Trent hosting unique camp
Camp Fyrefly program will bring 60 LGBTQ youth campers to Peterborough this summer
A new national camp for LGBTQ youth is coming to Peterborough this summer.
Camp Fyrefly will bring 60 campers – and nearly as many volunteers – to Trent University in July.
The camp is a three-day residential retreat for youth between the ages of 14 and 24. It takes place July 13-16 at Trent’s main campus in Peterborough.
It’s an arts-based retreat for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified, two-spirited, intersexed, queer, questioning and allied youth.
Camp Fyrefly already takes place every summer in three cities in Western Canada: Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon.
This is the first Camp Fyerfly in Ontario.
Spencer Harrison, a Peterborough native and Trent graduate who now teaches painting and drawing at OCAD University in Toronto, is the director of the new camp.
“It saves these youths’ lives,” he said. “And then they go on to become amazing leaders in their communities.”
Harrison said the camp is for any LGBTQ young person “who is having trouble navigating their dayto-day life.”
Applications will be accepted online starting March 6 on the camp’s website (www.fyrefly.ualberta.ca/Ontario).
Harrison said he fundraised $80,000 to run the camp this summer. That subsidizes pretty much the entire cost for campers.
Although the cost should be about $1,000 per person, each camper pays just $25 (including food and lodging).
Harrison said he chose Trent as the setting for the camp because this is his hometown and the university is his alma mater.
Jasper Hallows, 23, lives in Toronto and went to the Edmonton camp two years ago. He was at Trent on Friday for the launch of the local camp.
Hallows attended camp while in the midst of a medical transition from a female body to male.
Many LGBTQ youth find solace and community online, he said. The camp offered a face-to-face community that was important.
He made fast friends at camp, he said.
“It’s because you have this shared experience of difficulties, growing up.”
Leo Groarke, the president of Trent University, said he was delighted to welcome the camp.
“I think it works fantastically with our core values,” he said.
One of those core values is diversity, he said, and another is Trent’s commitment to young people as they move into leadership role.
Peterborough-Kawartha MP Maryam Monsef, the Minister of Status of Women, was also at the launch.
She’s a graduate of Trent University and she said she thinks the campus will make a strong impression on campers.
“We know the moment they see this place, they fall in love – and they come back,” she said.
She also said she was immensely pleased this camp is starting in her riding, at the university where she studied.
“I am so happening.” proud this is