Camp Towhee celebrates 50 years of building confidence
Campers escape isolation and gain self-esteem and lasting friendships
The feeling of belonging makes Camp Towhee a special place in the Haliburton Highlands. It’s a lakeside oasis where the lives of kids and teens have been enriched for half a century.
Young people aged 10 to 18 with learning disabilities and mental-health issues gain self-esteem and learn to cope under pressure through adventure, nature and art-based summer programs supervised by a qualified staff, some who returned as adults to work in an environment that altered the trajectory of their own difficult early lives.
Families who can afford to send their kids to Camp Towhee pay for two- and threeweek sessions, and those who can’t are subsidized through donations and sponsors such as the Star’s Fresh Air Fund.
As many as 300 people — including former campers, grateful parents, current and past counsellors and support staff — will be there for Towhee’s 50th anniversary celebration on June 16. Jennifer Hooker will be among them, along with some of the friends she made in 1989, camp chums she’s still in touch with nearly 30 years after they attended the inspiring summer program.
A registered early childhood educator for the past 20 years, Hooker is the co-ordinator at Family Resource Connection Early On Child and Family Centre in Toronto’s east end, and part of a group of family and child service professionals who developed the special needs and inclusion competency guidelines for Ontario Early Years Centres’ practitioner’s tool kit.
She credits much of her success, and her “lifelong connection” with former campmates and staff, to her summer at Towhee as a 12-year-old, which marked a series of “firsts” for her.
“It was life-changing,” Hooker recalled. “As a kid, I had a lot of confidence issues, and to a degree afterwards, but it taught me to believe in myself and to try things. I scored my first basket there, put my first ball through a hoop.”
“I remember one of the very first things I did was getting across a rope tied from one tree to another. It took an entire afternoon, but I did it safely with guidance from the staff and no one rushing me. When I made it, everyone clapped and cheered. It was the first time I made so many friends.” The residential summer camp’s positive effect on so many young people over the decades is abundantly clear to Nicola Bangham, the camp’s program manager with the Child Development Institute, which oversees the camp’s operation.
“I often get phone calls and emails from adults who speak to the impact that just one summer had on their confidence, sense of identity and ability to take risks in their regular lives, because a lot of our kids have been on the social periphery, isolated and bullied as children,” she said. “At Towhee, they got to experience that sense of belonging.”