Who We Are
The Council of Outdoor Educators of Ontario (COEO) is a non-profit, volunteer-based organization that promotes safe and high quality outdoor education experiences for people of all ages. It also acts as a professional body for outdoor educators in the province of Ontario. These aims are achieved through publishing Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education as well as an electronic newsletter, running an annual conferences and workshops, and working with kindred organizations as well as government agencies. COEO runs entirely on volunteer support and is managed by a Board of Directors.
Our Goals
- To establish and maintain professional practices in the field of outdoor education.
- To promote qualified leadership in outdoor education.
- To provide opportunities for professional growth.
- To promote the multiple values of outdoor education, both within and beyond our profession.
- To promote an active environmental ethic as a core value of education.
Meet the 2025-2026 Board of Directors!
President, Peggy Cheng (she/her)
Peggy’s original career plans was not in education but through her work in community stream restoration, the role of connecting people to nature ignited the spark for her to pursue outdoor education. This landed her at Queen’s University in the Outdoor and Experiential Education program where she was introduced to and attended her first COEO conference in 2014. She is well versed in the outdoor education world having worked at OE day and overnight centres and canoe tripped with youth through Trails Youth Initiatives. She currently works as a Community Outreach and Education Coordinator with Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and enjoys fall camping and snowy winters so she can travel through forests on cross country skis! She is privileged to be an immigrant settler who lives, works, and plays on the territories of the Anishinabek, Mississaugas of the Credit, Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat peoples and is continuing to learn from our Indigenous neighbours to live out truth and reconciliation.
Peggy is honoured to lead and support the work of COEO and her fellow board members. She is passionate about supporting all types of educators and wants more people to know about COEO through open dialogue connections between membership, advocacy for OEE, diversity and inclusion, and board governance.
Vice-President, Ben Blakey
Ben Blakey is an outdoor educator, teacher, and researcher currently working as an Outdoor Education Specialist (Supply) in the Toronto Outdoor Education Schools (TOES) for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). Previously, Ben worked in several independent schools in Toronto, most recently as an Environmental Education teacher & Ecoleader at the Toronto French School, as well as being on staff for some time at Crescent, Mabin, and Montcrest. He has an extensive background in outdoor, experiential, and environmental education, having taught students from grades K – 12. His research interests include ecopsychology, summer camps, and integrating ‘contact with nature’ at various levels of the education system. Ben is serving his 11th year on the COEO board of directors, having worked previously as Secretary, Director-At-Large, and Treasurer, as well as a being a member of the editorial board for COEO’s academic journal, Pathways: the Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education. He is the father of 2 young girls, and is excited to be part of COEO’s work in the upcoming 2025/26 year.
Past President, Hilary Coburn
Hil is excited to be working alongside this hard working group of COEO leaders as she transitions to Past-President. When she was in OEE at Queen’s in 2011, she attended her first Fall Conference and officially fell in love with COEO. Over many summers spent canoe tripping and camp counselling at Camp Tanamakoon in Algonquin Park, Hil’s love of the outdoors grew strong. Working at Project Canoe, Outward Bound, Me to We, and a couple of seasons at the Outdoor Centre at Camp Wanakita continued to empower Hil to immerse her students in nature and community based programs. Two years of working with amazing students, staff and Elders at the Bronte Creek Project enforced Hil’s belief in the positive power of integrated outdoor education. She loved teaching and learning on Selkirk First Nation lands in Pelly Crossing, Yukon for two years; where her and her husband Arthur could be found cross country skiing, taking out trapping/canoeing field trips, and beading with community members. Hil currently teaches Grade 7 in Owen Sound within the Bluewater District School Board. She is starting a tall-small outdoor environmental learning program where her Grade 7’s are working with local high school students and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation Environment Office to deliver curriculum connecting, outdoor environmental programs to Grades 1-4. After founding the Grey-Bruce Youth Climate Action Conference, she serves as a volunteer on this growing community collaborative annual event.
Hil is passionate and committed to building and continuing important relationships with local knowledge keepers, Elders and indigenous community members. She will continue to support COEO’s forward movement with being a part of positive reconciliation and working to make COEO conferences and membership accessible to all.
When not teaching or COEO’ing, Hil can be found hiking, paddling and skiing with her two littles and Arthur. Hil can’t wait to see you all at Make Peace with Winter in January!
Treasurer, Valerie Freemantle
Val grew up in the suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area. She is grateful for the adults in her life who brought her outside as a tween and young adult. She remembers the magic that the outdoors had to help her become a more confident, calmer, and fuller version of herself in those key formative years. The first chance she got to work in outdoor education was as in 2012 undergrad co-op student at the Scarborough Outdoor Education School (Kearney, ON) run by the Toronto District School Board. She knew she had found something special and after a couple of detours she was able to return to outdoor education.
After completing her M.Sc. at Queen’s researching changes in plant cover in Canada’s arctic, she enrolled in the OEE program at Queen’s. Since graduating in 2020, she has been working as an outdoor educator at Foley Mountain Conservation Area (Rideau Valley Conservation Authority) and supply teaching in both traditional schools and outdoor education spaces across eastern and southern Ontario. In Spring 2023, she completed Outward Bound’s Training Academy. In addition to the technical skills, this program was the encouraging nudge Val needed to start her own business in outdoor education. As a mixed race person and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, she wants to use her work and role in COEO as a way to make outdoor education more accessible to newcomers to Canada as well as those who may not feel welcomed in traditional outdoor education spaces. Val joined the board in fall 2023 after co-chairing the 2023 fall COEO conference “Opening Doors to the Outdoors”. As a board member, she co-chaired the 2024 Make Peace With Winter “Weaving Warmth” conference and supported several other board initiatives. After serving two years as a board member at large, Valerie is honoured to be elected to the board as treasurer for this term.
Secretary, Kim Squires (she/her)
Kim is looking forward to supporting on COEO’s Board of Directors again this year! She was first introduced to COEO while completing her Bachelor of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University in 2012 and has loved it ever since. Kim hopes to help grow COEO’s community and increase supports for COEO’s existing community this year. She is an early childhood educator and teacher and now works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph. While teaching in the Bachelor of Applied Science Child Studies program, Kim has the privilege of working with many pre-service early childhood educators and aims to help students understand the critical importance of outdoor play and learning opportunities for children and adults. Her research program focuses on early childhood education and care, with a particular focus on outdoor play. Among many things, she is curious about how we design outdoor learning environments, how these spaces are accessible to a variety of learners, and how this impacts children’s (and adults’) play, learning, and development. In her own outdoor play, Kim loves backcountry camping, jogging, and exploring waterfalls, mountains, and glacier lakes.
Volunteer Coordinator, Devin Mutic
Devin is a philosopher, educator, landscape photographer, and wilderness traveller. With an aim toward environmental praxis, his philosophical investigations wind the intersecting rivers of nature philosophy and education, finding paths toward a world of ecocommunal care and flourishing for individuals and communities, human and nonhuman alike.
With a master’s degree focused on environmental philosophy and education, Devin has worked, played, and thought with numerous forest schools, outdoor education organizations, and environmental learning centres throughout Canada. Deeply rooted in Ontario, he enjoys nothing more than the myriad interconnections of lakes, rivers, forests, rocky outcrops, and living beings of this place.
Devin is the Director of the Headwaters Wilderness Program, an educational organization guided by the purpose of developing, implementing, and practicing education for the present time, aimed toward the long-term. Centred around enabling entwined relationships with nature and with community, Headwaters utilizes intentional wilderness travel as an ideal medium for a wild, flourishing education.
Honoured to be part of COEO’s board, Devin could not be more excited to support the work of COEO and its members. As an organization, COEO reminds us that, whatever else may come, the moon still rises to brighten the night and the wind still blows to dance with the leaves. Much like winter – that most wonderful of seasons – which calls upon us to live deliberately and, in the process, reveals a life fully lived, Devin finds the value of COEO to be in maintaining the spark of that joyous enmeshment of life, kindling an educational community such that it will never go out.
Director-at-Large, Angel Suarez Esquivel (he/his/him)
Student and Community Engagement Specialist / Senior Nature Interpreter
Nature name: Hummingbird
Angel is an Early Childhood Educator (ECE) who specializes in outdoor pedagogy. Along with his Early Childhood Education and Teaching diploma from Humber College, Angel has a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Engineering and Sustainability. He works at the Humber Arboretum and Centre for Urban Ecology in Toronto as a Student and Community Engagement Specialist, coordinating the ECE field placement for outdoor education and the Learning by Leading program for Humber College and University of Guelph-Humber students. Finally, as a part of the Arb’s educational team, he continues to work with college students along with the general community and children of all ages.
Angel has a special connection to nature as it is the place he feels most comfortable, and he knows that nature always has something new to teach him. Originally from Mexico, he advocates for Latine communities to have fair access to outdoor spaces and recreation. He is passionate about removing barriers to nature and his goal is to connect more people to the outdoors.
Director-at-Large, Julie Read (she/her)
Julie attended her first COEO Conference in 2013 and is excited to join the COEO Board and contribute to a wonderful community which has given her so much over the years! Julie is the Program Manager at the national non-profit organization Take Me Outside and is an outdoor educator, elementary school teacher, Forest and Nature School practitioner and enthusiastic naturalist with over 15 years of leadership experience within non-profit organizations. Julie created the Fanshawe Nature School while working as the Community Education Supervisor for the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority and has previously worked as Community Programs Coordinator at the High Park Nature Centre in Toronto and as Program Manager at The Guelph Outdoor School. She loves helping people of all ages connect to nature and is deeply passionate about social justice, removing barriers and increasing equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility in outdoor learning. Julie grew up in a house in a forest with naturalist parents who took her birding in Point Pelee, home of the Caldwell First Nation, every spring since she was a baby, so technically she started birding before she could even walk. Julie now leads birding walks at the Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO)’s Birding with Pride annual event and is a hike leader for Point Pelee’s Festival of Birds every May. Julie is very thankful to live on Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant and Between the Lakes Treaty 3 Land, the traditional territory of The Mississaugas of the Credit, and is committed to Truth and Reconciliation. Julie lives in Guelph with her partner Claire and cat Penny and loves camping, wild swimming, cooking, reading, crafting and music.
Director-at-Large, Lilla Scott
Lilla is excited to join COEO’s Board of Directors for the first time this year. She has been an educator within Indigenous Communities for 15 years and shares her passion for the outdoors through her land-based teaching approach. She is currently working for Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation as a kindergarten teacher. She piloted an outdoor program which has completely shifted her philosophy towards learning and the importance of building a relationship with nature in the early years.
“Outdoor play is at the core of my philosophy for learning. The natural world is a place of wonder and discovery. It provides opportunities to build relationships with all of Creation and opens a window of endless learning possibilities. As educators, we can push to provide this kind of environment for our students so that they can learn from the land, as children have throughout history. Nature is our greatest teacher. Children get the experience to discover and extend their thinking beyond the four walls of a classroom. I love allowing them to take the lead as they explore the outdoors. Using nature as their playground gives them a chance to ask questions, create new thoughts and spark a new inquiry. Outdoor learning is critical for developing their executive functioning skills which will help them succeed as they grow.”
Director-at-Large, Rayanna Santiago
Ray is grateful and excited to collaborate with COEO’s Board of Directors for her second year as Director at Large! This year she hopes to connect northwestern Ontario educators, universities, and organizations with the COEO community. Ray is a secondary school teacher, outdoor educator, and retired Muay Thai coach, and she’s currently a graduate student in the Master of Education program specializing in Environmental and Sustainability Education at Lakehead University. Her current academic interests are on how place-based, post-secondary education supports students in developing an environmental ethic of care and meaningful relationships with our non-human kin. In her spare time, Ray can be found somewhere in the woods, whether it be on a canoe in a backcountry lake, in a tent under fall foliage, or attempting to snowboard and cross country ski through snowy terrain. Ray is always eager to further her abilities as an outdoor educator and loves finding opportunities to learn from and with our non-human kin.
Membership Secretary, Lee McArthur
Lee McArthur is happy to be here at COEO where outdoor educators, environmentalists, and all those who seek to strengthen our relationships with the natural world gather to share, learn, forge alliances, connect and rejuvenate.
I have been an outdoors enthusiast all my life, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, gardening and just being outside, where I find my greatest solace and deepest sense of belonging. Like many of you, I feel the urgency of the work done by COEO and its members. We have a vital and urgent calling to reforge and strengthen connections between our children, youth and young adults and the natural world that sustains all of us.
To this work I bring a long history of work as an educator and school administrator in the public system with all grades from K to 12. I have also taught at forest schools. Currently I am privileged to be a specialist teacher at Kikendaasogamig School, working with the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation. As an educator I consult and forge alliances with local organizations and Indigenous land stewards. Together we get children and youth outdoors and connected with nature.
Concurrently, I am working on a PhD at Trent University in environmental education, specifically pedagogies which foster relationship and eco-connection with the more-than-human-world. I have presented workshops at EECOM, Take Me Outside, Wild Pedagogies in Sweden and Greece and COEO’s Fall and OWLS conferences.
I am thrilled to be on the board and committed to supporting the important work of COEO and COEO’s Pathways journal. I look forward to working with the amazing COEO team and membership to further these goals, supporting and building the organization.