3 or 4 years and features a huge variety of
instructional sessions on anything you can imagine to do with
wilderness skills, leadership, ecology, forestry, wildlife,
traditional crafts, music, canoing, team challenges... the list goes
on! The next one will be in 2014, possibly in Saskatchewan if a
suitable sitecan be found.
September
featured a family camp at Matheson Lake in the Meadow Lake Provincial
Park, which included hikes, canoing and of course lots of good food.
Several new families joined our club this year.
October
featured a series of club meetings focused on Disaster Preparedness.
Given the last summer's events in Slave Lake and other places, there
was keen interest in learning how to be better prepared for all sorts
of possible events. Every year in October, JFW volunteers meet for a
weekend of leader development. This year's event was held at the
Long Lake JFW camp near Athabasca.
November
and December were
difficult weather-wise, but we managed a nature hike at the St Cyr
ski trails, practiced shelter-building and had a Christmas skating &
hayride party.
January
and February 2012
included cross-country ski lessons, our 'Sprucewood Derby' and some
hands-on projects like building tin-can pressure stoves and repairing
Coleman lamps and stoves. Adventurous wardens got to go on a weekend
bush camp and learn winter survival skills. Conservation Officer Dan
Robinson came for an afternoon to challenge everyone's fire-lighting
abilities.
March
saw one of the highlights of the year, our annual winter camp which
was held this year at Camp Oshkidee on Jeanette Lake. There wasn't
much winter, though! All thoughts of skiing and snowshoing were set
aside and we had tons of fun with orienteering, skills challenges and
team-building games. Ken Ness from Saskatchewan Environment gave a
fantastic presentation on the work of conservation officers and
wildland fire investigators.
May's
big event was our annual “Spring Fling” family camp which was
held once again at Matheson Lake. We were joined by JFW members from
Airdrie and Onoway. The weekend program included photography
lessons, sailing lessons, a forest-fire regeneration hike, a huge
potluck supper and entertaining evening campfire program and other
events.
June
gets busy with soccer and other demands on everyone's time, but we
did manage to get in lots of JFW time too. We finished up the
shelter at our in-town club site, which is where we hold many of our
evening meetings in the fall and spring. Our wind-up meeting began
with a work bee: last summer’s storms did considerable damage to
our interpretive trail at Pagan Lake, with tree trunks laying across
the walkway, and information signs lost in the debris or destroyed
altogether. Several hours with chainsaws, pruning sheers and axes
made the path accessible again. Hopefully, over the next few months
we'll get new signs made and installed. We also installed numerous
nesting boxes and finished the evening with campfire supper and
annual general meeting.
Junior
Forest Wardens is an exciting and educational opportunity for young
people and their families to have fun, develop skills, and get
educated in the many and diverse aspects of our natural environment.
For more information about our club or one in your area please visit
www.jfwa.ca.
Interested in starting your own local club in Saskatchewan?
Contact info@woodlandersjfw.org!
