Heather Wright/The Independent

For Cathy Buchanan, Brent Poland is “eternally 18.”

She sees him with his shock of blonde hair cut into a mullet for the summer, a bandana around his neck, acid-wash jeans and a mint green jacket, often sitting around the campfire at Huron Church Camp near Bayfield.

Sitting in the shade, just a stones-throw away from the camp near Bayfield nearly two decades later, other former counsellors nod in agreement and smile.

Since Cpl Poland’s death in 2007, the camp counsellors have been getting together for a weekend camp out where they share memories of camp life, and memories of Brent.

Forty years ago, the people in Keith Plater’s backyard Saturday, were teens, tasked with caring for campers between the ages of 8 and 10 at the Anglican Church camp. At night, after the little ones were safe in their cabins, the teens who weren’t on watch duty would head to the campfire pit, light up their cigarettes and spend the night talking about anything and everything.

After the campers left for the week and their cabins had been cleaned for the next group, the teenage leaders would climb into a van and head to Grand Bend, Bayfield or Goderich for a night together.

Former counsellor Kathie Moore says they had free reign as leaders and after hours.

Living together through the summer, the group grew into close friends. “All of us spent our formative years there,” says Buchanan.

“Most time I would have spent with Brent would have been around that campfire pit,” Cathy Buchanan added.

Poland came to Huron Church as a camper. He progressed from camper to counsellor and soon was leading canoe trips to Six Mile Lake in the French River area. Poland, a couple of counsellors and one adult would take the pre-teens through the woods, often portaging across land carrying the heavy aluminum canoes. Poland, his friends say, would motivate the kids by signing camp songs as they walked.

“The kids loved him,” said Moore, who travelled to Six Mile Lake with him. “Any time they had questions when we were on the canoe trip, they just would always go to Brent. We were just sort of the sidekicks.”

Poland had been a Scout as a child and thrived in the woods. Moore says his quick thinking saved her life.

As Moore tells the story, they had not even put the canoes in the water when she was stung by a bee. She got in the canoe, paddled to the dock and one of the young campers, screamed noticing the rash that broke out over her entire body immediately.

“Brent took one look at me, and he’s like, ‘Get out.’ I’m like, ‘And do what?’”

Moore says she and Brent left everything behind – leaving the campers to begin the journey – and walked 45 minutes to the nearest restaurant. Poland called 9-1-1 and the ambulance took her to hospital in Midland to get a shot. Moore was given an EpiPen and sent on her way.

Miles away from Six Mile Lake without any transportation, Poland scanned the area and spotted an OPP station across the road. Moore says he “walked over to the OPP station, told them what happened, and they totally gave us a ride right back to the dock.”

Scott Craven was the other counsellor on that eventful canoe adventure. Poland and his Craven’s dad, Rev. Bill Craven, walked to the only store in the area at Go Home Lake to pick up cigarettes for the teen counsellors who had run out halfway through the trip. The pair could only find Export A’s without filters, but Craven remembers lying on the rocks with his buddy, Brent, savouring every puff.

“He was just a really good friend, and I’m glad I got to spend that 10 days with him,” says Craven.

As the friends graduated from high school and went on to university, they weren’t in contact as much. Moore and Buchanan were close friends and lived together for a while. Others, like Rebecca Johnson and Scott Pook, moved away. In a time before social media, there was little contact, but lots of fond memories of their camp friends.

And they never forgot each other. Moore recalls a chance meeting when she was working at Starbucks in the early 2000s. Brent was in university and walked into the store while her back was turned.

“I heard somebody say ‘Kathie Moore’ and I knew immediately before I even turned around that it was Brent, and I just gave him a big hug.”

The reunion was brief. Moore and the rest of the former counsellors had no idea Poland entred the military two years later.

On April 8, 2007, his battalion was escorting a convoy to British soldiers in Helmand province. His light armoured vehicle struck a an explosive device. Cpl Poland and five soldiers were killed.

Cathy Buchanan was the first to hear the news. She was driving when the report came over the radio. “They said that five Canadian soldiers had been killed by roadside bombs and they listed the names. And when they got to Brent, I like,” under the shade tree 19 years later she makes the motion of swerving “my car almost off the road.

“When they said Cpl Brent Poland, I went to camp immediately in my head… It’s a picture with his hair. All the guys this one year had this mullet thing…this mint green jacket on, acid wash jeans and desert boots and I can see him like that.”

Buchanan called Moore immediately. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“I went down to my dispatch office where I was working and pulled it up on the computer, and I just remember sitting there and I started crying.”

The women called the others from camp, telling them the bad news.

“I was shocked when you guys called and said he was killed in Afghanistan. I was like ‘what is he doing in Afghanistan?’” says Johnson.

As spring turned to summer Moore and Buchanan approached Huron Camp to ask if they could place a memorial for Brent. Today, a sugar maple with a stone marking Poland’s time at the camp sits near the campfire pit where the counsellors became like family. They camped together the weekend of the dedication, holding a service of remembrance and raising a glass to Brent.

Today, they continue the summer camp out tradition. Buchanan says Poland’s death made them realize life is short.

“One of us is gone. We should probably invest in the rest of us,” says Buchanan.

So, they camp and reminisce and Brent’s name comes up often.

They remember him, his steady, calming presence, his pride in keeping the canoe shack organized, how he wasn’t the center of attention but always ready for fun – game to dress up like Vanna White or jump into the improvised wrestling ring in the camp’s chapel, dressed in a “skimpy” bathing suit.

“We come here every year to sort of remember him and remember all of the cool stuff we used to do as kids,” says Craven. “I just I wish I could just hop on Facebook and chat to him the way I do with everyone else. You know, I miss that.

“I miss that he’s not around anymore. You wish now – hindsight – you wish you’d spent more time when he was here.”

Pook understands that deep connection.

“Friends ask ‘why do you keep going? I consider this group family,” recalling how they all stood up for him when he was about to be sent home.

“I knew that even if I hadn’t spoken to them for five years, if I called them and said, ‘hey, this is what’s happening’; they
would say, ‘what do you need.’”

Johnson says this was the first place she went where people would hug each other adding they were “just solid people that love each other no matter what.”

It’s clear how deeply the camp counsellors are connected as Moore shares how she dreamed of Brent a few weeks after his death and tears fill their eyes as they heard it for the first time.

“Brent’s death really affected me hard. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks and weeks and weeks. I clipped out every newspaper clipping. I still have them in a box at home,” she says.

“And I had a dream one night. I was on the school bus from the camp, and we were on our canoe trip. The bus was picking everybody up, and I remember looking out the back window of the bus, and Brent was standing down by the water. And I the bus started to leave, and I was like,’ No, no, no, we have to get Brent. We forgot Brent!’

“And Brent just looked at me in the window, and he’s like, ‘It’s okay, I’m okay.’

“I’ve never forgotten that.”