Leadership Training Program

Our Leader-in-Training (LIT) program gives our senior campers the confidence and skills to serve them both in camp and in life as they mature from boys into young men, all while making lifelong friends during the course of their three and a half week session at camp. Centred on a 11-19 day whitewater canoe trip, campers are guided by their skilled and qualified wilderness canoe trip guides (their counsellors) in planning, mapping, and packing for their trip. Each day of the trip, a leader-of-the-day is chosen to make guided decisions and lead their group down the river, to lead the setting up and organising the campsite on arrival, to read the weather, to direct others in collecting firewood and cooking meals over the campfire, and managing other challenges. Feedback and advice on how to be better leaders is given along the way by the counsellors who once themselves took part in the LIT program and came up through the camp to become senior leaders. On their return to camp, Hurontario's leaders-in-training schedule activity sessions with our youngest campers to act as good role models and develop skills interacting with young children. Further, our LITs help run the camp's end-of-session special events by operating games areas or earning a spot as a team captain. Campers complete the LIT program having developed important teamwork and leadership skills, built upon their senses of resilience and determination, and they take home the achievement of having completed a lengthy wilderness trip in Northern Ontario, Quebec, or even up beyond the Arctic Circle. The LIT program prepares campers to graduate into our Counsellor-in-Training (CIT) program the following summer so they can continue to build upon their leadership skills and learn what it means to be a leader of young people in a summer camp setting. Successful CITs are offered a place on our counselling staff. The LIT program sets our campers up for the best summer job a person can have. In no other setting can an individual gain the unique skills provided by being part of the summer camp community.