Debate Camp

Together, Mike, Greg, Spencer and Nick – came up with the camp mission statement: to ensure growth, skills development and team building in a fun and rewarding atmosphere.  Shawnigan Lake School  provided our first campus, and was highly suited to the well-rounded program camp aspired to.  Founding staff members, in addition to our UBC team, included Jess Prince (top ranked female speaker at World University Championship, 2004 *) from McGill University and our Assistant Director for our first 5 years, Tracy Lee, teacher and debate coach from West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver.  Tracy has since gone on to coach Canada’s national team preparing for World Schools’ Debate Competition, winning the world title in Dubai in 2009.   By 2004, demand for camp’s program exceeded our 1 week capacity in British Columbia, and our Rosseau Lake School campus in Muskoka, Ontario – became our second home and sole location for our multi week sessions from 2005 until 2009.

 

By 2010, over 90 campers were attending each week, many from Canadian provinces east and west, as well campers from the Northeastern United States. Our lineage of Program Coordinators (Greg Allen, Teddy Harrison, Sean Stefanik and Josh Stark) had all contributed to developing a well-received set of curricular training approaches and highly popular debate-type games such as Debate Idol, Debate Feud and Bend Your Head.  Global Issues Workshops, Model United Nations simulations and debates done in British Parliamentary and World’s Style were all becoming regular features of camp’s program.  Camp, by its 10th summer in 2012, was upholding its founding credo – to ensure kids learned new skills in a setting that extended their worldview, and broke their retisense to try new things by ensuring they learned how to listen, support each other and as often as possible – saw the levity in all things.

 

Also in 2012, Debate Camp expanded its approach and offerings in two ways;  first by opening 2 new weeks of day camp programming at the Sterling Hall School in Toronto and opening its new residential location at King’s Edgehill School in Windsor, Nova Scotia.  In recent summers over 300 campers attended the summer offerings each year.

 

Canada has a strong tradition of parliamentary debate.   For better or worse, we have elected to solve countless conflicts throughout our history with speeches, majority votes and due process of respectful discourse.  Each generation of young learners, is tasked, throughout their school year, to make a speech, simulate a United Nations, or in many cases debate – competitively, or less so.  After 10+ years of successful training in this, we remain committed to the potential of our young people in carrying on one of Canada’s best contributions to modern governance.

 

In 2015, Debate Camp Canada will offer day camps in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary as well as day & residential camps serving Victoria, Halifax, Montrel and Ottawa.  For the first time in our brief history, Debate Camp Canada is living up to its name and offering one-week programs right accross the country.