EAGLE BAY CAMP

 Eagle Bay Camp - Shuswap Lake

I had only been in Kamloops about six or seven weeks when I joined several other men, one Saturday morning, and went to Salmon Arm, BC to a storage place to retrieve camp equipment and stuff that had been used at the C&MA camp at Arrow Lakes campsite.

For a quick review let me say that in early 1964, when I was pastor at the Vernon Alliance Church, we six Alliance pastors of Revelstoke, Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna, Penticton and Oliver got together and agreed to rent Maple Springs Bible Camp for ten days.  This camp was on a hillside a few miles west of Peachland, BC.  Our first year for a camp program was July 1964.  That year and several succeeding years, we operated a teen weekend, which usually dovetailed into the Canada Day weekend or close to it.  We had a teen camp from Thursday supper time to Sunday afternoon at which time we began a children's camp which went until the following Saturday.

Sometime after I left Vernon, the district was able to lease an island, for a camp site.  This island was formed in 1960 when a dam had been built at Arrow Lakes, near Revelstoke.  I don't know how many years that the Alliance churches in the Thompson/Okanagan used it as a campsite, since I was in Alberta some of those years.  Eventually they stopped using that site for a camp.  It did not prove to be very practical.  Staff, campers, visitors, food, equipment, etc. all had to be transported by boat.

Around the time that the Arrow Lakes campsite ceased to be, property for a camp was purchased on Shuswap Lake.  I don't know what the time lapse was, after  the Arrow Lakes camp was shut down, but I don't believe that any summer camp was held for a year or two or maybe more.  So back to my story re transporting this stuff that had been in storage.  It was all moved that one day and placed in a storage container which was on the Shuswap camp property.  That was November 1985.

I was at the February 1986 camp committee meeting, which was held at the Vernon Alliance Church.  One of the men, a camp committee member from Kamloops, spoke up and said, "If we don't start camp this summer, I wonder if we ever will."  All the committee members present agreed to his motion that we conduct four weeks of camp that coming summer on the Shuswap Lake property, which area was known as Eagle Bay.

 One of the cabins at Eagle Bay Camp - 1989

By July, five months after the motion was made to have camp, four cabins had been built, there was a place to eat and a modular trailer washroom facility was in place.  Whatever else, we had all that we needed and we held four weeks of camp.  Eagle Bay Camp was finally a reality.  Dan Jr.  served as a counselor that first summer and also in the summer of 1988.  I didn't have any grandchildren then.  However, since then, all five of my grandsons have been campers at Eagle Bay Camp, from one year to several years.  Joshua and Zachary have both served there as camp staff.

Joshua was on staff in the summer of 2008.  He was baptized at Eagle Bay Camp that same summer.  We made the trip up and was able to witness his baptism.  Unfortunately it rained that evening, so when he was baptized in the lake following the evening chapel service, it was in the dark of night, in pouring rain and illuminated by some car lights and a spotlight or two.  I said that all five grandsons attended one or more camps at Eagle Bay Camp.  Austin became a paid staff member a few years later at Sunnybrae Bible Camp, also on the Shuswap Lake, but on the north side of the lake.

Visiting at camp following Joshua's baptism 

Eagle Bay Camp has been Zachary's life for several summers.  If some of you reading this blog did not start at the beginning, or have forgotten, Zachary is the reason for this blog.  He asked me to share my pastoral journey.  Zack was a camper four different summers.  Including this year, he has served in some sort of staff capacity for six years and this year is his third summer to serve as a paid staff member.  He is there right now, as I write, having started last Sunday, May 27th. 

A family camp was held for the first time in August 1989.  I was invited to be the camp speaker for the morning devotional hour.  I chose to give a series on the life of Joseph.

Closing night of family camp - BC Day, August 7, 1989