Highlights


For those who are too busy (or lazy) to browse by other means, this is a list of interesting bits of Tamakwa history discovered while building the archive. 

There are many interesting items in the archive. Search for CAMP Radio or Color War breaks, or browse the decades before your time at camp. BUT, to keep this list of items manageable, it is restricted to unknown or forgotten aspects of Tamakwa's history.

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David Stringer's picks, reflections, and explanations of features and some surprises found while assembling the archive. Discoveries of a mysterious log structure, and the history of "Medicine Island"... the historical fifth island on Tea Lake.

Al Skelly, one of the first year staff, in a 1986 interview recalls the origin of the Peach Pie shtick.

Tamakwans from the 50's and 60's remember a giant, dead cedar tree on the way to camp. It dwarfed Lone Pine and was in many camp movies. It was also the subject of two year-end plaques. Browsing the Algonquin Park archives came up with a picture of it BEFORE Tamakwa was established. It was even bigger than we knew it. This is a comparison of it's size before we saw it, and as we saw it.

During WWII, Lou and Omer went to war on different continents, and Tamakwa was operated as a different camp for a few years. This is a newsletter from Lou describing his plans for re-opening camp. Some things came to be, and some didn't.

The 1985 plaque was awful, and the only people to ever see it were at the final banquet. After camp, Dave Bale took it apart, and turned it into the one we see today. This video was considered too disrespectful to show to anybody... until now.

A 1947 Group shot in front of the dining hall shows the origin of the "This Mirror is Clean, Are You?" Shtick. The mirror was only ten inches wide, but the slogan was better. It's at the upper left of the picture.

The 1946 camp movie marked the re-opening of camp after WWII. The whole movie is on the archive, but this is a two-minute pull of the most interesting pictures. Perhaps the scramble to re-open required temporary rental/borrowing of several boats not seen in any other movies or pictures.

The 1947 movie was found under a pile of junk in 2021. Several weird things are in it, including an office right at the lake. This is a quick pull from the movie. The full movie is Archive# 1915.