Closure of Y’s summer camp for girls may be permanent

YMCA-YWCA reviewing future of facility that’s been open since 1946

For the first time in 69 years, Camp Davern did not open its doors this summer.

And the overnight summer camp for girls at Maberly, 100 kilometres west of Ottawa, may be closed for good if its operator, the YMCAYWCA, can’t find a way to address declining registration numbers.

The camp is “not a financially sustainable model as it exists today” according to a release from the YMCA-YWCA, which said it is reviewing the future of the facility that opened in 1946.

Spokesman Rob Adams said registrations have been slipping since 2010, and dropped to 307 in 2014 from 337 a year earlier.

“Having to decide to close Davern was never an easy decision,” Adams said, “but with the marketplace and the eroding numbers, we’ve decided to focus on our outdoor education centre and our regional day camps for this year.”

Camp officials also cited the competitive marketplace and the consideration of capital investment as factors in the decision.

Families paid between $300 and $1,500 to send a daughter to the camp, depending on the length of stay and program. But parents and campers didn’t seem to feel the same draw there once was to Davern, a traditional summer camp designed to develop leadership and outdoor skills for girls between six and 16, said Adams.

Possible reasons for this, he said, could include “shifting priorities for families and an increase in other specialty camps and activities to choose from.”

Yet as the area’s sole girls-only camp operated by the YMCAYWCA, it has spawned a tight-knit community.

“Once you’re a Davern girl, you’re always a Davern girl regardless,” said Adams, the organization’s associate vice-president of child care, camping and youth engagement.

“I’m a male in charge of (the camp) and I consider myself a Davern girl. There’s definite history to that, and loyalty and love for what camp has done for them.”

Camp alumna Megan Bennett agreed. She spoke fondly about swimming lessons in the lake, card games and setting up tarps on rainy days. But overall, she said, the experience was made that much better through the friendships and connections she established.

“At camps, especially, there’s a community that’s built through summers, going back every year, friends that you have at camp that you stay in touch with,” she said. “There’s something magical about a summer at a camp. Those relationships, those memories, that experience in nature, in the wild, connecting to other girls your age … it’s a very special time. I’m sure it kind of sears into many girls’ hearts and stays with them.”

Bennett, who attended in the early 1990s for “two or three summers” and was a member of the camp’s leader-in-training program, credits Camp Davern for a love of canoeing that she now shares with her two young daughters.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the camp’s future — Adams said the possibility of reopening is “still being evaluated” — its legacy will live on.

“I think there’s a lot of positive stories being created with the camps that we have now, which is continuing that Davern tradition,” he said. “It’s just not under the Davern name.”

I’m a male in charge of (the camp) and I consider myself a Davern girl. There’s definite history to that.