City canoe portage helps send kids to camp
Amici Camping Charity lets children ‘learn the skills needed to become leaders’
When Calvin Miller first went to camp at the age of 11, he didn’t expect it to change his life.
“It was a good way to blow off steam,” he says. “I was definitely a troublemaker as a kid. . . . so you know my poor mother needed to find away to deal with my angst and camp was the answer.”
But, he says, the experience — which continued for more than a decade as he went from camper to counsellor — ended up being transformational.
“Being able to persevere is something I learned at camp,” he says. “Camp gives kids so much opportunity they wouldn’t have otherwise had. . . . I wouldn’t have been able to learn the lessons I did in the city.”
Now Miller, 27, is helping raise funds to allow other kids to have the same opportunity he did, through an annual canoe portage in downtown Toronto. More than 100 former campers made the 10-kilometre trip on foot Saturday, raising more than $175,000 (high E. coli levels in the lake prevented the traditional paddling portion).
Kate Horton, the executive director of Amici Camping Charity, says they are sending more than 250 children and teens from low-income families to camps across Ontario this year.
“Kids really learn the skills needed to become leaders in this world. They learn teamwork, resiliency, problem-solving, creativity,” she says.
The charity commits to ensuring the kids can return to camp every year if they want to, she adds.
Two of those kids, Nicholas, 13, and Adrian Costache, 11, are heading to their second year of camp on July 1 with assistance from Amici. Adrian has learned to be a better swimmer. Nicholas was able to overcome his nerves to scale up ropes.
“It’s not just the nature, it’s the whole impact,” their mother Corina Ivan says. “They are more independent, they learned to take turns, they understand other people’s feelings.”