Brigade Members Paddle Their Own Canoes

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31007, 12 March 1966, Page 17

Brigade Members Paddle Their Own Canoes

Members of the Boys’ Brigade in the Salomon Islands soon learn to paddle their own canoes.

Transport among the islands is by mission boat or dugout canoe, and boys use the latter to assemble for the annual camp on New Georgia Island, according to Mr G. Siama, the Boys’ Brigade organiser for the Solomons, who is visiting Christchurch. Mr Siama, a former schoolteacher on Choiseal Island, is now a fullJtime organiser for the brigade, his position being financed by the New Zealand Boys’ Brigade Council, and is in New Zealand on a three-month training and leadership course. It is his second visit.

Outdoor and “expedition” activities received much emphasis in the Boys’ Brigade movement in the Solomons, Mr Siama said yesterday. Boys paddled their own canoes between islands, tracked through the jungle, crossed rivers by throwing up log bridges, and even held snake-huriting competitions. There was a similar outdoors emphasis placed on activities in New Zealand, he said. Schemes for “expedition work” to figure more prominently were under consideration.

For instance, a New Zea-land-wide camp for senior boys would be held at Arthur’s Pass at Christmas, 1967, where such ideas would be applied. The Boys’ Brigade movement in the Solomons, said Mr Siama, comprised almost 800 boys, in 20 companies,

on six of the main islands. In addition, Lafe Boys (the junior movement, for ages eight to 11) had been started, and numbered two teams of 70.

The Boys’ Brigade movement started in the Solomons only in 1960, with 400 boys, so that in five years its strength had doubled, Mr Siama said. The boys were “very keen.” Mr Siama has already visited Auckland, Palmerston North, and Wellington, and will also visit other South Island centres. He will attend a fortnight’s course in Wellington, for non-commis-sioned officers in the movement, in May, before returning to New Georgia Island (where he is based) to apply what he has learned in New Zealand to his own training courses for leaders.