History

     River's Edge camp is located 45 minutes from Calgary in a town called Water Valley.  We have operated at this site since 1998.  However, the history of the property extends much further back than that.  In the mid 1950s a couple purchased a half section of lands.  Their names are Roy and Jean Luyendyk.  They are an ordinary couple that did amazing things through their life.  Over the course of their lives they have adopted 22 children, 14 of which are from overseas.  This was on top of the 5 children they birthed.  This gained Roy and Jean a reputation for helping at risk youth and this lead them to open a Children's Home in which they fostered unwanted children.  It eventually became known as the Cremona Valley Children's Home and operated until 1995.  Over the years this site was home to roughly 500 children, some stayed a couple of months and some a number of years.  The home was later handed over to Kelly, Roy and Jean's son, and his wife Sein who continued the home until 1995.  At that time Kelly and Sein were called to move to Paga New Guinea as missionaries.  The Luyendyk's were then looking for a new occupants for the land. 

       At that time, the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada was looking for a camp property that would replace the two camps they had when the denomination was formed in 1990. Both these camps, James River Bible Camp (Missionary Churches) and Elkton Valley Bible Camp (Evangelical Churches) had a long history of camp ministries and tent revival meetings dating back to the early 1900’s. In 1998 River’s Edge Camping Association was formed to amalgamate the two camp ministries into one. And the rest, as they say is history.