This summer, give a child the space to breathe
Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford haven’t broken their own rules often during this coronavirus pandemic, but when they did stray their transgressions were the same: They went to their cottages.
Both leaders took some heat in the early days of the lockdown for slipping out of town — the prime minister to Harrington Lake in Quebec; the premier to Muskoka. This, despite their own orders for everyone to stay home.
But even if these politicians ignored their own advice, many citizens could also appreciate Ford and Trudeau’s basic human need to escape: to find fresh air.
For all of us — not just political leaders — COVID-19 has been a re-education in the luxury of air to breathe and the space to enjoy it. Throughout much of the spring, many Canadians realized that enjoying nature had become an essential service.
But the pandemic has also laid bare the divisions between those who have access to these luxuries and those who do not.
This is a new situation for the country, but it’s also an old reality too. In 1901, Joseph Atkinson, then publisher of the Daily Star, recognized that access to nature and the great outdoors was a unattainable luxury for too many children living in the city, especially during heat waves like Ontario has been seeing this week.
During that stifling summer, Atkinson established the Star’s Fresh Air Fund, which continues to this day. His idea, as relevant today as it was at the turn of the 20th century, was that this newspaper should be helping children enjoy the outdoors, whether at day camps or in the cottage country that beckons so many of us in the summer — even political leaders.
One thing has changed since 1901 and that’s the amount of money needed to pull this off. In 1901, the $1,025 raised sent 26 children to a farm in Whitby. In 2020, this strange and trying year, the goal is to raise $650,000 so that about 25,000 children can get away to one of the more than 100 camps now associated with the Fresh Air Fund. And if camps are cancelled this summer because of the pandemic, any money raised this year will be carried over to 2021.
Over the years, many Star writers have added their voices to this annual appeal, writing about the need to give and about their own experiences at summer camps.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a town that felt like summer camp from the moment school ended in June. It was Milton, now a growing part of the GTA, but in my childhood it was a small town, still steeped in its rural origins. Farmers’ fields and swimming spots were a bike ride away, as was the Sixteen Mile Creek that we never, ever swung over in a rope tied to an overhanging tree. (That denial is aimed at my mother, who looked dimly on that activity and who might be reading this column.)
Later, in high school and university, I worked summers as a counsellor at the day camps that Milton’s parks and recreation department ran on playgrounds all over the town and nearby communities. I spent idyllic summers working with kids in Campbellville and Brookville, and another couple of years in charge of young teenagers training to be camp counsellors.
Every Friday, all the camps banded together to go on some adventure by bus; usually to Toronto — to the Science Centre or Ontario Place (my two favourites). In this, I guess Milton’s summer campers were headed in the reverse direction of the Fresh Air Fund campers; toward the city instead of away from it. But the point was the same: to have summer adventures you would remember for your whole life, as I certainly have.
I have joked through the years that working with kids in summer camps was perfect preparation for covering political antics, but what it really gave me was an appreciation of a season spent in play and nature — something every child should experience.
This year, more than ever, children need the kind of summer that the Fresh Air Fund can provide — with help from generous donations from Star readers, who know well what kind of weaknesses COVID-19 has exposed in this country.
About a month ago, when the gradual reopening was beginning in Ontario, some commenters on social media found it hard not to notice that the earliest restrictions were lifted for those with means to get away from it all: golfers, cottage and boat owners, and yes, government leaders too. Even as the lockdown was lifting, in other words, the pandemic kept drawing its lines between the haves and the have-nots.
Please consider giving — because it isn’t just political leaders who feel the need to find fresh air this summer. It’s all of us, and especially children.