Just wanted to let you know what we have been doing and what we are gonna be doing in the near future.

This past weekendwas VERY busy.  We had our annual clean up camp at Camp Secrest.  We spent the weekend up at Secrest, cleaning up around the lean too, evicting pack rats out of the lean too and the outhouses.  We rebuilt one of the outhouses that had been abused by the elements as well as squatters who go in and use the camp when we aren’t there.

We made an exchange with Kenn Draymon – Riverbend Telecom & Audio.  When I asked Kenn if we could use his gas powered weed eater to cut down the 5ft weeds around the campsites, he graciously offered to bring his tractor mower up to Secrest to tame the weed population (plus he still gave us use of his weed eater).  I asked how we could repay his generous offer and he suggested that we help him with his clean up of his section of the “Adopt a Hwy”.  So after coming down from Secrest Sunday morning, 1st Oliver Scouts and Kenn cleaned up 2kms of Black Sage Road (at the height of the wind storm).

We have 4 Scouts who are working towards their Chief Scout Award and the hours put in on the road clean up will go towards the Community Service requirements of this Award.

We are once again running the stations at the Festival of the Grape “Chateau de Kids” on Sunday, October 2, 2011.  Because our numbers are down this year, and we won’t have as many volunteers to help out in the kids venue, I have approached Allison Podmorrow and the Linking Crew at the high school to see if they are able to help out.

We will be holding another bottle drive on October 29, 2011.  We will be putting out notices closer to the bottle drive and I will be bugging you again to remind them closer to the 29th.

We are also in the throws of our biggest fun raiser – Scout Popcorn.  We will be out in droves selling popcorn of the process we sell we get 60% back to put towards our programming costs.  We also have the policy that no child will be left behind due to financial constraints.

We have many camps lined up for all of the groups Scouts, Cubs and Beavers.  This is also the first year in many years that we have a Venture group.

Next year is the Canadian Jamboree in Calgary.  The Scouts have decided to forego any “big trips” this year and to fundraise so that they can participate in this Jamboree with other scouts from all over the World. The Jamboree is well known on the international Scouting scene, and will usually have several groups from other countries attending.

As I said earlier, our membership is down.  We are down from 24 Cub Scouts to 10 registered Cubs, 8 Scouts, 8 Beavers and 4 Venture Scouts (14 – 17 year olds).  If anyone is wanting more information on Scouting in Oliver, please call Margie – 250-485-2101.

So, if you could please take some or all of this and get the word out to the Community, I would appreciate it.

Story and photograph from Margie Matheson