Over a decade ago Will Elliot and Michele Amy developed an idea, which quickly evolved into a dream, of hosting a music camp at the Kenosee Lake Boys and Girls Camp.
There would be all of the fun camp activities of swimming, kayaking, camp fires, and being in nature; but, it would also focus on music and with an ever-growing fiddle community in the area it felt right.
The first camp was held in August 2006 with a number of fiddling instructors and the help of Father David Banga. It was one week long and approximately 50 participants attended. Through hard work and dedication, Elliot and Amy have grown the event over the years.
Now the camp is run two weeks every year with, approximately 120 people attending each week.
“We don’t have difficulty filling the camp,” Amy laughs. “We really like our facility and don’t want to outgrow it, but we also like the small community-focused atmosphere.”
The camp has also expanded over the years from fiddling, guitar, and piano – fiddling is still the largest section of the camp – to include mandolin, banjo, choir, and cello.
“Our original concept hasn’t changed, it was clear what we wanted to do, so our core principals are the same, we’ve just grown. Our staff has changed, we like to keep that dynamic, and as the camp grows we like to rotate the staff looking for musicians to add to our roster of teachers.”
The camp draws in people from across Canada to enjoy instruction from some of the best Canadian traditional musicians from coast to coast, including fiddlers who have competed at the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Championship.
Each night, during the weeklong camp, performances are hosted in the evening. Three nights out of the week instructors perform, the Pig N' Whistle (a kind of talent showcase for anyone interested), while the Friday night is the student showcase.
Although groups only perform one or two songs during the student showcase, they come away with numerous songs and a great experience settled at Kenosee Lake.
“This year was super, it was great,” Amy said. “We had a wonderful staff and a lovely time.”
One of the great parts about the camp that Amy was pleased to see with two of her past fiddling students, Amy Poirier and Patrick Tinant, was that they had started out as campers learning to fiddle.
“It’s really exciting,” she said. “I think the purpose of the camp is to make way for new blood and new instructors, and they are great teachers and players, so we were very happy to have them come out.”
“It just shows our hard work over the years and our goals for bringing people up with the ideas and principles of the camp works.”
Ultimately Amy says that over the last decade the true heart of what they’re doing at the camp is building a community.
“We’re really just building community where volunteerism, looking after each others’ kids, and true rural values in how we eat, play, and interact,” she said. “It’s a microcosm of a lovely culture, of a community that people need. People today are more disconnected and are in need of community. Our instructing is fantastic, but I think it’s the community that brings people back each year. It’s real people, a real community, and that’s not something people are getting on their computer screens, so they’re searching for that.”
