PRESS RELEASE
Armenian General Benevolent Union Inc.
Dr. Rita Kuyumjian
Chairperson
805, Manoogian street
Ville St-Laurent, QC H4N 1Z5
Tel: 514-748-2428
Fax: 514-748-6307
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:
Montreal, June 29, 2006 – The AGBU Montreal Scouting movement held a very
successful summer camp at Camp Tamaracouta in the Laurentian region of
Quebec. Over one hundred twenty members of the movement including very
young beavers, cubs, scouts and a group of dedicated leaders and volunteers
camped at the historical campsite. The program ended with a successful
campfire in front of hundreds of parents and an appreciating audience.
The campfire was attended by several of AGBU Montreal executive board
members, including the newly elected chairperson, Dr. Rita Kuyumjian. In
her address to the present, Dr. Kuyumjian highlighted the importance of the
scouting movement within the AGBU and expressed the hope that, following the
example of our president Mr. Berge Setrakian, future presidents of the AGBU
would come from our scouting ranks as well.
As a yearly tradition, a group of dedicated senior volunteers designed and
built a large flagpole structure using only rope and wooden logs. This
year’s structure was by far the most complicated and the largest ever. It
weighed over a ton and its highest flagpole was made of a single 40-foot
high tree trunk, breaking most of the tree line of the campsite. The
structure was in the form of a large sail boat with the flag post as its
main mast.
"I am very proud of our team of builders", said Viken L. Attarian, the
designer of the structure, "What is even more noteworthy was that the whole
thing was completed in one day. In fact, most of the rope weavings were
completed by young scouts including some of our cubs. Their mastery of
scouting techniques is amazing, proving once more why our group is tops in
Quebec and one of the best in Canada."
The staff at Camp Tamaracouta was so impressed by the size and elegance of
the structure that they expressed the hope that it would be left there
permanently. "I am proud to say that our team has decided to donate this
structure to this historical campsite," said Aline Egoyan-Pederian,
chairperson of the AGBU Montreal Scouts’ Council. "This camp has an
important historical significance for the world scouting movement and it
contains the memories of generations of AGBU scouts in Montreal. This is a
very fitting gesture on our part."
Since its opening in 1912, Tamaracouta Scout Resereve (TSR) is the oldest
continuously running scout camp in the world and is second only to the
oldest in the world after the original Brownsea camp run by the founder of
scouting Sir Robert Baden Powell in 1907. Baden Powell’s original footprints
are immortalized in a bronze monument at the entrance of TSR. Information
about Camp Tamaracouta can be found at
For further information, please contact the AGBU at 514-748-2428 at
[email protected]; for photos, visit our website at
.