Jun 4

Jun 4 Skipper the Camp Director

Skipper of Black Bay Camp and later, Marygrove Camp

(1940-1961)

While other teachers took a well-deserved summer break away from multiple children, Mary doubled down for over 20 years.

Mary’s love of the outdoors coupled with the fact that she lived in a one-bedroom apartment with her sister, Dori, might have influenced her decision.

Mary eagerly accepted the offer to create a girls' camp at Black Bay, a job offer from Father Holly, and later after proving her competence, at Marygrove, with a job offer from Monsignor Castex and Father Kelly.

Miss Mary Flynn, the teacher, insisted on being called Skipper at camp.

Every summer, Skipper swapped her brown schoolmarm tweed skirt and sensible rubber- soled shoes for a functional navy pantsuit and hiking boots.

Skip loved every minute being Director of the Black Bay Camp for Girls’ from 1940 to 1951 and Director at Marygrove from 1952 to 1961. As a woman with powerful faith and an unwavering devotion to the Virgin Mary, it was outside where she felt closest to God and all that was Holy. She built a Marian Devotion and would lead the girls in the Rosary every morning before breakfast.

Around her neck hung a land-yard containing the camp’s keys and her whistle. It lay on Mary’s impossibly crisp white blouse. Even on the hottest days, she would wear her double breasted nautical jacket around camp looking like a real skipper!

For both camps, she often recruit campers, counsellors, nurses, her Headquarters management staff and leaders-in-training from those she knew in the Pembroke and the Pontiac region. Mary expertly coached these young women and men to be assertive thus giving them confidence to pursue their life’s dreams.

In the 1940s, young Black Bay campers remember being taught how to write letters home, the importance of including others in their play and wholesome fun jumping off the dock and unsupervised time in the forest.

Rounds of Little Sir Echo were sung around the campfire and echoed back-magic!- by the Mulvihill family huddled around their bonfire across the bay. These are fond memories of many young campers, now in their 80s.

In the 1950s, Marygrove Camp on Georgian Bay was quite a costly camp and attracted Catholic girls from Toronto, Quebec City and Ottawa. Mary designed, staffed and managed the camp each summer, and it grew in popularity. Eventually it became too big for St. Anne’s in Penetanguishene to administer.

In 1961, at 57 years old, after Mary had spent her last 10 summers at Marygrove, she retired. The camp was transferred to the Archdiocese of Toronto to run as a charity for disadvantaged girls and it has remained with that mandate.

Our Skipper was now ready to slow down a bit, though, and spent her summers at her cottage in Westmeath. Twenty years of rushing from the last day of school to camp and to school again were over.

Mary made an enormous impact on so many of the campers, counsellors, nurses and staff. One woman, wrote in her scrapbook, “My whole life changed the day I met Mary Flynn.”