The faculty of tourism and outdoor recreation at Capilano University is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and highlighting the success of programs like the mountain bike operations and scuba dive instructor programs offered here on the Sunshine Coast.
The faculty was started at the North Vancouver campus with the launch of the outdoor recreation program in 1972 and Don Basham, honorary director of the Sunshine Coast Community Foundation, was a part of it.
At the time Basham was a physical education major who was just finishing up as the technical director at the Canada Games and was looking for work.
This just happened to come along. I knew the masters' students and I guess they knew that I had some contacts because of the games with government and I guess it was just one of those things that comes along once in a while. I was in a position to get the grant and manage the program, Basham said.
He explained that year the B.C. Corrections Branch and social services keyed into the fact there is therapeutic value in taking troubled teens on outdoor experiences.
However in that first year that they started to do this, and it was both corrections and social services, they killed about eight kids in canoeing accidents and a couple of other outdoor backpacking incidents. So they put the brakes on it and said 'why is this happening?' Basham said. What was happening was that, yes the value of it was of course sound and it still is today, but the instructors were trained in either social services or corrections. They weren't trained in skills in outdoor recreation and there was no certification in the province to train people to lead activities like cross-country skiing and backpacking and canoeing and that sort of thing.
He got together with some masters' students at Simon Fraser University and pitched the idea of a course to the government. They issued a grant to Basham and his group who developed the skills component of the outdoor recreation program and married it to a management program that already existed to train parks managers and fish and wildlife officers.
The program was well received and soon other colleges were adopting a similar type of outdoor recreation program.
If you look around now there's about maybe eight of 10 of the colleges in B.C. that are running outdoor education or recreation programs, Basham said.
The Sunshine Coast campus joined the faculty of tourism and outdoor recreation in 2004 with the establishment of the scuba dive instructor program. The unique course is only offered on the Sunshine Coast and it uses trained Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI), allowing students to obtain recognized PADI credentials.
Once students graduate from the eight-month full-time course that combines tourism management with PADI training, they can work in a wide variety of positions including outdoor education, tourism management, diving instruction or scientific diving support.
In 2005 the local campus developed another homegrown program, the mountain bike operations certificate program.
In it students are introduced to the tourism industry, trained as mountain bike instructors and guides and given instruction in trail design and building.
It's the only program of its kind in the world and it's widely supported by industry professionals.
Graduates can get a job as a mountain bike guide or build trails for the government, non-profit groups or private businesses. Graduates from the program since its inception in 2005 are now working all over Canada, the U.S. and internationally.
To find out more about the programs offered at Capilano University go to www.capilanou.ca.
