Wednesday night, June 17, was our last scheduled meeting at our Sunnidale Scout Hall. 

Thank you to those Scouters who showed up to help go through some of the “stuff” (no other word could possibly describe the odd bits and pieces of craft supplies, old flag poles, displays, piles of old event badges, posters, and of course,  mugs, mugs and more mugs!).

We shared laughs and stories about the past, stories about our Simcoe Phoenix Area and also about the old Kempenfelt Bay District.  Much of our usable stuff has been redistributed and will now be put to use in scouting groups.

We are under the impression that some of the tables and chairs might be headed for Camp Wildman near Georgian Bay - we do know that some of that sort of equipment has already gone to another Scouts Canada camp in Owen Sound area. Without our building, we have no need for these items.

The sign is off the building now and arrangements are being made to have the flag lowered. The building reverts to the City of Barrie by June 30 and after that, we anticipate that it will be demolished. At what time? We don’t know; that will be up to the City!

It was with sadness that I locked the door for the last time Wednesday night.  We all have such vivid memories - of training courses, leader meetings, Council meetings, Camp planning meetings, Honours and Awards meetings, Chief Scout’s Award parties, Jamboree committees, Venturer meetings, Youth Forums, Beaver BRRs, Beaverees, year-end BBQs, plus, of course all the sections that have used the building when their school locations were suddenly unavailable.

No longer will our Beavers, Cubs and Scouts be able to use Sunnidale Park for outdoor meetings because they won’t have the required shelter in case of bad weather. We have to wonder how we will find locations to hold all these meetings!

Back in the days of the old District, we used the building as our main office, with all the records, (training, Honours and Awards, outdoor forms, committee reports, all the Camp Wildman paperwork,) boxes and boxes of training supplies, trophies, Kub Kar tracks, pictures, pictures and yes, more pictures. It seems like all of our history was in that building.

For many years, we had our Scout Shop in the basement---badges, leader books, uniforms were all there. Our Scout Hall was our gathering point, our place to be! We no longer have a Scout Shop in Barrie and our members have to send to Toronto for their program badges.

So, for now, we feel we must grieve our loss - and it is a loss.  It can be almost an overwhelming challenge for volunteers to pull together programs that will excite and educate our youth, week after week, year after year. Now, to also lose our main “planning” meeting location and without any money readily available for location rental fees, it can almost seem like our efforts aren’t as valued as we hoped.

The good news is that Scouting will move forward. Somehow, we will get through this. The future for our Simcoe Phoenix scouting members will be BRIGHT and SHINING. The adults and youth involved in our movement have the scouting spirit burning within and we will not let it die out!

Our BIG thanks will go out to those Scouting partners---the churches, service clubs and businesses that we hope will step forward to be our heroes.  

So someday, when you are driving by Sunnidale and you see that the little brown building is gone, just know that a whole community of Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Venturers and all their leaders are missing it terribly!