SNAP and Tim Hortons team up to give Mistissini kids an unforgettable week

More than just scoring a double-double on the way to work, one of the biggest advantages having a Tim Hortons in your neighbourhood is that it offers the opportunity to send groups of kids to a Tim Horton children’s camp.

From March 24-28, 46 Mistissini children from Grades 5-8 enjoyed a week of activities at the Camp des Voyageurs Tim Horton in Quyon, Quebec, including a day’s outing to Ottawa.

According to local Tim Hortons owner Anthony MacLeod, the camp provided free lodging, transportation and meals to the children and their chaperones, courtesy of the Tim Horton Children’s Foundation. MacLeod said this trip would not have happened had the SNAP (Stop Now and Plan cognitive-behavioural strategy program) team from the Mistissini Justice Department not stepped in with their organizational skills, which paved the road for this trip.

“It was great working with the Justice Department on this. Sheena (Costain), Selena (Jimmikin) and the rest of the team with (Director of Justice) Donald Nicholls did a great job. It was a collaborative effort but they did a large chunk of the work to get the kids organized to go. They are the ones who deserve to get a pat on the back,” said MacLeod.

MacLeod said he and his sister Elaine were proud to have been able to give access to the camp to the kids and a third party group like SNAP because the basic premise of this kind of trip is to send children down south who would normally never get the chance.

According to Nicholls, who spent the week at the Quyon camp with his SNAP team so that they could offer the kids some SNAP lessons in conjunction with the camp, provided for a unique opportunity for the participants.

“Tim Hortons generally offers a three-day camp for children from nearby communities, but since we were coming from 10 hours away, they gave us an entire week. And because they were flexible with their three-day programming, they told us that if we wanted to add something else that we could,” said Nicholls.

His team is already operating in schools in Mistissini and Waswanipi to provide children and families with lessons on how to control anger by getting them to stop, think and plan positive alternatives before they act impulsively. This experience helped them design workshops at the camp to go along with the regular programming.

While Nicholls was planning the trip with his team, he ran into NDP MP Romeo Saganash, who organized a tour of Parliament for the Mistissini youth.

After that the group went on a guided tour of the National Gallery of Canada, followed by a visit to the Canadian Museum of History (formerly the Museum of Civilization) where they were given a guided tour and watched an IMAX flick, People of the North. The Eeyou Power Group bought the tickets for the Museum of History.

“We had some kids who had never been to Ottawa and we encouraged them to ask questions at the gallery and the museum. So they were able to ask any question they wanted with adults responding and explaining to them. It was great seeing the kids so engaged,” said Nicholls.

According to Celina Jimikin, a childcare worker with the SNAP team, the camp experience was an adjustment for the kids.

“At the beginning it was hard for them because they had to leave their families for so long and they didn’t have Internet or phones – but that was only for a day. After that they really adapted. They had games and learned how to work together with teamwork and how to communicate,” said Jimikin.

Jimikin said the children marvelled at the buildings and took advantage of their opportunities, whether it was asking a question or interacting with an exhibit at the museum.

According to Sheena Costain, a SNAP Community Program Support Worker, the trip focussed on leadership skills, self-esteem and bullying. While many of the younger children were very familiar with the SNAP team and their lessons, those attending the high school had never encountered the program.

“We had never worked with the older kids before and so we gave them a brief on what SNAP was, how to calm your body down and all of those types of things. We also got them to understand the definition of bullying and the different types that exist – verbal, social, cyber and physical – and we got them to analyze it through answering questions and brainstorming,” said Costain.

According to SNAP coordinator Dorothy Nicholls, “The kids who weren’t part of the SNAP program, didn’t know what to do. At first, they were a bit lost, but eventually started to participate.”

To get kids to warm up to these important lessons about empathy and understanding, they engaged in fun yet poignant learning games. In one of them, Costain said she put a line of masking tape down the centre of a room and then had half of each group of children stand on one side and call out statements. If the child felt the statement applied to them, they had to step on the line.

“You start out with things like who is wearing polka-dot underwear and maybe half of them step on the line. But you can slowly get into more serious things like who has been bullied in the last month. It is about creating empathy with the kids and letting them understand that there is common ground there. When I asked who has been bullied in the last week, almost all of them stepped on the line,” said Costain.

This way these children knew what it was like to step into someone else’s shoes.

To develop their sense of self-esteem, Costain said she divided the kids into groups of 10 and had them write another child’s name on a piece of paper. They then had to pass it around their circle, with each child adding one positive thing about the person on the paper.

“By the end of it they had all of these nice things about themselves. And this is good because when they feel low they now have these lists of what other people think about them and how important you are in this world,” said Costain.

According to Tim Hortons Camp Counselor Marie-Frédérike Scott, the SNAP activities blended wonderfully with the camp’s regular programming because the lessons being offered by both groups shared similar values and themes.

“We have a program that we call ‘GREAT beads’ and these are values that we want to teach them at the camp. The G stands for goal setting and achievement. The R stands for responsible leadership. The E is for environmental awareness. The A is for adventure and creativity and the T is for teamwork and friendship. These are the values that we push through all of our activities,” said Scott.

At the same time, the camp is also about fun. During the winter months, the camp offers snowshoeing, archery, photography, treasure hunts, night hikes, campfires and a talent night.

What stood out most to Scott about the Cree trip was the talent night.

“So many of them participated and some had really wonderful talents, with the skits or songs that they performed,” she said. “You could see how much they were enjoying this. Some of the chaperones participated – one couple, Emmett and his wife Lizzie, played guitar and sang a song in Cree.”

Not surprisingly, Scott said they excelled in many of the wilderness-related activities. The kids even offered to show Scott and her fellow counsellors how to make rabbit snares.

But the outdoors wasn’t the only thing they were familiar with.

“In our winter survival camp we always make bannock. Most of the kids from other schools won’t know what it is until we show it to them but everyone seemed to know it. The leaders on the trip all remarked that we were using a great recipe and they would use it at home. This was really fun to see, they knew what we were talking about,” said Scott.

After an eventful five days at the camp and two days on the road, the children returned to Mistissini, all thanking MacLeod for the trip and being happy to have gone.

Nicholls hopes to repeat the trip in years to come, perhaps with children from different communities throughout Eeyou Istchee.