Less Than Lost
A camp administrator’s reflection on Covid19, Summer 2020
I have seen a lot of camps and people in our industry referring to Summer 2020 as the “Lost Summer”. While I am sure this is the reality - or at the very least the way it feels - for many of our friends, I wanted to share a reflection at the end of our “Less Than Lost Summer” here at Camp Brébeuf.
On May 19, when the Ontario government announced that overnight camps would not be allowed to run in the province due to COVID-19, I had already been laid off for nearly two months. The Outdoor Education program I run at C.Y.O. Camp Brébeuf in Rockwood, Ontario had been fighting for survival for months prior to the announcement, as first the threat of teachers’ strikes and later the closure of schools due to the pandemic decimated our business. As a nonprofit agency, the loss of our two biggest seasons for revenue generation - year-end school trips in May and June, and our concurrent overnight and day camps in the summer - looked to be just about the end of the line. 79 years after Camp Brébeuf opened in 1941, it was a very real possibility that we would have to close our doors forever.
But we are camp people. We are used to making something out of nothing. We are used to facing impossible odds and winning. We are used to taking on problems that no one else can solve, and turning them into golden opportunities. So the small staff contingent who had been kept on during the worsening pandemic convened a council of alumni and friends - camp superstars from across generations, “idea people” who would show up and speak out and help us stay afloat. These were not financial whales from whom we hoped to land large grants and donations; they were not well-connected in government and business with contacts who may have been able to bail us out; they were us. They were campers and staff who had lived the reality of camps across the country for decades: making magic and changing lives with less than nothing. This small crew volunteered their time, ideas, and talents across video conferences and visits to a quiet, shut down camp. Soon, plans were rolling.
First, a campaign. Remind people of the value of camp in their lives. Perhaps we have helped a parent with much-needed childcare. Perhaps they met their future spouse while they were both on staff. Perhaps their parents came to camp, and their grandparents before them. A reminder that once, maybe last summer or 50 summers ago, their life was made a little better by the fact that camp existed. A hashtag, #KeepCYOWhole, to remind people that we do more than just camps - we run athletics and outdoor education and youth ministry initiatives for young people across southern Ontario. Video content and testimonials and word-of-mouth appeals; this team got to work.
Next, a crossroads. The province announced that day camps would be able to run, if they could put in place the proper health and safety practices and limitations to avoid spreading the virus. Could we really reopen? Could we afford the changes required, while also limiting our enrollment to less than half our typical numbers? Could we find staff who could be trained quickly, but also be trusted with immense responsibility to keep vulnerable children safe in a pandemic? Would those staff be willing to take the huge personal risks involved in going back to work in the midst of everything?
We decided not only that we could, but that we must. Not for financial reasons - running our limited day camp at one of two facilities, while leaving the other shut down completely, is not making back any of the revenue lost to the closure of outdoor education and overnight camp. In fact, it barely breaks even. But we decided that it was worth it for the kids and families whom it would serve. It would give parents who had been avoiding a return to work with kids at home a chance to start earning again. It would give kids an outlet for months of pent-up energy and creativity. It would give communities who had been homebound for months the chance to get back to nature and be outside. This was confirmed almost immediately when we opened up registration for a shortened summer with tightly capped numbers and sold out within days. Now we were committed. No going back. It would be a ton of work, and the financial payoff would be slim, but it would be the right decision. Because we are camp people. This is what we do.
As we enter our final week of summer day camp (with no cases of COVID-19, knock on wood!) and prepare ourselves against a return to uncertainty in the fall, still none of this feels normal. The campfire circle sits dormant; no fire stirs the ashes, no voices lift in song under the dazzling summer stars. The pavilion lies empty; no skits and airbands, no end-of-the-week social where the night hums with music and the endless possibility of youth. Nature reclaims trails and campsites unused since last autumn; no small feet follow big ones, trusting them to lead the way and never falter. Seventy staff living on site and forming lifelong friendships became seven, commuting in each day and waving to each other from a distance. No counselors in training, no one-to-one programs for children with special needs, no sleepouts under the stars. A Lost Summer.
Except that it wasn’t. At least not entirely. For in the dark, a small group of dedicated people kept the flame burning. Summer camp ran - not like it ever had before, but it ran. People donated - hundreds of them - what little they could spare in the most uncertain financial times in a century, and the lights stayed on. Volunteers showed up - in masks, with ten feet between them - and cut back the brush from trails, cleaned the algae from the pool, and rebuild things that were broken. And every morning, campers came. They drove up the laneway to a checkpoint where their temperatures were taken and their health was screened, and they wore masks, and they stayed with the same small group all day, and still they had fun. For a few precious hours there was no pandemic, there was only camp. They reminded us that camp is not the bells and whistles; it is not the activities we do or the traditions we keep; it is not even the place itself. Camp is not a noun. Like love, it is a verb. Camp is the thing we do when we take everything we have, no matter how little, and everything we are, no matter how small, and we use it to create a small spark of magic in the lives of young people. And how can that ever be lost?
