{"id":9002,"date":"2014-11-19T15:33:50","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T20:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9002"},"modified":"2014-11-26T13:11:36","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T18:11:36","slug":"gold-seal-of-approval-from-duke-of-ed-and-princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/gold-seal-of-approval-from-duke-of-ed-and-princess\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold seal of approval from “Duke of Ed” and Princess"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Photo by Grant Martin Photography)<\/em><\/p>\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

As she approached the podium at Ottawa\u2019s Chateau Laurier Hotel last week, the one thing weighing on Aurora student Shannon Cumiskey\u2019s mind was the fear of forgetting what to say or, worse, tripping up the stairs in front of a packed house.<\/p>\n

For someone who travelled to Kenya to help build a school and undertook two four-day dogsledding excursions in Northern Ontario, those might seem like relatively pedestrian fears, but last Monday, November 10, was no ordinary day for the Queen\u2019s University student.<\/p>\n

Shannon, accompanied by her family, was in Ottawa to receive the Duke of Edinburgh\u2019s Gold Award from The Princess Royal.<\/p>\n

Before she and her fellow award recipients were brought into the hotel\u2019s ballroom with bagpipers, organizers were given a brief pep talk on what to expect on meeting and receiving their respective awards from the daughter of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. It was, however, a lot to take in.
\n\u201cI was one of the last people to go up on stage and everyone had curtsied so gracefully and had lovely little chats with Princess Anne,\u201d Shannon recalls. \u201cWe were told before how to curtsy and how to bow, how to address her and all those guidelines, and I was so nervous that I would mess up, forget what I was going to say, or trip up the stairs in front of everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Shannon, what was about to happen was the culmination of a nearly seven year journey on the road to gold. She first started down this path as a high school student at Newmarket\u2019s Pickering College, encouraged by the enthusiasm for the program shared by her teachers.<\/p>\n

The Duke of Edinburgh Awards were founded by Prince Philip in the 1950s to get youth out to experience the world around them, get far beyond their comfort zones and give back to the community. Last year, it celebrated its 50th anniversary in Canada.<\/p>\n

To complete her Community Service component of the award, Shannon began volunteering as a timekeeper for the Ontario Minor Hockey Association and Newmarket Hockey League, before graduating to overseas work in Kenya and through Oxfam.<\/p>\n

While the program encourages you to hone your skills in selected areas \u2013 Shannon focused on driving and cooking \u2013 it also encourages one\u2019s adventurous side. Hence, the dogsledding treks up north. Physical recreation is also an integral component where Shannon built upon her swimming and skills in cross country running. <\/p>\n

\u201cI really got into it, and after a while it didn\u2019t really seem like I was working hard towards a specific goal,\u201d she says. \u201cIt became something I really wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each year, Pickering College takes a select group of students overseas to work on particular projects. Shannon\u2019s brother blazed the trail to Kenya the year before she had the opportunity to go. She describes her brother as a \u201cquiet guy in high school\u201d but came back a changed kid, who couldn\u2019t stop talking about the experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came back and just felt like a rock star from the whole thing and I wanted to experience that as well,\u201d she says. \u201cI thought it was really cool that on my trip we were going back to the same village my brother worked at knowing he started one of the schools there and we got to finish it.\u201d
\nThe dogsledding trips were also facilitated by Pickering College, but Shannon says she was initially hesitant to take the plunge. She enjoyed it so much that when a second opportunity to go presented itself she snapped it up. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was such an amazing experience,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you had asked me before if I ever wanted to go dogsledding, I don\u2019t think I would have said yes. I am not normally someone who really likes the cold, and it seemed like a pretty big step outside my comfort zone, but after going once it was one of the most fun things I have ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

One disappointment for her was she ran out of time to finish her gold Duke of Edinburgh Award while she was in high school, but she worked hard in her early days at university to finish it independently of her school. When she arrived in Ottawa to receive the accolade for all her hard work, a path shared with so many others in the room, it was a moving experience. <\/p>\n

And to receive the award in person from Princess Anne just added to the lustre.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got up there she was such a nice lady and she made me feel so calm,\u201d says Shannon. \u201cShe is very relatable from what I experienced and she was interested I finished the award as an independent participant. I thought she was going to be a bit stiff and not very chatty, but\u2026there were about 90 of us and she took time with each person and chatted about what they were doing with their lives. It would have been so easy for her just to shake our hand and send us off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shannon is currently studying concurrent education at Queen\u2019s University, presently in the high school education stream. Although she has her eye on teaching, she says she is not sure whether this will be her ultimate goal. Law and art therapy are a particular draw for her and avenues she intends to explore later in her education. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe [Duke of Edinburgh Awards] instilled a lot of confidence in me,\u201d she says. \u201cIt helped me step out of my comfort zone. I learned I can set a really high goal for myself and I know with hard work I will achieve it.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photo by Grant Martin Photography) By Brock Weir As she approached the podium at Ottawa\u2019s Chateau Laurier Hotel last week, the one thing weighing on Aurora student Shannon Cumiskey\u2019s mind was the fear of forgetting what to say or, worse, tripping up the stairs in front of a packed house. For someone who travelled to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2lc","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-14 15:41:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/2014-11-20-01.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}