It’s not often that you can visit two cities for the price of one, but that’s just what I did during a recent trip to Ontario.
The first city I visited was Thunder Bay; the second was the site of CJ 97, the city within a city housing some 11,500 scouts and more than 2,000 volunteers from across Canada in the Lakehead to attend the National Scouts Jamboree.
How do you build an instant city for 13,000 people? Carefully and with a lot of thought. The camp was centered around four main building clusters, each containing two shower buildings, and a Safeway-operated grocery store.
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There were fast-food vendors on site, and banks of telephones.
Eleven sub-camps were built, one for the administrative staff and one for each of the 10 provinces. Each was named after a major provincial river and each had a population of about 1,000 for the duration of the event.
A lot of thought went into making this the most environment-friendly jamboree to date. Indeed, before the event started, a commitment was made to leave the site in the same condition in which it was found, if not better.
Literature sent out ahead contained such suggestions as bringing bubble tents, which don’t kill the grass, and using refillable propane containers. At the end of the jamboree, plans were made to empty propane containers into large barrels which would be donated to the Thunder Bay Scouts.
The camp had security and fire protection and its own Environment Canada weather station. More than 300 phone lines, plus fax lines, data lines and banking machine circuits were installed.
CJ 97 had its own newspaper; 65,000 were printed daily, 15,000 to be delivered on-site and the remainder to go to subscribers of the local daily newspaper.
It also had its own medical personnel to treat the expected 8,800 injuries; they expected to treat about 10 percent of the camp population every day, mainly for cuts, bruises and stomach aches.
More than 125 activities were planned on site and around the area. Volunteers were geared up to look after the Scouts on their off-site trips.
The event attracted a lot of media attention, as well as the Chief Scout of Canada, Governor General Romeo LeBlanc. One suspects that, while the Scouts appreciated the attendance of their Chief Scout, they were more taken by the performance of the Bare Naked Ladies, a popular rock band, which performed a special one-hour show just for them.
