MAKE PEACE WITH WINTER 2025
Registration for Make Peace with Winter is Now Open!
The Council of Outdoor Educators of Ontario is excited to invite you to attend Make Peace with Winter (MPWW) at Camp Kawartha, January 24-26, 2025.
Your 2025 COEO Make Peace with Winter Organizing Committee is hard at work on another amazing weekend packed full of professional connection and development, experiential learning, and winter fun! Make Peace with Winter is a retreat-style conference for educators interested in learning how to share (and embrace!) the outdoors with their students in the coolest of seasons.
Join us as we learn, share, and laugh with kindred spirits from across the province and beyond. We’ll enjoy delicious food throughout the weekend and engage in opportunities to connect. Embracing the experiences of the weekend will support you in feeling rejuvenated and leaving with new ideas and resources to enhance your professional journey. The final ingredient for a perfect winter weekend is you! Our host site, Camp Kawartha, is ready to welcome everyone.
MPWW Registration is now open! Make Peace with Winter at Camp Kawartha is a smaller group so, if you hope to attend, we encourage you to register early. We look forward to having a range of participants and presenters at MPWW 2025- the longtime members, the newer members, and the brand-new members! See below for more information about the conference.
Take time this winter to share connections and support one other. We encourage you to spread the word about MPWW and invite folks who you see working to build community in the outdoors who may not yet be a part of COEO.
MPWW 2025 – REGISTER HERE!
Conference Location
Camp Kawartha is an award winning and highly acclaimed facility that is dedicated to the promotion of the highest standard of programming, with a particular focus on outdoor environmental awareness, education and stewardship. Camp Kawartha is situated on 186 acres of stunning waterfront property that features forests, fields, wetlands and extensive trails. The camp offers a unique blend of outdoor, environmental, corporate team building and leadership opportunities for youth, families and user groups throughout the year. For more information about the site, visit: www.campkawartha.ca
Map and Directions
Accommodations
Accommodations will be in Camp Kawartha’s Cabins. They are heated and quite comfortable. The beds are bunks and you will need to bring your own sleeping bag and pillow. The facilities are modern and feature separate washrooms and shower facilities. Bring earplugs just in case, and please inform us of any accessibility accommodation needs in your registration form. If your sleep patterns might interrupt others’ sleep, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate this.
***BRING YOUR SKIS AND SNOWSHOES!
You may wish to bring your own cross-country skis or snowshoes with you to the conference – in fact, it’s encouraged! However, don’t worry if you don’t own any, Camp Kawartha has a few sets of skis or snowshoes to lend conference participants free of charge.
Meals and Snacks
Camp Kawartha’s culinary professionals will be providing delicious and nutritious meals for the conference. Please outline any dietary needs clearly on your registration form. Coffee, tea and water are available in the dining hall. Other snacks will be provided at times indicated. BYOWB! – Bring Your Own Water Bottle. ***Please note, alcohol is permitted on the Camp Kawartha property (BYOB), but no glass beer bottles – cans only, please.
Carpooling
As always, the COEO Conference Committee encourages carpooling when possible and will help facilitate this by organizing a list of drivers with available space in January – please contact conference@coeo.org if you require a ride or are willing to offer a ride to someone else.
Conference Schedule
The full conference will go from the evening of Friday, January 24th, 2025, to approximately 1 pm on Sunday, January 26th, 2025.
Check back soon for a detailed schedule for the weekend!
The Trading Blanket
Now an annual MPWW tradition! To participate in the Trading Blanket activity – bring an item to trade! Each participant brings 1 item they would like to trade. The item should be something of utilitarian value or beauty. The item should be functional and something you are willing to give up. A blanket is placed in the middle of the room. All participants start by sitting around the blanket, with their trade items sitting on the floor in front of them. Participants may circulate around at first to see what items are up for trade. When the trading begins, one person volunteers to put their item in the middle of the blanket. Anyone wanting the item can move their trade items forward in offering. The owner of the original item examines the goods offered for trade and decides whether to make a trade or not. If a trade is made, there are usually pleasantries exchanged, and the group moves on to the next person’s item. If no trade is made, the owner will remove it from the blanket, thank those who made offerings, and they may consider making a trade later in the evening. Get creative! Items we’ve seen on the trading blanket range from homemade preserves to traditional tools, unwanted clothing (still in good shape), rides home, works of art, jewellery, nature artifacts, and books. The blanket trading can go on for a long time, so participants are encouraged to limit the items they offer for trade and come and go as they please. Participants have found these interactions much more meaningful than simply shopping for wanted items. This year’s trading blanket will be a timed event. Happy trading!
Used Gear Silent Auction to Support the Bursary Fund
Have you recently upgraded or replaced your beloved outdoor gear? Do you have old camping stuff that could use some TLC or a new loving home? Do you have a pile of “needs repair” gear that you know you’ll never get to? We are planning a used gear auction at the upcoming Make Peace with Winter conference, and we are looking for donations of new/well-loved/no longer needed by you gear! All of the money raised will go to COEO’s bursary fund to help us broaden our community and increase access for those who need some extra financial support. Plus, you’ll know that the donated gear will all be put to excellent use within our outdoor community! We will also happily accept any other non-gear donation items to add to the auction if you have anything in mind – we especially love to see things lovingly made by our COEO pals (Crochet?! Pottery?! Cards!? Paintings?! Maple Syrup!? You name it!) and feel free to reach out if you have something you aren’t quite sure about! If you have anything you’d like to donate, please bring your donations directly to MPWW and find any committee member when you arrive! Please feel free to also email conference@coeo.org if you have any questions.
Volunteers
We are looking for volunteers to help us manage the parking lot and help folks find their sleeping accommodations on the evening of Friday January 24th. If you are available and would like to help between 4:00 pm and 8:30 pm, please email conference@coeo.org.
Register Today!
Regular and Organizational Members $285 (Early Bird Rate) $330
Retiree and Student Members $260 (Early Bird Rate) $285
*Membership: Registrants for the 2025 COEO MPWW Conference must hold a current COEO membership. Not a member? Your membership fee can be paid along with registration.
Also, please note that the special early bird pricing is only valid until December 15, 2024 – to qualify, you must register online on or before this deadline!
Conference Bursaries
We have a new addition to our bursary process for MPWW 2025. This year, rather than applying via email, folks who would like a bursary are asked to fill out this form.
In this form, we will not be asking you to justify why you need a bursary. We trust you. This form asks for your name, why you want to come to COEO and how much financial support you need.
Please complete this form by December 16th to be considered for a bursary.
Bursary FAQ
Who do we want to use these tickets?
There are many reasons that folks may need financial support to come to COEO. If any of the following criteria describe you and you need financial support to come to COEO, consider a bursary ticket.
- Student
- New professional (in the outdoor industry for less than 3 years)
- From a marginalized group (ex., indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+)
- Significant change in personal circumstances that has created a financial stress
Why are we doing it differently this year?
We want COEO to be accessible to as many folks as possible. There are many factors that could contribute to the ticket price being a financial barrier to folks coming to a COEO conference. We wanted to streamline the process and not have folks feel like they need to prove to us that they deserve to come and deserve some financial support. If you need financial support and you see yourself as meeting any of our suggested criteria, please fill out the bursary form.
What can you do to help our bursary fund?
Our bursary fund exists because of donations. We have fundraisers at our conferences (silent and live auctions) that currently represent most of the funding to the bursary program. COEO is exploring new ways to fundraise so that we can expand our bursary program and offer more bursary tickets in the future. If you have any fundraising ideas for the bursary fund (particularly ones that draw on funds from outside the COEO community), please get in touch with COEO at info@coeo.org.
If I get a bursary, do I still need to get a membership?
Yes, if you purchase a bursary, you still need a membership. Our membership fees are what keep us running as an organization and we are unable to function without them.
Apply for a bursary!
Conference Poster
Have you seen the OFFICIAL 2025 MAKE PEACE WITH WINTER CONFERENCE POSTER yet? (see below) Download a copy for your very own, print and display it with pride in your centre, school, camp, store, park, staffroom, office or outhouse!
A Brief History of Make Peace with Winter
The very first Make Peace with Winter gathering took place at the Leslie M. Frost Centre in Dorset, Ontario on the weekend of February 1-3, 1980. The conference was a cooperative effort between the Council of Outdoor Educators of Ontario and the Ontario Teacher’s Federation and was billed as an event primarily for teachers (K-13). The conference took place annually for many years afterwards, but then during the mid to late 90’s was only offered sporadically, and then eventually vanished from the COEO calendar in 2004. Through determination and hard work this once beloved COEO retreat-style conference has returned. Deb Diebel, COEO Past President was instrumental in reigniting the Make Peace tradition when she and a group of colleagues from the Bluewater Outdoor Education Centre hosted Make Peace with Winter in January of 2012 on the Bruce Peninsula. This collage is a collection of various Make Peace with Winter advertising and posters that were used throughout the 80’s and 90’s.
