VIRTUAL PATHFINDER
Where our Pathfinder community comes during the off season. Learn, play, watch and explore while we practice physical distancing and spend more time with family at home.
Stay tuned to this space, and stay...
#triptough & #believeinsummer2021.
Who's ready for summer?
Who's ready for summer?
Let's Go Tripping
Campsite sunset fire
A great campsite tour
Book Club
Photos
Events
Quizzes
Videos
2021 Chatter
Algonquin Park Videos
Wolf Calls at Night
PATHFINDER BOOK CLUB
A suggested reading list for our CPI community.
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Fiction & non-fiction novels, series, short stories, wilderness adventures, biographies, autobiographies, histories, coffee table books, and more.
'Algonquin Park History & Lore' (17 Books)
'Literary Efforts' (5 books)
'The Wood & Canvas Canoe/
Paddling & Tripping' (3 books)
'Related Adirondack Material' (2 books)
'Canadiana & North American Canoe
Country History' (13 books)
Explore trip reports, photos, destination spots and more.
Trippers!! For anyone planning a trip through Algonquin Park, anyone who has tripped through the park, or anyone who is curious about canoe tripping through Algonquin - this site is for you.
TOURduPARK.com is the home for trip reports, ruin sites, wildlife and scenic photography exclusively within Algonquin Park. Here you will find detailed accounts of various canoe trips through Algonquin. The trips range from single day or single night trips, to extended solo trips of up to 21 days. '
Old CPI Film Faves
National Film Board classics we love
Film Time - old school...
Many years ago, we campers were shown movies from the NFB, summer-in and summer-out. Actual celluloid copies were shipped to the island on heavy reels, and screened through the searing heat of projector lamps. How many times did the film jam and frames burn up before our eyes?! These classics evolved to VHS, then DVDs. Today they live online at NFB's fantastic site.
Make popcorn and dive in!
Does the Island Sleep? No, she only dozes.
The normal bustle of May Crew didn’t happen for the first time since Glenn and Sladds took over camp in 2000. And, of course, Summer 2020 was cancelled when Ontario closed overnight camps. But CPI is indeed only dozing: a tiny work crew has been polishing and prepping camp for all the action we're looking forward to in 2021.
A sign of renovations this year? A still life of items lost under the Canoe Dock over many years, recovered once the decking came off in July. Every object tells a story?
Canoe Biographies -Named trip canoes - know the legends behind the boats
Our hand-crafted wood canvas canoe fleet is a centerpiece here at camp. Each canoe bears the name of a special person or persons in Pathfinder history, to whom the boat is dedicated. Alumnus Bob Ludwig donated the first canoe named: a Hurley build for legend Tom Dodd.
Sladd's Nolo Desk- Who knows what this wall is all about?
Nolo sub-zero, October '20. Who knows what this wall is all about? Next to Sladds’ desk, trivia is about to winter over again. Tell us what you know here! The key is on Virtual Pathfinder this Sunday. #triptough
The Camp Song
Camp song history & bugle calls for our morning/evening and flagpole traditions
Reveille
To ‘rouse’ the camp, a bugler played this call in lower, middle and upper kingdoms.
To The Colors
Flags raised in morning - Nowadays we whistle, but traditionally a bugler played each day. Flags rise briskly.
Retreat
Flags lowered in the evening. A slower, more reflective melody. Flags descend slowly.
Taps
Day is Done - the bugler plays this call poignantly in lower and upper kingdoms.
Pathfinder Camp Song
I want to wake up, in the morning
Where the Pine and Balsam grow
Where the loons are calling and the sun is shining
And the whole world says,
Hello!
I want to tramp on, o’er those blazed trails
Underneath my old canoe
For it’s there at old Pathfinder
Where the days are never blue
I want to go back every summer
To the camp on old Source Lake
Where the wolves are howling and the fox is barking
And the bugler bids me wake
I want to tramp on, o’er those blazed trails
With a tumpline on my head
And when the sun sets o’er the hill tops
Turn to my balsam bed …
Where the Morning Glories Grow - Hear the Recordings
CPI Earth Day 🌎
Celebrating Earth Day and Our Beloved Wild Place on Earth
Today, April 22, like every day, we think of the place that means so much to all of us, Algonquin Park and Pathfinder Island. Ice out is nearly at hand. The forest is about to hum with life once again. Our summer home is warming up to receive us.
Take time today to share an Earth Day feeling/memory or two. Post your own pics and perspectives, and tag us @camppathfinder with #triptough and #believeinsummer2020. (Anytime you read this piece, you can add your post! - update to #believeinsummer2021)
Earth Day began in the U.S. in 1970. Established in April to mark a spring moment for reveling in nature’s beauty, it was intended to focus thoughts on man’s impact on Earth. The first Earth Day was inspired by Rachel Carson’s 1962 seminal book Silent Spring about damage from pesticides. Also inspiring were public concerns about air pollution from cars and factories, and amazing images of our home planet – a tiny blue-white marble in space – shared by NASA astronauts who reached the Moon and looked back for the first time in human experience.
Like many others on those early Earth Days, Pathfinder people would have collected garbage, planned recycling projects, or demonstrated for policy change on those early Earth Days. Without a doubt, we all thought about camp and the Park on those days.
On canoe trips, we felt we were more in touch than most, with how fragile was the beauty and complexity of nature. Our awareness of people’s impact on Algonquin became more finely tuned - litter, trail and campsite damage. Our heart’s commitment to camp and park was welded onto our love of their beauty, and our resolve to tread with our friends ‘lightly on the land.’
These feelings, it turns out, were always with Pathfinder people, long before Earth Day, and have persisted over 107 Pathfinder years along with Earth Day’s growth to observance in 190 countries.
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Pathfinder people feel this way today. How about you?
Campers, Alumni, Staff - What does being at camp and in the park mean to you - paddling clear lakes, sleeping under stars, catching a fish from a rushing river, walking paths most will never see, being away from a hectic, tech world?
Camp and Park seasons and scenes leave lasting memories with us, often shape our lives, and are sometimes nearly impossible to describe.Today, if you are able, head outside, go for a walk, run, hike, or simply sit and listen to spring starting to come alive.
Tonight, take a look at your sky. How many have said or heard, “nowhere else on earth are the stars better than on Source Lake.”?
There has never been a place too far,
There are no stars you can’t sleep under.
The wind will blow and the sun will set,
So we will keep on tripping.
Becoming a part of nature is a part of us,
And we get to do it all together.
Source lake sunsets and Big Trout headwinds,
What it is that we love is that which brought us here.
The first time you’re lucky enough to see it,
It’s like you’ve understood it forever.
-Riley Hanson, Director of Tripping, 2020
An original song about the Pathfinder Red Canoe
Teddy, a longtime Pathfinder camper, wrote and performed an original song on his ukulele during his time at home. Take a moment to listen, and allow yourself to be transported to a quiet, solo paddle around Source.
Thank you Teddy, this is just what we all needed.
'...Just me and you in the great big Algonquin blue...'
ACF Camp Trivia Night
Friday 4/17 Pathfinder Zoom Trivia
Algonquin Campership Fund hosted a staff and alumni Zoom trivia night. The event, organized by Trip Pierson, Erica Mason and Paige Clark, was a hit. The 50-60 members of our CPI family, ranging in age from 18-65+ years old, included veteran secondmen, rookie headmen, veteran staff, alumni, tripping directors, camp directors and owners. The group was tested on their knowledge of the park, camp history, and some good old 'you had to be there' moments from decades past.
We heard epic stories, had laughs, and most importantly we all got a reminder of how important and tight the CPI community is.
The Algonquin Campership Fund helps to bring kids up to Camp Pathfinder and Camp Northway in Algonquin Park. We all know how important a summer in the park can be. If you'd like to help make that difference for a future camper, please visit the ACF page to donate. There, you can also learn how to apply for aid.
Tom Thomson
Details & clues from the artist's life, work, and mysterious disappearance
Tom Thomson, one of Canada’s most influential painters, was last seen alive on July 8, 1917, setting out on a solo fishing expedition on Canoe Lake. Thomson knew the area well. He was an expert fisherman, canoeist, and gifted painter who paddled many Algonquin lakes in pursuit of his unique artistic vision. Days later, his swamped canoe was spotted. Thomson's body was found eventually, on July 17 floating near Little Wapomeo Island.
Can you solve the mystery? The documents below are clues and details put together by CPI staff for our school programs, and an interactive all-camp activity from summer 2017. Staff became the story's characters while campers searched the island for clues and details to help solve the mystery of Thomson's disappearance.
Thomson CPI mystery cliff's notes
Linda Leckie,"Spirit of Algonquin"
A CPI Spruce Root school resource for secondary students
"Algonquin Park has played a very important and significant role in my life. When I look at my parents photographs hanging on the wall smiling from their respective places in the canoe, I feel Algonquin running through my blood. When I hear a canoe trip coming down the lake I am taken back to my early cottaging days on Cache Lake ...When I close me eyes for an after lunch quiet time, I become a Kiowa camper once again... With the taste of Bakers semi-sweet chocolate I am a canoe tripper resting in the bottom of the canoe after a long carry on a portage trail, unwrapping a special treat."
-Linda Leckie, fellow of the Pathfinder 'Spruce Root'
Run by Caleb Musgrave, Anishinaabe Woodsman & CPI Alumnus
Ever wanted to learn how to make rope out of tree bark or how to make syrup from tree sap? Now you can without leaving your home.
Caleb Musgrave, Pathfinder Alumnus, is the man behind Canadian Bushcraft, an outdoor education school. He offers free online classes while the school is shut down due to COVID-19 concerns.
"We're just trying to reach out to the community, make sure that people still learn and enjoy themselves in the woods," said Musgrave, an Anishinaabe man from Hiawatha First Nation near Peterborough, Ont.
March Visit to Camp
Friday, March 27, 2020: a walk to CPI
Winter cpi journal ... March 27
"A brilliant, bright, bluebird morning ... The world has changed so dramatically since we closed down CPI. Between now and the day we all return here, the world will have changed and changed over again...
"...Hard to predict what the changes will be, but I know - and so do you - what won't change. The beauty-power-love of this place, and all the people who breathe it full of life...
"...Nothing can stop what Pathfinder is ..."
ONLINE EVENTS
Join us on themed days, 'Council Fires', and Zoom get-togethers.
#triptough #believeinsummer2020
