Feral!

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**Feral!**
Feral! 1998
Feral! 1999
Feral! 2000
Feral! 2001
Feral! 2002
Feral! 2003
Feral! 2004
Feral! 2005
Feral! 2006
Feral! 2007
Feral! 2008

Feral! staff
Feral! guests of honor

Camp Feral! is a furry convention held every year in the wilderness of Ontario, Canada. Traditionally it is an intimate gathering that gathers anywhere from 50 to 100 participants, with the exception in 2006 with 132 registered campers. Camp Feral! has been running since 1998, and is often referred to as being the "uncon" due to its vast differences from hotel-oriented furry events.

1 History
2 Guests of Honour
3 Programming
4 Mascots
5 Sites
- 5.1 Camp Arowhon
- 5.2 Kinark Outdoor Centre
6 References
7 External links

[edit] History

The concept for Feral! was first drawn up during the summer of 1997 over the span of several meetings. Several furs had shown great interest in hosting a furry conference in the Toronto area after having attended the successful Albany AnthroCon 1997 in July. P.Pardus is credited for being the driving force behind starting Feral!, combining two suggestions from locals Terry Wessner and Silfur of a workshop-oriented university and a summer camp respectively.^[1] A committee was soon brought together, including P.Pardus, Terry Wessner, Silfur, Benjamin, and Wilykat.

In a retrospective on Feral! published in Feral! 2007's conbook, Wessner credited the origins of the Feral! name to MelSkunk, stating they were looking for a name that was "evocative without being too open to ridicule". MelSkunk suggested the name, which was immediately adopted by the convention's staff.

While initially a three-day event in its first year, the camp's duration was increased to five days in subsequent years to permit for additional workshops and camp-related activities, making Feral! the longest furry event classified as a convention.

[edit] Guests of Honour

2001*: Uncle Kage, chairman of Anthrocon
2002: Jessica Willard, furry artist and creator of Falstaff
2003: Krahnos and Roxicat, furry artists
2004: Iyu and Aethan, creators of Circles
2005: Anklebones and The Wormwood, furry artists, Sean and Andrew Rabbitt, owners of Rabbit Valley Comics, BanWynn Oakshadow, furry writer
2006: Uncle Kage and 2 the Ranting Gryphon, comedian
2007: Ferris, Gideon Hoss, and Max Blackrabbit, furry artists

Prior to 2001, workshop instructors tended to serve as guests of honour and weren't specifically publicized as such.

[edit] Programming

Though Feral!'s events have not always been the exact same from year to year, some of the more well-established ones have become tradition:

Predator & Prey: Sometimes better known as The Survival Game or The Food Chain Game, participants are split into three groups based on the roles in an ecosystem - carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores, which can eat any animal below them in the chain. The objective of all participants is to consume as many creatures as possible by tagging them while stopping at food and water stations. "Special" roles in the ecosystem (such as disease, fire, etc.) are often performed by Guests of Honour, with amusing results.
Capture the Flag: Teams compete against each other in an all-out fight to get the other team's flag and bring it back to their own goal. The game is played with LARP (live-action roleplay) rules, meaning the foam swords tend to fly.
Cabin Skits: On the penultimate day of the camp, cabins come together to perform skits for the remaining campers. First introduced in 1999, it tends to be one of the more nervewracking events for campers, intimidated by the prospects of getting up and acting in front of their peers - but several memorable skits have come out of this event.

[edit] Mascots

Farley, Feral!'s mascot as first rendered by Benjamin

Feral!'s first mascot was Farley, a distinctly Canadian-looking lynx character created by Benjamin prior to the first edition of the event in 1998. Farley appeared in the first Feral! con book, later entitled the Feral! Survival Guide.

Mascots tended to consist of contributions from artist Guests of Honour to the Survival Guide for the next several years, before being replaced on a more permanent basis by four different clan mascots (tied to Feral!'s introduction of clans, which campers were randomly assigned to for participation in activities). Completed by artist team The Wormwood and Anklebones, each mascot represented one of the four tribes at Feral! - Geist for Earth, Misha for Fire, Aelos for Wind, and Kabalo for Water.

In 2007, furry artists Ferris and Patchouli collaborated to create a new mascot, Pawnie, which now appears full-time on Feral!'s website.

[edit] Sites

[edit] Camp Arowhon

Camp Arowhon is a campground nestled deep in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. With its own lake, its facilities are well-suited to the convention due to the fact that it hosts several summer camps for children during a two-month period throughout the summer (its main log cabin hall for campers, built in 1928, can host almost 350 people). Recent events have been hosted at the conclusion of the camping season, prior to the site undergoing maintenance.

Arowhon hosted the first Feral! in 1998 and again in 2004 through 2007. The event will return to the venue in 2008.

Camp Arowhon website

[edit] Kinark Outdoor Centre

The Kinark Outdoor Centre served as the venue for Feral! from 1999 to 2003. It was first used when Camp Arowhon had no time slot available for Feral! 1999. It is located in the Haliburton Heights region of southeastern Ontario, Canada, very near to a small town named Minden. This venue bears a hilly terrain with its own lake, which quickly earned the nick name of "Lake Nestea" due to the particles of leaves from the nearby trees (tannin) that gave the water a deep golden hue. Where Arowhon excelled in rustic charm, Kinark had the advantage of being a more modern facility which had a few class room spaces with good resources available for workshops.