Re-using the picture to bring out a beautiful story. When this process started I requested and collected stories written by Olympians about Olympia. Anyone was and is welcome to submit a personal story of 500 words and it will be in the book. The chapter is called the Soul Of Olympia because these people and their stories make up the fabric of this world-class camp. Per was one of the first stories submitted, a sign of how much this story and this camp mean to him


Per Tøien, basketball coach, week 7

Meeting my past

In 2008 I walked into the coaches’ room at Olympia for the first time – and met my father!  

The pictures on the wall of Norwegian airmen in winter training – that might have been him! It dawned on me that I was standing at the same place where my father had spent many leisure hours on leave from Little Norway.

Nora Sheffe, she of Week 7 and a Lady of Leisure, and I have a common past with our families in Zimbabwe in the nineties.  When we were planning to visit them in Ottawa in the summer of 2008, their children were attending week 7 at Olympia, Nora was coaching, and I entered my two children for their Canadian Summer Camp experience.  More as an afterthought, I also asked Dave if he would consider me a basketball coach for the same week, should there be an opening.  There was, and there I was.

I have pictures of my dad at Vesle Skaugum.  They had a bear tied to a pole, a bear they fed beer.  I have seen him swim, I have seen him with friends, and I have seen the log buildings.  He told stories of his fellow airmen and him going for week ends away from Muskoka Airfield – and they were happy stories.  (He had no other happy stories of the war after going to Britain and then on to the continent.)

As I arrived at Olympia that day, I did not know really where I was.  We drove in from the back.  I was bedded in “the motel”, my kids were in their cabins, and Nora and I – and the other coaches – walked over the field to the first information meeting.  Those pictures, the realization!  I walked down stairs and saw the familiar Norwegian crest and the quote in Norwegian on the fire place.  I had jumped a generation back.

I cannot even begin to describe the feeling.  We had planned to go to Toronto Island Airport, the original Little Norway, but I had not done enough research – nor planning – to even consider finding Vesle Skaugum. And now I was there. I saw the monument out front, the crest again over the entrance to the dining area.  I relived part of my father’s youth.

After that Olympia has been an important part of my life.  (So far) eight times a coach travelling from Norway. Both of my youngest kids are multiple campers, my daughter also a counselor. Many friends among the Olympia family, and many, many memories of my own.  

Olympia has a special place in my life independent of the story of my father, but for me it can never be “just another basketball camp”.  It is the place where I met my father – 15 years before I was born.

 


My father’s name was Ragnar Otto Olsen.  He stayed his entire working life in the Royal Norwegian Airforce after joining in Canada during the first year of the war.  He ended up a major, but I am not sure what they called the cadets in Little Norway?  Airmen, maybe? Or cadets?



The link to the blog is TuesdayswithDave.blogspot.com

This blog is about the journey of the writing of the book A Hero's Journey: From Little Norway to Olympia Sports Camp. The blog will contain excerpts from the book and my personal thoughts on what the place and the people that make up Olympia's journey is all about. The title comes from the great book Tuesdays With Morrie, by Mitch Albom. The blog's title is recognizing Dave Grace as Camp Director, but all content is my own. 

 

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