Volunteer of the year 2014
Cathy Traverse has hung up her wings.
In June, Traverse retired from her role as Beaver leader after 32 years.
The Creemore resident is known to many as Malak, named after the owl in the Friends of the Forest story, the basis for the Beavers program.
While Traverse is reluctant to talk about all of her accomplishments in Scouting, her husband Wayne Traverse reveals her wall of fame. The certificates and plaques take up two walls. They include certificates for years of volunteer service, from officials inside and outside of Scouts Canada. Traverse was also the first person in Ontario to receive a medal for volunteer service issued to mark the 100th anniversary of Scouting.
Traverse said she first became involved with the organization in 1982 when she enrolled her youngest son, Tim.
“He was getting ready to go to school and he was very attached to his mom,” she said.
Someone recommended she try Scouts as a way of preparing her young son for school.
Traverse said there were about 20 children enrolled in Beavers at the time and she was recruited as a parent helper.
“I enjoy working with the kids, and the adults,” said Traverse. “The look on their faces when they try something new or when they make something to take home.”
The program is all about learning to share and working together. There’s no competition in Beavers, for children between the ages of five and seven, it’s about having fun while learning about Scouts.
She was schooled in Scouting and the following year, Traverse took a one-week course about how to deal with children with specific behavioral issues and was promoted to Beaver leader.
Even after her sons left Scouting, Traverse continued to volunteer with the organization. She held many positions on the regional council, was district commissioner and eventually became Beaver coordinator for the province of Ontario.
She has helped coordinate jamborees in Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec, was site supervisor at the 100th anniversary campout at Burl’s Creek in 2007, attended by 3,000 youth and adults from the region.
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Beavers program, Traverse helped organize a sleepover at the SkyDome in Toronto with 10,000 people. She said it was close to beating a world record, but not quite.
Various agencies and companies offered activities during the day and at night, children rolled out sleeping bags on the turf and the first level. She said it was a long sleepless night of watching over children who were too excited to go to sleep.
Traverse is also the recipient of the medal of merit, awarded to her in 1999 after coming upon a fatal crash while en route to a Scouting event. She was among those who cared for the injured passenger. The driver was killed.
Traverse, who has operated a home daycare since 1977, said she has cared for many local children throughout the years. She has seen somewhere between 250 and 300 children come through her home and now she is caring for the children of the children she looked after in the early days.
She said there was some cross over with people from the daycare joining Beavers and vice versa.
Now, her granddaughter and two grandsons are in Cubs.
“It’s like a big circle,” said Traverse. “Do I miss it? Sometimes. And sometimes I don’t,” she says with a chuckle.
Ultimately Traverse said her decision to leave the organization was due to the fact that she needed to have surgery on her knee and found she couldn’t move around as well and couldn’t get down on the floor, necessary for some of the Beavers’ ceremonies.
“I figured if I couldn’t do it properly, it was time to get out,” she said.
But she has not totally severed ties with Scouting. She is still quartermaster for Gilwell, an annual reunion for leaders.