By Chad McCordic
Published September 2003
After returning to school from my summer at The Working Centre, I was immediately thrust back into the lineups, hassles, and general unpleasantness of life at university. Slowly but surely, I began to let my work with The Recycle Bike Camp become a passing memory in the haze of an incredible summer. I began to forget the months of preparation, with endless meetings over coffee. I forgot the nights of tossing and turning wondering, “Did we get that lock-nut for Eric’s bike?” or other late night musings. I forgot the twenty minutes at Sportsworld it took for me to convince Carly that is was indeed safe to go down the red slide. I’ll never forget those memories, but I forgot how import they were.
But only a few days ago, I came across a quote that changed that. It was by P.D. James and he wrote, “What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give.”
It reminded of the first meeting I was a part of for The Recycle Bike Camp. Much of the details were over my head, but I was struck by the idea that all these different people with these different organizations were coming together simply to give somethings necessary to children: importance. At the table were police officers, youth coordinators, social workers involved in a variety of programs, and me, wonder what the heck was going on. I missed most of the details that circulated that table, but I felt the sense of purpose that was there.
The Recycle Bike Camp was to be a free day camp in certain neighbourhoods where youth could bring their bike for repairs, and a staff would not only perform the repairs for them, they would also demonstrate how the youth could do it themselves. There were also daily bike trips, and fun out-trips at the end of every week. We would begin in July 2nd and end on August 23rd, running from Monday to Thursday.
Promotion began soon after that, with masses of little yellow flyers being distributed out to communities in the vicinity of where we were to place the camps. We were graciously allowed space at Chandler Mowat Community Centre for our morning day camp, which ran from 9-12, while our afternoon camp, which ran from 1-4 was at the St. Bernadette Catholic Elementary School.
We had three camp “leaders”, plus myself, who had a good knowledge of bicycle mechanics, and some experience with kids. We were late teens to early twenties, so remembering being a kid was not too difficult.
As the opening day approached I was filled with nervous apprehension. How many kids were going to show up? What would they be like? Is it going to be fun for them? Every waking moment of my Canada day weekend was spent with these thoughts buzzing about.
On the first day, ten kids showed up to the morning camp, more than we had expected for the first day. The afternoon, however, was a little more difficult.
We had a fairly regular daily schedule. We would open up the camp, set up our equipment, and do small repairs as kids began trickling in. after this we would have announcements, and then play some sports, game, followed by a lesson on a bike. To top it off we would all go on a bike ride.
The first week, the announcements had to do with the Earn a Bike program that was being offered to members of the camp by The Waterloo Regional Police. On the first Friday, the camps had grown sufficiently that he had to get two minivans to transport the kids to the Police Station where they all assembled some sixty bikes, ten of which were going to our camp. Suddenly, enthusiasm was everywhere.
We kept on steadily growing into the second and third week. Minivans were no longer going to cut it on July 25, when we had to bus the two camps to a trail for 20 Kilometre trek with the police. We had a spectacular time at Sportsworld, where I must have shared an innertube with all thirty of the kids from both camps. Everyone enjoyed the canoe trip down the Grand River with several police officers (most of whom were flipped over by a fun renegade canoe).
There were these fun times, and of course, there were miserable moments as well…sometimes overwhelming the fun times. But for me, the best moment of the entire summer came near the end. We were two days from finishing the camp and it was a sweltering hot afternoon. Our attendance at the afternoon camp had reached about seventeen the weak before, but today, with the heat, we were down to five regular attendees. As I left I heard, a girl who had been with us from the beginning of the camp, talk with one of the leaders.
“I hope you come back next year, that way in a few years I can be a junior counsellor.”
I had given all summer long, never really expecting to receive anything in return for my work. And in that moment she gave back to me more than I could have ever asked for.
