How the Ottawa Rock Camp for Girls Impacts Canada's Young Musicians

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As Pat the Bunny of Wingnut Dishwashers Union once sang, "If there's girls still growing up in this world to believe that they can't sing rock'n roll… then I don't wanna live in this world anymore." Fortunately, it's not just anarchist folk punks who feel this way. In recent years, the discussion of women in rock music (and music in general) has reared its frizzy haired head in many forms. In Ottawa, women have taken it upon themselves to make sure that young girls all over Canada's capital region are getting their shot behind the microphone, in front of amps, and on top of drum thrones. Stephanie Bergeron and Keltie Duncan are the leading force behind Ottawa Rock Camp for Girls; an organization started by women for future women based off of other North American models. The camp runs just three days once a year, but the impact on participants is profound.

"We're giving girls an opportunity to not feel intimidated," says Bergeron, who has been with the camp for over six years. In her current role she coordinates volunteers, as well as heading up community sponsorship and fundraising. "Some of the girls have expressed in the past that even if they have a music class, the guys dominate the electric guitars and the drums and they kind of feel like they're too shy or too intimidated to take on that kind of role, or be loud," she says. "It's just like 'it's ok to hit the drums' and 'it's ok to yell in the microphone,' you know? Giving the girls a safe space to play and an opportunity where they might not have had instrument availability and good mentors, all the teachers are female musicians." The camp typically runs in the Fall and hosts around 20 campers at Capital Rehearsal, a jam space in the city. This year, Duncan took over as Chairwoman and taught drums. She says that they hope to expand operations so that they can provide females with year-round support. "Some challenges we face are mostly around expanding operations," Duncan says. "We are looking to branch into public funding to build up a bit more of an operating budget for year-round activities. This means beefing up our governance stuff a bit and maintaining our stability as a board."

In the spring of 2015, the Ottawa music community faced controversy as one of the city's most beloved bars and music venues House of Targ hosted Portland-based stoner rock band Black Pussy. As soon as the show was announced petitions were started to have the band barred from playing because many in the community saw it as an inappropriate appropriation. Many also took issues with Targ's reaction—or lack thereof. Call it being overly-PC if you must, but the fact remains that a huge portion of show goers, not just ethnic females, no longer felt that they would be included, and more importantly, safe at Targ. After much back and forth, discussions on local radio shows and national news coverage, Targ rolled out an action plan that included "Hosting a monthly series of free community workshops and seminars on topics such as consent, racism, decolonization and harm reduction" and "Offering/encouraging safe space training at [nearby] Carleton University to House of Targ staff," amongst other things. "My band played there [recently]," Duncan says, "I can't speak for anybody. I think that some people still feel uncomfortable there and that was the problem. Their response to that created what was an unsafe space for a specific demographic in the community and I feel like that maybe hasn't gone away for everybody. But I'll speak for myself, we played there because I feel like the more there are women on stage in spaces that are perceived that way I feel like that might help." Bergeron added that Targ consistently supports the camp by donating prizes for events and hosting fundraisers. Despite a few unfortunate incidents, Duncan says that generally the Ottawa music scene and its leaders are "supportive" and "positive" influences on women in the industry.

The successes of the Ottawa Rock Camp for Girls are intangible, but they are readily available to anyone who might doubt the power of having a double X chromosome on stage. "Every year you see the transformation of the girls from day one where they're kind of shy, there's always the outgoing ones and there's always the ones who are a bit more in their shell, but the transformation is pretty awesome," Bergeron says. "It's inspiring."

Noisey: Can you tell me a little bit about yourselves and how you got involved in the camp?
Stephanie Bergeron: This is my sixth year, originally my first year at camp I was making lunches. Then the next year, the two girls that were organizing it decided they needed a break and they said, "Here's what you have to do," and handed the whole thing over. I felt a little out of place because I'm not a musician and I don't have any contacts in the music industry. The volunteer teachers overlapped those couple of years so they really helped me out a lot in recruiting more teachers and at that time all the instruments we were using were donated by the teachers and the teachers friends were loaning all the instruments except for the drum kits which were the rehearsal studio's. So it was a little bit more frantic but the camp was smaller back then, there were maybe twelve, fifteen girls.
Keltie Duncan: This is my first year. I was actually involved in the [Ottawa Video Camp for Girls] last year which films at the Rock Camp weekend, then I was able to get closer and I had been to one meeting before but I wasn't able to help at the time. I also work for the animation festival here so it's all the same time of year. So yeah, through Video Camp I saw the magic of Rock Camp, it was everything I thought it could be and more, so it was very inspiring.

How and when did Rock Camp come to Ottawa?
Bergeron: 2007, it was originally funded by LadyFest Ottawa, which was a volunteer feminist group that was really big in promoting women in the arts. So they would have a three-day music festival and put on workshops promoting different crafts, different women in the business, they'd put on spoken word performances, all different kinds of things. So they've kind of fizzled out by the time that I passed over and since then we've done our own fundraising. But there are rock camps all over the world—Portland was the original one.

What are some of your favourite tunes?
Duncan: Every time I'm asked about my favourite album it's the Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack, I listen to it all year round.

Solid. So run me through the camp experience, what happens at Ottawa Rock Camp for Girls?
Duncan: Friday night we all get together and watch a documentary, it's a pizza-movie night. Everybody eases into this group-mania. This year it was at Club Saw, you come in, you make name tags you're going to keep for the weekend, put stickers on it and make it look awesome, the girls mingle, all the teachers are there, so it's getting familiar with faces.
Bergeron: It's a good icebreaker.
Duncan: Yeah, then they watch a movie and at the very end of the night their instruments are assigned. The girls have two options when they register, what their first choice and second choice of instruments are and then we assign them and reveal them at the end of the Friday night.

Is that any instrument at all or just classic rock band?
Duncan: Keyboards, guitar, bass, drums.
Bergeron: We just introduced keyboards last year, there's been a good response to keyboards, people keep asking for it.
Duncan: And it's cool because our volunteer teachers will take the lead and transcribe and make tabs to get the music ready for the weekend. So the teachers meet well ahead of time and choose the songs to write out, so all you have to do is hand out the music during the weekend and start playing. It's fun for the teachers to find the songs that might not have keyboards and add a keyboard part and then it's interesting to transform the songs that way.
Bergeron: Some of the campers have never touched an instrument before and some of them have very minimal experience. There are some that have experience but want to try a new instrument, so the Saturday is really introductory; "this is the instrument, these are the parts of the instrument, these are some basic chords or beats" and then the Sunday they get into the actual song that they're going to play and form a band to practice together.
Duncan: All the instruments are isolated on Saturday, so there's a room of like five drum kits and then the bass players and guitar players all hang out together. Then Sunday is jamming as the band.

Do they choose the band?
Bergeron: They choose the song. We post up all the songs and they get to choose, and then the teachers kind of look at them and say "well I think maybe this guitarist is more advanced so she might do better with this one." A couple of names will get switched up and there's usually an extra song that gets tossed away, so whoever was in that one gets moved into another one.
Duncan: The band names are chosen with a draw. Everyone puts in an adjective and a noun and then they shake it up and you pull out an adjective and a noun, so it's like Moist Anonymous was one of the bands, or like Scary Rainbow. [Laughs] it's great.

What are you guys hoping to accomplish by putting on Ottawa Rock Camp for Girls?
Bergeron: Giving girls an opportunity to not feel intimidated. Some of the girls have expressed in the past that even if they have a music class, the guys dominate the electric guitars and the drums and they kind of feel like they're too shy or too intimidated to take on that kind of role or be loud. A lot of the girls were struggling with the singing, it's just like "it's ok to hit the drums" and "it's ok to yell in the microphone," you know? Giving the girls a safe space to play and an opportunity where they might not have had instrument availability and good mentors, all the teachers are female musicians; Keltie was teaching drums this year.
Duncan: Yeah exactly, and I think it's important for them to see women taking the lead and teaching them.

Rockin' out.
Duncan: Exactly. Giving them a safe space for girls to just relax and be themselves.We have dreams of having jams and maybe someday a women's rock camp because it seems like we get that comment a lot, "you should have one for grown ups!" We should have one for grown ups! So we'll explore what we can do about that stuff. And Luke Martin at Capital Rehearsal is a big supporter of ours, so I think monthly jams at least to give girls continuous access to stuff is definitely doable.

How are girls and women doing in the Ottawa music scene?
Duncan: Well, it's been my experience that everyone is pretty supportive actually. I've had a really great positive experience playing music here. I mean, there's jerks everywhere, so obviously there's been a couple eye roll moments but overall the people who are the leaders in the community anyway are very conscious and supportive and positive.

The Black Pussy incident at House of Targ, do you have thoughts on that? Do you know anything about it? Is that a problem or is it a one-time thing in Ottawa?
Duncan: Yeah that's a touchy one. My band played there [recently]. I can't speak for anybody. I think that some people still feel uncomfortable there and that was the problem. Their response to that created what was an unsafe space for a specific demographic in the community and I feel like that maybe hasn't gone away for everybody. But I'll speak for myself, we played there because I feel like the more there are women on stage in spaces that are perceived that way I feel like that might help.

Break it up, yeah for sure.
Duncan: That was my thinking, it's not going to do any good to have less women on stage in this scenario so we played. We're called Bonnie Doon.
Bergeron: And the guys at Targ have actually been really supportive of the camp the past few years. We had a fundraising launch there and we've had bands raise funds on our behalf that are playing there. They are really big supporters so they do support women in music for sure.

Do you have any great anecdotes about campers? People who really shined, someone who didn't know anything but was able to walk out jamming a drum solo.
Bergeron: I think that happens every year actually.
Duncan: Yeah, this band played "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath and nailed it. We were all like "Woah!"

Bergeron: And we've had a lot of campers with anxiety issues, some of them it's a push to get to camp. They don't show up and you give them a call and say, "Hey what's going on?" And they're like, "uhhh I don't know if I can handle it," and by the end they're rocking out on stage and having a blast and making friends and surprising themselves. Every year you see the transformation of the girls from day one. There's always the outgoing ones and there's always the ones who are a bit more in their shell, but just the transformation is pretty awesome.
Duncan: Yeah it was nice, two of the teachers went out of their way to phone and check-in everyday with a couple girls who were too nervous to come. Another girl came and was overwhelmed and on her way out a teacher took her one-on-one and kept her comfortable and they worked together then she stayed.

That's awesome.
Bergeron: That's happened a few times over the years where we've had campers that are really struggling but sometimes it just takes one-on-one time and for them to ease into it and yeah there's always campers who take up an instrument really quickly, it's inspiring.
Duncan: Like girls who are singing and playing the drums, I still haven't figured that out.
Bergeron: They don't tell them that that it's hard to do. It's hard to learn an instrument and sing at the same time and they don't tell the kids that, so they just assume that "Okay, this what I'm supposed to do" and they learn how to do it right away; learn an instrument and to sing at the same time and they're doing it all in the same day.

That's pretty great, really fast turn around. Where do the instruments come from now? Where does all the gear come from?
Duncan: Long and McQuade donates all the instruments.
Bergeron: And the drum kits are at the rehearsal studio.

The camp is totally donation based so what are you biggest sources of income? What are some of the challenges you face?
Duncan: Our income has come mostly from our fundraisers and intermittent donations. We mostly hold our own fundraising events, but Town restaurant does an annual evening where they donate a portion of their proceeds from a weekend dinner service that is always very generous and wonderful. We've had a lot of support in the past from Targ as well. Some challenges we face are mostly around expanding operations. We are looking to branch into public funding to build up a bit more of an operating budget for year-round activities. This means beefing up our governance stuff a bit and maintaining our stability as a board. So far so good, though!

Griffin Elliot is a writer based in Ottawa. Follow him on Twitter.