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Heart of Our City: Jeroen Gerritsen’s Scout’s honour

Jeroen Gerritsen joined Scouts Canada when his sons wanted to sign up

Jeroen Gerritsen’s first camping trip in Prince Rupert started before he even stepped foot in town.

It was minutes after he and his wife arrived in Vancouver to visit her hometown for the first time since their marriage, and they’d just flown all the way from Holland, his home country.

“We’re going camping,” his in-laws told him.

“I had, for the first time in my life, jet lag,” he said.

READ MORE: New camping gear helps get Scouts outside

Now, having been with Scouts Canada for eight years, it’s hard to imagine the go-to camping leader being wary of an excursion.

But when his in-laws told him they were going to drive the whole way to Prince Rupert, he said, “1,600 kilometres? Are you completely crazy?”

Equipped with a 16-foot trailer, Gerritsen asked where he and his wife would sleep. In the back of the truck, under the canopy, of course.

They used a bucket of water from a river for washing and brushing their teeth along the way — a new experience for Gerritsen.

“I was really impressed,” he said. “That’s cool, it’s just down to the basics, down to having fun.”

This style of camping was a far cry from how Gerritsen’s family set up camp in Holland. The four of them, Gerritsen, his brother and their parents, would camp in the same spot for weeks at a time before packing up their large tent and heading home again.

His love of camping was sparked at a young age, and the draw of adventure has never dulled. Every year, he’d looked forward to the moment they could set up their tent again.

“It didn’t matter where. In two, three, four hours of arriving and setting everything up, you make your first friends,” he said.

When Gerritsen made it to Prince Rupert after that fateful road trip, he was astonished by the rolling mountains and hospitality of his wife’s hometown.

“I think I was here for 10 minutes, and I said, ‘OK, let’s move,’” he said with a laugh.

They moved from Europe and, after living in Terrace, the family’s been in Rupert full-time for four years. Gerritsen has re-learned how to camp, excited by the possibility of sleeping at a new site every night. It’s a passion he’s passed down to his three sons. The family drives 6,000 kilometres through B.C. and Alberta every summer for their annual camping trip. The oldest son, Xander, was the one who wanted to become a Scout.

Gerritsen said Xander wanted to try something new, outside of normal team sports. So they went to Scouts, Xander with his dad in tow for the first handful of meetings. Jeroen’s role quickly evolved from parent to leader to group commissioner of the 11th Prince Rupert Scout Group. His current group is made up of 14 kids between 11 and 14 years old.

“If I knew that they did this kind of stuff with Scouts, I absolutely would have joined then. It’s fantastic,” he said.

Across the Scouts group, the numbers have grown, with much thanks to Gerritsen’s recruiting skills. Just the other day, he got two new Beavers — kids between five and eight years old — to sign up. Give him a few minutes of telling tales of camping and adventures, and you may be a new leader.

“Part of Scouts is you get to be with kids. You can teach them some life lessons, you can teach them outdoors things, survival, what they don’t normally get,” he said. “Really teaching them life lessons, to be kind and help each other out.”

While two of his own kids, Xander and River, are too busy with other sports, Gerritsen’s middle son Ryder is a Scout. Commitments to other sports and leaders who often do shift work are a few of the challenges the non-profit group faces. After 10 years of working across the province doing IT services for Northern Health, in January Gerritsen started working for the City of Prince Rupert. He helps the RCMP, Public Works, the arena and other facilities with their computers. The new gig means he travels less than his previous job. Now he has more time at home — and to travel with the Scouts.

They’ve got several trips planned, like an upcoming survival weekend in May. Ventures, the group for 15 to 18-year-olds, is starting up again next year for the first time in 15 years. Gerritsen hopes to take them to Hawaii for camps down there. Eighty per cent of the Scouts, he said, haven’t been out of the province, let alone the country.

While his own camping technique has come a long way since Gerritsen’s first trip to Prince Rupert, he’s still just as excited to venture into new areas, with many kids in tow.

“If you tell the kids, ‘We’re going over the water and we’ll send you with the boat. We’ll go there and you’ll have to arrange it all yourself, set up your tent, make your own food, make your own fire.’ They say, ‘Can we go tomorrow?’

“Everybody loves to do that. It makes them free.”

Read more Heart of Our City profiles here.



Want to nominate the next Heart of Our City? Email keili.bartlett@thenorthernview.com

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