What is the Barrie Platypus RoVent Allliance?
This is a question that I seem to get asked every once and a while, and I am never too sure how to answer it, here’s my best shot.
The Barrie Platypus RoVent Alliance started in October 2022, While I was the one who organized everything and became the Youth Leader of it, I can’t take credit for the idea, the idea actually came to me from former 14th Barrie Venturer company President Rudy MacNeil, the idea first started at Camp Endobanah, I attended this camp as a Venturer only knowing 1 or 2 people, at the end of the camp I knew everyone and I call a few of them my friends still to this day, I am even going to Portugal with some of them next Summer. In the beginning things did not go so smoothly, we had to change the date of the first meeting 3 times due to miscommunications and schedule conflicts, in the end though we made it work. The first meeting included Youth and Scouters from 14th Barrie, 1st Barrie Foresters & 1st Kempenfelt Bay, later on this year we invited 2nd Innisfil to the Alliance. In this first year we hosted monthly linking meetings which mostly flipped between 2 hosts – 14th Barrie & 1st Kempenfelt Bay, these meetings usually included something fun, a business talk where we talk about anything from camps to events that don’t happen. and gathering with new and old friends. A lot of friendships have come out of the Alliance that would otherwise not have happened, and of course there are those that just don’t get along very well. In this first year we camped together twice – at SCOPE 2023 in the US which was very successful & at Wolfs Den in Utopia which was not as successful.
In the 2023/2024 scouting year things just seemed to work better, we still continued the monthly meetings with activates like Skating, Bowling, Board Games, SCUBA, & Axe Throwing. But we also camped a lot more together as the alliance attending Moots – we attended Genesis VentMoot at Camp Bel in Dorchester, ON (Near London, ON) won the Golden Gauntle the top camp award, Llama Moot at Mount St. Nemo Scout Reserve in Burlington & SCOPE 2024 at Woodland Trails Scout Camp in Whitchurch-Stouffville. All of these camps were a success and I think everyone had fun, well maybe not at Llama moot…
This year we also started using ScoutsTracker which well an imperfect program made calendar tracking, communication and attendance tracking much easier. This along with our previously created Discord Server and communication was a lot better then the year before.
In the 2024/2025 Scouting Year we plan to continue like the previous year, with the monthly linking meetings having loads of fun, meeting new friends, and with some business talk too, we will be returning to Camp Bel & Genesis VentMoot to defend our Golden Gauntle Award, Llama Moot to get 1st instead of 2nd and be in a cabin. Plus we hope to attend a few other Moots for the first time – Snow Moot in February & Vent Assembly in April, plus who knows someone could suggest another awesome camp.
Zach Knowles
Youth Leader, Barrie Platypus RoVent Alliance
zach.knowles@scouts.ca