Past Quests
Summer 2024
Quest 1 was held in August, 2024. Eleven young people ages 17–24 joined the Liminal Learning hosts in Algonquin Provincial Park. There were campfires and canoes, exercises in contemplation and self-reflection, and an invitation to get real together — being vulnerable with our hopes, dreams, and fears about living a meaningful life.
The 11 — self-coined “the Pioneers” — are now participating in the 12-month follow-up program.
Upcoming Quests
Ontario, Canada
May 2025
We invite young people who are navigating the transition from high school to study and/or work (ages ~18-24).
You’ll join a dozen other explorers in nature. There will be campfires and canoes. You'll work hard in ways you might not expect — in understanding yourself, getting real together, and being vulnerable with your hopes, dreams, and fears. You'll need the courage to try, to make mistakes. To take on the big questions and the unknown.
Applications open 2025.
Sign up for news about future Quests in Canada, UK, and Europe
Location
Algonquin Wildlife Research Station
Algonquin is Micmac for “at the place of spearing fish and eels”.
For 8,000 years — 8,000! — Native peoples lived and moved through this magical land parcel, and after an unchecked chapter of logging, Algonquin Park was established in 1893. Soon after, Tom Thomson and the rest of the Group of Seven fell in love (and inspired legions to do the same) with the Park’s 2400 lakes, 1200 kilometres of rivers and streams, and all those flora and fauna that reveal themselves if we’re patient and attentive.
Moose, wolves, beavers, deer, bogs, swamps, deciduous and coniferous forests side-by-side, trout, loons, grouse, bunting, salamanders, turtles, snakes, bears, and yes, blackflies and mosquitoes. Fall colours along highway 60 that might just win the planet. There is so much here.
We are very grateful to be within a small list of friends and partners who can access the magical Algonquin Wildlife Research Station for our Quest. The Research Station has been the queen bee of Algonquin since 1944, home to the critical work of deciphering how humans and the land and its furry and scaly and winged and more can live in harmony.
What to expect
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Landing
Sensing
Knowing
Realizing
Launching
🍴🍁🚣♀️📷
AM
Arrival
How do we perceive?
How do we know?
A future worth living for
Courage & commitments
🕒🍴🍁🚣♀️📷
PM
Where are we?
Ways of seeing
How do we really know?
Imagination and beauty
How do we act and change?
🕒🍴📷🔥🌌
This example schedule shows the ‘arc’ of a Quest, from landing to communal launch into adulthood. In practice, each Quest will be designed for the distinct group of young people taking part, and will encourage participatory and emergent design.
A day in detail
Day 3: Knowing
AM
5 - 7
Invitation to photography blinds for moose feeding times. Free time/sleep-in for others!
7 - 8
Invitation to a swim or paddle.
8 - 9
Breakfast & morning huddle with crews (smaller groups of 3-4 explorers)
9 - 12
HOW DO WE KNOW?
Values, Virtues & Truth: exploration of personal experiences and practical philosophy
Reason, Intuition, & the Unknown: exploration of ways of knowing, degrees of ‘truth’
PM
12 - 2
Invitation to writing/reading/reflection in pairs. Free time, nature walk/fishing for others. Drop-in or pick-up lunch.
2 -4:30
HOW DO WE REALLY KNOW?
Neither/Nor: principles and exercises
Application of morning session concepts to our present lives
4:30 - 6
Free time. Explorer-led offerings.
6 - 7:30
Dinner
7:30 -
Invitation to sunset paddle, bonfire, storytelling, music, wolf howl. Free time.
Bedtime!
How we sustain
After the Quest
From wonder to world-building
Transformation is fast and slow. It comes in a flash of experience and over many months or years in changed habits, relationships, “real life”.
Our Quests are designed for the fast — breakthrough transformative experiences. They inspire young people to shift from worry to wonder.
Our 12-month post-Quest program is designed for the slow — integration, implementation, and self-authored development. It inspires young people to shift from wonder to world-building, in the form of Heists.
From worry, to wonder, to world-building. We'll support real change with our founding team's various expertise in experience design, space-holding (digital, offline, and hybrid), technology for good, education, and entrepreneurship.
In conversation
At the Liminal Post you'll find interviews with young people contemplating our program and their transition into adulthood.
“I've been changing a lot. Six months ago I would not have taken the opportunity to take that project… I would have been too scared.”
Students Eva & Nacho