GRAVENHURST SCOUTS CELEBRATE 40 YEARS IN HALL SATURDAY AND 114 YEARS IN TOWN
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — Mary Jane Reid has grown up with hundreds of Cubs, Beavers, Scouts and Venturers who are today leading productive lives and in many cases now are leading members of this community.
In more than half a century of scouting, the Group Commissioner has learned as much about life and politics as the boys and girls who meet twice a week in their hall on John Street.
Tying knots and getting tied up in knots are different.
Forty years ago when the old Scout Hall next to the high school was beyond repair, the folks at Scouts Canada in Ottawa wanted the local pack to build a scout camp.
For what better than another camp in Muskoka? (The nearest scout camp is in Minden.)
The local leaders of the day reasoned that many of their kids already lead a camp life every day living in the rural outdoors around them.
So, instead, in 1984 it was down with the old and up with the new scout hall a few months later.
Gravenhurst is home to only one of three scout halls in all of Canada, Reid brags.
The other two are out west, she said, as they prepare to celebrate its construction — and an impressive 114 years of scouting in the town where boys and now girls gather to do more than tie knots.
The local co-ed youth organization for kids ages 5 to 26 has 50 children and adults involved in Beavers, Cubs and Scouts right now — with two adult Rovers attached to the 1st Gravenhurst Group. (Bracebridge has 1st and 3rd Bracebridge groups.)
At 11 a.m. they will gather for an official ceremony and cake marking four decades of being in the hall and more than a century in town.
Reid expects to see longtime den mom Sheila McNeice.
Everyone is welcome, especially former Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Venturers and Rovers.
Each will have their own historical display.
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