Canadian Ecology Centre
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The Canadian Ecology Centre is an outdoor education complex located within Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park and near the Ontario-Quebec border.
[edit] Basic Description
The Canadian Ecology Centre site consists of a main building and several smaller cabins on a tract of land within the provincial park. The CEC is supported by proponents within the logging and wood industries, such as Tembec, as well as by various levels of government, NGOs, and public donors. The CEC facilities, while contemporary in both age and design, are constructed almost entirely out of wood.
The CEC is is primarily an educational and research centre, where courses on a wide variety of subjects ranging from local culture and history to biology and science to forestry management are offered to the public. The site is also equipped with high-speed internet access, and can be rented out as a conference or meeting centre. Cabins can also be rented for a nightly rate as an alternative to "tenting it" in the park.
The Forestry Research Partnership, a joint project between the timber industry, the Ontario government, and the CEC, has headquarters at the Canadian Ecology Centre. They are primarily focused with studying and determining the most sustainable forestry practices in order to ensure best use of resources and best ongoing supply of quality timber.
The centre, like much of the surrounding area, is almost fully bilingual, and most programs are available in both English and French.
[edit] Eco-Camp
By far the best-known aspect of the CEC, however, is Eco-Camp, which is a summer program offering academic credit to high school students. Formal two-week courses in subjects such as forest ecosystems, physical education, and geomatics are available. The program is residential, and students live on-site for the duration. The most popular program, a grade 10 science course, is almost invariably booked solid even with three back-to-back itinerations of the course.
