The Campfire Blanket Legacy

By Jill Passmore, Visitor Experience Coordinator

You may have heard that the Oshawa Museum is gearing up for Be Prepared, a new feature exhibit about local Guiding and Scouting, set to open in the Fall. My family was involved in Guiding and Scouting for many years. I was involved as a child, and my children have participated in the organizations as well.

Jill and her father’s campfire blanket

In previous blog posts, I’ve mentioned my family’s campfire blankets. When the Museum announced this exhibit, my father, Roland Thurn, generously donated his campfire blanket to the Museum. I spent a day or two reexamining the blanket in its glory. Dad always had more patches/badges, and better patches/badges, than we did. In true Thurn fashion, I created a spreadsheet to track what was sewn on. Since patches can be very similar, I needed to add columns as I went along. The final identifiers are type (novelty, uniform, patrol), shape, background colour, text, text colour, trim colour, organization, details, year, thread colour, and notes (See photo).

The oldest patches date back to the 1960s when Roland was a part of The Life Boys organization. The Life Boys was a Christian organization similar to Scouting. It is an offshoot of the Boys Brigade that was founded in 1883, now known as the Christian Service Brigade. The logos on each are a variation of a blue and gold life preserver and anchor with the motto, ‘Sure and Steadfast.’

Roland re-joined the Scouting movement when his son, my brother, was old enough to join Beavers. In Port Credit, Ontario, they were a part of the 5^th Port Credit group. However, after only a year, the family moved to Oshawa where they joined the 24^th Oshawa unit.

Roland Thurn wearing different scouting uniforms

There are so many patches that reveal how committed the leaders in this group were, patches representing Apple Day (I still get apples on Apple Day if I happen to be out), Trees Canada, Pinewood Derby Kub Kar races (held at Camp Samac), Winter Activity Days, and Jamborees. The pièce de résistance is a 10-inch cross-stitched wolf Roland’s mother made. He sewed it at the centre of the blanket, where Scouters and Guiders sometimes cut a hole to create a poncho.

Working on this project inspired me to unpack my blanket and start sewing on unattached patches so I could donate it to the OM too. Did you ever have a campfire blanket from Guiding or Scouting? What is your favourite patch or memory associated with it? You can see Roland’s blanket displayed when Be Prepared opens this fall.

The Host Files: Scout-Guide Week and Scouting in Oshawa

By Adam A., Visitor Host

The week of February 22 is Scout-Guide Week, the celebration of the global Scouting and Guiding movements around the shared birthday of its founder, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, and his wife, Lady Olave Baden-Powell, the former World Chief Guide. These organizations promoting preparedness and community mindedness have long been active in Canada and had an especially notable presence in Oshawa.

Lord Robert Baden-Powell’s role as the founder of Scouting began as a mere coincidence. He was a career soldier of the British Empire and served in a number of colonial campaigns in Africa. During this time, he penned a guide to living off the land and wilderness survival titled Aid to Scouting, meant to instruct the Army’s non-commissioned officers in the skills needed for reconnaissance. At the same time, a grassroots movement had begun to reconnect the youth with nature and revive the rural character that had been lost through industrialization and urbanization. In lieu of more suitable literature, a number of predecessor organizations had adopted Lord Robert’s book, inadvertently turning a niche military manual into a best seller. Lord Robert took a more active role in the movement upon returning from the Second Boer War, organizing the first scout rally in 1907 and rewriting Aid to Scouting to be more directly applicable to youth wilderness instruction, publishing it in 1908 as Scouting for Boys. In 1910 he formally founded the Boy Scouts Association and, along with his sister Agnes, established the Girl Guides in response to the high amount of female interest in scouting.

Scouts Canada would only be established in June of 1914 as an overseas component of the British Boy Scouts Association, but, as in the UK, a number of predecessor organizations and informal scouting troops already existed by that time. This arrangement gave Canada a national council to organize scouting activities and procure uniforms and other equipment for the troops, but Scouts Canada would continue to be internationally represented by its British parent association until 1946.

022.11.1 – scout shirt from the 1930s

Last year the Oshawa Museum received an especially interesting collection of artefacts from this period of Canadian scouting. A collection of Sea Scouts uniform clothes belonging to John Chappell, son of Colonel Frank Chappell, was donated in September. This collection notably contained the uniform John Chappell had worn in 1933, his 6^th year with the 8^th Oshawa Sea Scouts Troop, and the year in which he was one of eight Canadians to attend the 1933 Scouting Jamboree in Budapest, Hungary. This uniform proudly displayed 20 proficiency badges:

• Pathfinder
• Ambulance man
• Cyclist
• Signaller
• Fireman
• Rescuer
• Interpreter
• Naturalist
• Starman
• Citizen
• Swimmer
• Pioneer
• Camper
• Laundryman
• Handyman
• Camp Cook
• Musician
• Electrician
• Auto Mechanic
• Plumber

Detail of 022.11.1, showing the sleeve and badges.

He also had badges designating him as a King’s Scout and a First Class Scout. As Scouts Canada was still internationally represented by the British Boy Scouts Association, his 1933 Jamboree patch is accompanied by a Union Jack patch.

Girl Guides of Canada was established in July 1917, though a number of Guide Companies organized under the British Association had been operating since 1910. The Oshawa Girl Guides began as one of these early groups, first organizing in 1911. For many decades they lacked a permanent meeting place. They met at St. George’s Anglican Church as well as the homes of prominent Oshawa women like Adelaide McLaughlin and Verna Conant.

Camp Samac, c. 1940s; Oshawa Museum archival collection (A002.9.8)

In 1943 Sam McLaughlin donated 150 acres in north Oshawa to Scouts Canada, and three years later it opened as Camp Samac. Camp Samac remains one of Scouts Canada’s largest properties and hosts a number of major scouting events, such as the international Join In Jamboree which has been held there since 2015. In 1947 the McLaughlins would provide the Girl Guides with their Guide House in downtown Oshawa.

Painting of Guide House, 1981, Oshawa Museum archival collection (A013.5.5).

Various troops from both organizations frequently visit the Oshawa Museum to learn about the area’s history and to do Victorian/pioneer crafts. The Oshawa Museum is also currently preparing a new exhibit on the history of Scouting and Guiding in Oshawa which is planned to open later this year.

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Sources:

https://www.scouts.ca/news-and-events/national-calendar.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Stephenson-Smyth-Baden-Powell-1st-Baron-Baden-Powell

http://discoverhistoricoshawa.com/listings/camp-samac/

http://discoverhistoricoshawa.com/listings/girl-guide-house/

Guiding and Scouting

By Jill Passmore, Visitor Experience Co-ordinator

Some of the earliest and most fond memories of growing up in Oshawa stem from my family’s involvement in Guiding and Scouting. Everything happened at Glen Stewart Club House on Cartier Avenue, just west of the Oshawa Centre, though I’m fairly certain Waverly PS and St. Michael CS were temporary or later locations for some units.

I started as a Brownie, with a brown dress uniform, white tie with orange maple leafs printed on it, and sash and small leather pouch for dues. Today my daughter wears pants and a t-shirt with brown trim. The tie is the same, but the maple leafs are brown. The sash is still there but online payments ahead of time or post dated cheques have replaced the dues pouches! An online program has even replaced the Brownie workbook, but that just happened this year. Later I flew up to Guides, wearing my sister’s hand me down uniform, which I donated to the Museum within the last few years.

Guiding taught me so many important life lessons and I am proud to tell people how I learned them. The responsibility of taking care of a pet, learning to do laundry and why it’s important to keep a clean home. How to sew on a button and be a good hostess. These may seem dated and useless to many kids today, but I challenge you to find an eleven year old who can properly introduce themselves to adults or sew a hole in their clothing.

My parents were supportive when we no longer wanted to be involved in Guiding or Scouting, but until then, they were just as involved as we were. Dad was Hawkeye and Mom was Rainbow as Beaver and Cub leaders. After I was finished with Guiding, I still spent a lot of time attending Cub meetings when my Mom was working. My Dad tired hard to lobby for me to join the organization at a time when the policy was staunchly ‘no girls allowed.’ My son wondered why I was able to tell him what the Beaver Motto was (complete with bent beaver teeth hand gesture); I bet he’ll wonder when I can recite the Cub Grand Howl to him too!

Recently, we all had the opportunity to visit the Scout Shop at Camp Samac. Did you know that it still smells the same thirty years later? Growing up the whole family had grey wool campfire blankets. We would sew on patches and badges we’d earned and later of other places we’d visited. When I went as a kid, we’d always get to pick out a new patch that we would sew on ourselves. We all took great pride in our campfire blankets. Returning as an adult is just as fun. Everything has a slightly different meaning. My new ‘I survived camp’ patch means I got through the weekend by sleeping in a trailer with a clean bathroom and kids that haven’t maimed each other and a bottle of wine, and not my daughter’s version of ‘I survived one night of Sparks camp without my brother.’

I’m hoping that my kids will begin to understand how meaningful these experiences will be to them in the future. The games I played, the songs I’ve sung are all things that I share with them now as a parent and product of Guiding and Scouting.