Every summer for over a decade, a group of Squamish teenagers has piled onto a coach bus and headed off to Rockridge Canyon, a Young Life bible camp known for its zip lines, heated pool and family style meals. This year, 17 teens are signed up for senior high camp and seven more for junior high, and the local Young Life chapter is fundraising to help send them.
Young Life operates independently of any one church but partners closely with local congregations. In Squamish, a key partner is The Rock, where Glenn Davies serves as pastor and chairs the adult committee supporting Young Life. Allyson Huguet, is the Young Life area leader, and runs the program day to day. She has been part of The Rock for close to sixteen years and on staff with Young Life since 2017, though she has been involved in the Squamish program since 2011, the same year Young Life arrived in town. Rockridge Canyon itself has been open since 2004. Davies describes it as a far cry from the Bible camps he grew up picturing.
“It is unlike your traditional Christian Bible camp,” he said, noting that many of the teens who attend aren’t coming from churchgoing families at all.
What sets the program apart, according to Huguet, isn’t just the week at camp. Leaders run club nights twice a month through the school year, alternating between junior and senior high, and the same adult who leads a club night is the one who travels with that group of kids to camp and serves as their cabin leader.
“We hang out with these kids all year,” Huguet said. That continuity is the point, she added, recalling a leader of her own who told her as a teenager, “I want to be the kind of friend that will be at your wedding one day,” and meant it. He and his wife showed up years later when she got married.
Huguet says one of camp’s best offerings for teens is a week with no phones, connecting with their peers. “The first day, they’re all jonesing,” she said, but by the end most teens don’t even want their phones back, telling her they’d never really talked with their friends like that before.
The senior high camp runs seven days and costs roughly $1,000 per teen this year, while the six day junior high session costs about $900, prices Huguet says are in line with most overnight camps in the province. Young Life’s longstanding rule, she said, is that “money should never be a reason that a kid can’t go to camp,” but the organization still expects teens to put in fundraising effort of their own. Davies pointed to rising insurance costs as one reason camp fees have climbed industry wide in recent years, calling it a cost that’s “going through the roof” across the board.
Right now, the fundraising effort centers on a Panago Pizza coupon sale, with teens selling coupons and earning a portion of each sale back for their camp fund. Anyone interested in buying coupons can reach out to Huguet directly or to one of the youth heading to camp this summer. A hot dog sale outside the Save-On Foods is also in the works, with dates expected once the store confirms availability.
For Davies, the appeal goes beyond a fun week away, he said that teenagers benefit enormously from having a consistent, trustworthy adult in their life who isn’t a parent, something both club nights and camp are built around. Davies and Huguet said Young Life leaders work to build a deep trust with the teens.
“Every teenager deserves the right to know that there is a God who knows them and loves them and created them and wants a relationship with them,” Huguet said, “and to do whatever they want with that information and still be loved as they are.”
Those interested in purchasing Panago coupons can reach out to Huguet at ahuguet@younglife.ca or people can donate directly through the fundraising link.
