Going Back to Camp: Introduction

Welcome to Going Back to Camp. In this introductory episode, Dave MacKay and Wendy Chong explain why they're returning to the lessons of summer camp and what they hope to discover along the way. Over the next 10 episodes, they'll explore belonging, friendship, compassion, fun, collaboration and leadership — and how the experiences we have when we're young can stay with us for a lifetime.  

Transcript

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Cheech 0:07

Hi everyone, it's Wendy Chung.

Dave 0:09

Hi

Cheech 0:09

everyone, it's Dave McKay. We'd like to welcome you to our very first episode of the going Back to Camp podcast. I like to call this episode zero.

Dave 0:22

You do like to call it

Cheech 0:23

episode zero. Will you also call it episode zero so we can be on the same page at the start

Dave 0:27

at least? No, I'm actually not gonna call it episode zero, but that's okay. We have drift. We have

Cheech 0:31

lived off. We're having microphone issues, but I think we should just press on.

Dave 0:35

I think we're pressing, but just

Cheech 0:37

so you know, listeners, you're going to hear listeners some

0:39

screwing

Cheech 0:39

going on here. Yes, he's got a screwdriver. He is adjusting the mic. This is quite the setup. Kudos to Dave for everything he's done for our technical

Dave 0:47

setup. Kudos to Chich for the table.

Cheech 0:50

Oh yes. So I said, my name is Wendy Chung, but Dave will be referring to me as Chi, which is one of my nicknames. From summer camp.

Dave 0:58

From summer camp, which I didn't know until we started this process that it was only my

Cheech 1:04

name. I just thought you were teached to everyone. No, I am not Teached to everyone. Yes. Only to the people. From the summer of 97. Summer

Dave 1:10

of 97. Shout out to Summer of 97. Summer

Cheech 1:12

of 97. Okay.

1:15

I'm super excited to be doing this podcast with my good buddy Chi. Hey, a little bit about my background. So I'm 54 years old now. Do I look 54? Don't answer that. I know, I just, I just avoided eye contact. No, you're a youthful 54, especially in your ball cap. I certainly know. Act 54. I live in Toronto with my lovely wife, Janet, who we've been married now I think 20 years. I should know this. What's 2022 to today? How many years is that? Yeah, it it 2022 to today? No, TW 2002 to today. Yeah, that's, you're just gonna celebrate your 21st this year. We got married the same year. I also got married in oh two. That's so cool. Yeah. We have three amazing children. Finley, Henry, and Angus and Wyatt, the yellow lab. And we live around Young and Lawrence in Toronto. After camp. I worked in the technology industry in sales for almost 25 years, and I'm on a hiatus. I'm in between career paths and this podcast has been a bit of a buffer for me, a bit of a sendoff to the next part of my life. So that's a little bit about me and my camp background is I went to Onaga as a camper and staff, and then, Chich and I met at Canor where I was on staff and the director. That's a little bit about me. Just tell me quickly a couple of passions, interests, passions, and interests. So I am a fishing freak and I also love sports. So currently I'm playing tennis and also getting ready for the golf season, and I'm going to run a marathon in the fall. Oh, amazing. Which I haven't done in, 15 years or something like that. Wow. Good luck. I didn't know that. So that's the, that's, and you have knee issues. Really good luck with that. I know. I'm gonna need some serious help with that. Yeah. Awesome. That's me. Cool. Well we left out music. I'm also a huge music person. We talk a little bit about that. So yes. Thanks for that intro, Dave. Okay. Over to me. Over Chch. Over to you. Over to me. So Dave calls me Chch, but my name that I was born with is Wendy Chung, and I also live in Toronto. Dave and I are doing this podcast from my dining room table. I'm in Midtown Toronto. I live here with my husband Andrew, and my two wonderful children, Evan and Melanie, who are in high school, grade 11 and 10. Camp, you talked a little bit about camp background. So I, my very first camp experience was at Camp Olympia when I was nine years old, but my, the camp I most closely associate with is Camp Arwan in Algonquin Park. I spent eight beautiful summers there, a few as a camper, uh, and a few as staff. One as l I t I think, yeah, eight years total. And my kids now go there. So it's been really fun to relive. Some of my experiences through them and really fun to just see how they, how they're enjoying camp. They started younger than me. They've been there. I think it's now gonna be my son's seventh year and maybe my daughter's sixth. Something like that. and then as Dave said, we met at Canor, and that was my last summer at camp in 97. Although I did do a couple of stints as a volunteer counselor at Camp Fugees, 20 plus years ago. In terms of current passions and interests, before we started this podcast today, I was sharing with Dave some of my, Ins and outs of ultimate Frisbee, cuz I love ultimate Fri Frisbee. I've been playing for 20 years, played competitively for a while also 20 years ago. Everything happened 20 years ago. 20 years ago was big for you, but I still, I still play recreationally and I play with my son, which is a blast. And um, and I've also coached some of their kids teams, but he's now old enough that he can play in adult leagues and it's really fun being teammates with him. So I love Frisbee. We do a lot of water skiing as a family. I love to swim. We love open water swimming. I love being Lakeside. I love to sing. You do. I sang in a rock choir for a while, and now I just sing around the house and aggravate my family, although sometimes my kids and I sing together, which is also lots of fun. That's a little bit about me. Do you wanna talk a little bit about your career, what you kinda do? Oh, right, right, right. That's that's something you touched on that I have not touched on. I work in presentation skills coaching, so that's been something I've been doing for. Hey, almost 20 years, on and off, a little bit of a pause in there when my kids were really little, but, um, so I work mostly with people, executives one-on-one when they're preparing for something that matters to them. So that could be a conference type address, keynote address. It could be business development pitches, management committee meetings, board meetings, things like that, which is a lot of fun. And I did a few other things at the beginning of my career. Worked briefly in finance, worked in an internet fundraising company. Did my mba, uh, recently did the Institute of Corporate Directors course at Rotman to do governance work. Cause I do some board work right now, not-for-profit work, which is lots of fun and, and brings me lots of satisfaction. And I do with some of that work, I, um, focus on matters of diversity and inclusion, in particular racial diversity, which is of great importance to me.

Cheech 6:34

You wanna tell them a little bit about the podcast, how this has come to be?

Dave 6:37

This all came about one day when I was, trying to have some deep intellectual conversation with one of my kids about one of the themes that will cover in, season one of our podcast. And I was noticing it was really hard for me to jump into these conversations. We both have teenagers, that never seems to be at the right time to have a conversation about things like friendship or values that you learned at camp. And all of our kids went to summer camp. Obviously we met at summer camp, and I thought it'd be great to do a podcast. And I knew that I wanted to do a podcast with somebody else. So you were the first person that I thought of. Aw, shucks. I thought Chich would be great for this. If there were podcasts back then in 97, Probably would've done it from camp probably,

Cheech 7:24

yes. Because, ah, the kids can take care of themselves. We had a lot of

Dave 7:27

free time, I think back then. So that's how the whole thing got started. It got started with, how can we start a dialogue and pass along some of the things that we've learned from summer camp, which both you and I know had a tremendous impact on our lives. That was the impetus. That was the initial

Cheech 7:44

spark. And since it was so hard to talk to your teens about it, you thought maybe I'll make a podcast and just force them to listen to that. I

Dave 7:50

thought, what? Better, completely non-personal abstract way to reach my children than through you don't even have to be in the same place. In fact, probably won't be in the same place. And then if they just, this is how you sever

Cheech 8:04

ties with your family, create

Dave 8:05

podcasts. This is the best. This is how you send your children off to university. Uh, guys, I've got a season of podcasts here. I'd like to you to listen to in the car on the way to university. Good luck, but I don't wanna talk about it. don't wanna discuss it. Let's

Cheech 8:20

just,

Dave 8:21

this is a new way. If you have any questions, call Chich cuz I'm out. By the way,

Cheech 8:25

is it okay that I'm sipping water?

Dave 8:27

Ruining the perfect. I don't think we'll know until we get into the recording studio and we actually listen okay. I

Cheech 8:34

just go for it. Okay. And I guess I can experiment with different volumes of gulping. I think you can. Okay.

Dave 8:38

Thank you. I think you just go for it. in my lead up to this, I did note that we must have water at all times. Apparently doing podcasts makes you very, dry.

Cheech 8:46

Yeah. Hydration is important. should we move on?

Dave 8:50

you think that we've covered enough of the introduction? I guess the key thing was, what was your reaction when I first asked you? Yes. Because I think that's important for our listeners.

Cheech 8:57

Yes. I mean, I hadn't seen Dave in a while. We, I don't know, I guess maybe we had emailed or something during covid, but I, it had been a while since we'd seen each other, I think. But the last time, one of the last times I was in touch with Dave, he was telling me he was thinking of throwing together a band and oh, maybe he might involve me in the vocals. And I like to sing. I'm not sure I'm a particularly good singer, but I sang in a rock choir for a while and it's something I enjoy and I don't, but I don't do that anymore. So when Dave sent me this email out of the blue, about a month ago, a month or bit ago, he said, I gotta talk to you about something. I have an idea. And my immediate reaction was, are you getting a band together? And then I didn't hear anything back, but we did get on the phone and he said, no, let's do a podcast. So that's the first I heard of it. It's not like we have been planning this for years or anything. So I I got roped into this.

Dave 9:53

It was a hardcore bait and switch. Yes. It was like he said, band, what are you talking about? Hey band. And then, which quickly became podcast. Yeah.

Cheech 10:01

Yeah. So that's how it came to be. That was my initial reaction. And then I thought, Hmm. Podcast. Interesting, curious, not something I was specifically thinking of doing ever, but I was open to listening to Dave's pitch and I'm on board for season one. Episode zero.

Dave 10:18

Episode zero. Yeah. You committed initially to nothing. Yes. And then eventually after we had three planning sessions Yes. You had pen and paper was Yes. There was a lot of moving parts. Yes. And then you said, okay, we'll do it. Yeah. Which I was super excited about. Yeah. So here we are. Here we are. Podcast zero. Episode

Cheech 10:39

zero, not podcast. Zero

Dave 10:41

episode zero. Podcast one maybe. Okay. I'll talk quickly about the four reasons that I

Cheech 10:49

think, oh, but should we be talking about what summer camp

Dave 10:51

is? Do you wanna talk about what summer camp is first, or do you wanna talk about the reasons for the podcast?

Cheech 10:56

Oh, go for reasons. Go, go.

Dave 10:57

Four reasons why we want to do this. One. Fun. we've had already had a ton of fun actually. Mm-hmm. Just getting prepared for this. So if no one listens to this and it just ends up being you and I, it's been a success check. We, we can check that off. Connecting with old friends. As I'm thinking through the episodes we've already planned, I've already thought about people that I'm getting excited to see. Mm-hmm. You know, where are they? Mm-hmm. you know, when that thing in the paper you used to, you'd see the column that would be, where are they now? Mm-hmm. And would be a somewhat famous person. Mm-hmm. And there were like working at a paint store. Yes. I'm fascinated to see where some of these people have ended up. Like James Lackey was the name you mentioned before. Yes. And I was like, I hadn't thought about James Lackey Yes. In years. So that's a good one. The third thing was to reflect on values. And the fourth thing was to tell some stories. Those were the four things that we thought would be great. Anything else?

Cheech 11:50

I think that captures it. This is, was this was part of Dave's pitch to me and I said, sure. That sounds good to me. Sounds good. I'm on board. Okay. So summer camp, what is it? What is it? So sometimes

Dave 12:05

for our listeners who. Didn't go Exactly. Or maybe are from another part of the world cuz we have listeners all over the world. Yes, we do.

Cheech 12:12

I think in specif of the universe actually.

Dave 12:15

I think a lot of guys in the UK really like our stuff. Yes, I think so.

Cheech 12:19

If you've never experienced summer camp, the whole idea of it seems a bit foreign. I know actually talking to my husband about summer camp, he didn't grow up going to summer camp and he had never really heard about summer. He obviously knows about camping and had done some camping, but it was at university that He met a bunch of people from Toronto actually who talked about their summer camp experiences. And so summer camp, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is basically an overnight away from home experience. There are day camps. Our podcast is specifically looking at the overnight residential camp experience, as you might hear it referred to. But you leave home for various durations of time. I think there are some camps that you can go to for as few as, seven days yeah. And I think a lot of camps now actually, that have longer durations of three or four weeks are now introducing smaller two night samplers for younger kids so they can get a taste of it before going away from home for the first time for a full week. You go overnight, you're living with a bunch of kids, usually your age, maybe a cabin of anywhere, eight to 15 people. Depends on the camp. You have a counselor that generally counselor too, that usually live inside the cabin. These things are varied a little bit from camp to camp and some camps are as short as a week, some are three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks. Last year, actually my kids went to camp for the entire summer. I haven't done full research of every possible camp that exists, but they typically are set on lakes. So you have a waterfront experience and for kids who are, still learning how to swim, like that's definitely an important part of it. Just from a safety perspective. If you're gonna be living on the water, it's important to be safe and all kinds of water activities, but also land activities too. Tennis, arts and crafts. Why am I drawing a blank? What are other activities that are non-water activities? Drama. Rock climbing. Rock climbing. Yeah. The, I know the summer camp. Yeah, the summer camp that I went to. They're way more activities than there used to be. So this is more of a generalist camp than I'm describing, but they're also specialty camps where you might be doing only water sports or only canoe tripping. My first overnight camp experience ever was dance.

Dave 14:29

Dance camp, music camp, band camp and band camp. Yeah. I

Cheech 14:33

think you played the flute. Yes. No, I don't think I played the flute, but I went to dance camp for a week. I didn't love my first camp experience, but anyway, I've gone down the rabbit hole a little bit. But that gives you a flavor for what we mean by summer camp. Is there anything you'd like to add to that, Dave McKay?

Dave 14:50

It is unique geographically, summer camp. You don't see it in Florida, you don't see it in the, any of the western parts of North America. It's unique. It's really a band right around the Canadian and US border. Mm-hmm. Mostly communities that are, as you were saying before, a lot of lakes, smaller lakes. Yeah. The camps in the beginning would've been Very rustic. We were in tents when I was out onaga. A lot of camps that still have tents as well. Mm-hmm. A lot of it was around tripping. Yeah. In the early days, it would've been

Cheech 15:24

Explain tripping. I mentioned canoe tripping

Dave 15:26

You go out in, 15 to 17 foot canoes and you go adventuring there's not a lot of parts of the world where you have canoe, canoe tripping, and yeah. If anybody knows Canada, I think most people would know of Algonquin Park. It's one of the largest and maybe one of the first national parks in the world. Is it a

Cheech 15:48

national park or provincial park? Oh, maybe it's just, I think it's provincial.

Dave 15:51

I think you're right. I think it is provincial. Yeah.

Cheech 15:52

that I really understand the full distinction between the two. The jurisdiction,

Dave 15:57

isn't that the title of it? Algonquin Provincial Park? I can't remember. Yeah. Maybe that sounds right. Setting aside, I don't know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of acres of beautiful, pristine nature was unique. Mm-hmm. And so a lot of camps are situated in and around Algonquin Park Yeah. In Ontario.

Cheech 16:16

And to your point about people maybe being aware of that, people who are outdoorsy, people in various parts of the world do come to Canada for that experience. I've met some Europeans in canoe tripping that specifically ca actually, I remember meeting a young couple, they came to Canada to cottage country for their honeymoon. They spent part of it at a resort up in cottage country. And then the other part of it, they were going canoe tripping for their honeymoon. That's amazing. Yeah. World class canoe tripping. That's.

Dave 16:46

So I think that's a good background in terms of summer camp, how it

Cheech 16:50

evolved. Yes. And by the way, I actually think there might be some on the West Coast. I know we talked about this before. Okay. I'm re I was, I'm reading a book right now that's a, a biography of this man's experience in Abbotsford. And it's, his, his experience has nothing to do specifically with camp, but he's sharing about his upbringing. He went to a Christian camp not far from Abbotsford. Hmm. And I thought, oh, I have to tell Dave that. That's

Dave 17:12

interesting.

Cheech 17:13

Yes.

Dave 17:13

I like, I like it when you contradict everything that I've said. Well, yes. We, we come back to it. Yes.

Cheech 17:18

This podcast for me, one of the goals is just your undoing.

Dave 17:22

Yes. Which, which I think that was actually your goal was undoing Yes. The undoing of Dave. So that Yes. We keep him grounded. That is the only reason we don't wanna, I'm

Cheech 17:31

floating away anymore. Um, I just realized, I started speaking with my mouth away from the microphone. So before Dave gets mad at me, I've reoriented myself. Yeah. Better. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It only veered for a couple of seconds. You're fine.

17:45

Well, that's it for episode zero. Thanks everyone for joining us and listening to our banter and we'll see you next time. C it episode zero. No one.