Our History

Founded in 1893 by A.S. Gregg Clarke and located on Devil’s Island on Lake Temagami, Ontario, Keewaydin is the world’s oldest canoe-tripping camp.  A student of Frederick William Gunn, who is considered to be the father of the American camping movement, Clarke began his camp in the wilds of northern Maine, traveling for months at a time with first 4, then 7 and then 30 boys, living and embracing what he called the “Strenuous Life” and coining the motto “Help the Other Fellow” which is still used today. The camp grew in the 1890’s and Clarke took on several partners to help purchase canoes, etc for his growing campership. But after the 1901 season Clarke decided it was getting too crowded in Maine as lumber companies and tourists started to invade his precious wilderness and, selling off his shares of the camp in Maine, he headed north to Temagami.  Clarke took with him a philosophy and tone that has become the Keewaydin Way: an emphasis on fun, robust, challenging canoe trips from a base camp deeply ensconced in wilderness, a focus on the trip as an educational tool, the moose head emblem, an unfaltering attraction to the frontier, and a vision of a progression of ever-longer trips for campers to continue to grow and be challenged by more remote locations, deeper learnings, big river travel, and whitewater.

In 1902, a group led by Clarke pushed north into Canada. They were nomads that summer, traveling around, surveying and looking for potential home bases.  In 1903 they set up a temporary camp and a year later they settled permanently on Devil's Island in the North Arm of Lake Temagami. They called the camp Keewaydin after the northwest wind, a harbinger of good weather and fair tripping.   The numbers of campers grew and the base camp on Devil’s Island grew along with them.  Wigwams, dividing campers into age, maturity and experience groupings, were added and trips ranged further afield, finally reaching the shores of James Bay in 1911.  Clarke’s vision was acheived!

In the ensuing years the camp grew, adding a camp on Lake Dunmore in Vermont in 1910, and on the north end of Devil’s Island they added the Ojibway Lodge for families and visitors in 1923.  Additional camps were added all over the United States - a family camp, a fishing camp, sailing camps, cycling camps and riding camps, some lasting for one season, some for as many as 30, or 50 seasons.  By 1938, the camp board was large with diverging interests and directors, and a dissolution of the Keewaydin Camps, Ltd partnership was proposed, and accepted, by the board.  Many of the camps went  to private ownership by each director, some then disappeared or after greater longevity subsequently closed.

Only the original camp on Lake Temagami, and the Keewaydin Camp on Lake Dunmore survive uninterrupted to the present.  Songadeewin, the Vermont girls camp, closed in the late 70’s and reopened on Lake Dunmore in 1999. For Temagami the credit for its longevity goes largely to a series of committed owners:, William Gunn and George Creelman, the Thomas-Jones Foundation, Howard Chivers, Fred Reimers and Joe Fogg and Lewis Lehrman, all of whom ran Keewaydin with passion, intelligence and plain hard work.  Not much changed from the vision of Clarke.

In 1999, Fogg and Lehrman took a great step forward by adding a girl’s program to Keewaydin with the idea that what worked for more than a hundred years for boys, would surely also work for girls.  They were right.  The girls program has thrived, taking their first trip to Hudson Bay in 2004 and every other season since. While the trips and location are the same, the program’s philosophy and style has developed over the years to better reflect and serve the needs and strengths of girls.

In 2001, Lehrman and Fogg donated Keewaydin Temagami and Ojibway to the Keewaydin Foundation, which had been running the camp on Lake Dunmore since 1982, and had reopened Songadeewin on Lake Dunmore in 1999.  The gift brought the camps back together after nearly 64 years, in a not-for-profit foundation setting, one that secured a bright and prosperous future for all the Keewaydin Camps.  Subsequently the foundation has invested heavily in the infrastructure on Devil’s Island preserving its buildings, grounds, docks and thereby its traditions into this 21st century.