‘Lady of the lake’ gets hero’s welcome
Annaleise showered with thanks on a visit to Camp Trillium
Applause erupted Wednesday as Annaleise Carr stepped into the Camp Trillium dining hall for the first time since her record swim across Lake Ontario last weekend.
That feat, which made her the youngest person ever to swim the classic route across the lake, raised more than $135,000 for the camp, which provides a place for children with cancer to forget about hospitals and tests and have fun.
Campers at the camp’s Rainbow Lake location, near Simcoe, Ont., crowded around Carr, giving her hugs and asking for autographs.
Her father, Jeff, brought a stack of five-x-seven-inch photos and a marker so the doting youths could get a memento of the girl the legendary Marilyn Bell herself dubbed the new “Lady of the Lake.”
Just14, Carr was torn between fulfilling her obligations as a role model and her attraction to the craft table and spending time with the other kids making fancy magnets.
Counsellors and kids at the camp planned a re-enactment of Carr’s swim that added in an embellished detail: a rogue shark. Kids wore goggles and swim caps with Carr’s name written in dry-erase marker.
“You can’t think about it without tearing up,” said Sitara De Gagne, a family member who was at the camp Wednesday. “What it means to the camp is unbelievable.”
De Gagne’s 5-year-old son, Hunter Kemp, sat perched on her other son’s shoulders, bright red hair hanging in his face. Hunter was diagnosed with leukemia at age 2.
Hunter came to Camp Trillium for family visit day with his brother Josh, 18, and little sister Willow, who is just 18 months old.
It costs about $1,000 to send a child to Camp Trillium for a week, meaning that Carr’s feat will buy a week at camp for at least 135 kids with cancer.
“It’s no longer our best-kept secret,” said Fiona Fisher, fundraising director for the camp.
She applauded Carr’s swim not only for raising money but also for putting Camp Trillium in the minds of others planning fundraisers, including Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which has contacted the camp about an event later this year.
Carr embarked on the swim after she visited the camp with her running and swimming team as part of a fundraiser they were doing. She entered the water at about 6 p.m. last Saturday at Queen’s Royal Park in Niagara-on-the-Lake. At the time, she had reached her fundraising goal of $30,000.
“You can’t think about it without tearing up. What it means to the camp is unbelievable.” SITARA DE GAGNE MOTHER OF 5-YEAR-OLD CAMPER
That figure would nearly quadruple over the course of the swim, with updates given by the crew ev- ery step of the way. A night of high winds and waves on Saturday left Carr exhausted. The sun helped, but her pace picked up substantially when the announcement was made that she had reached her next fundraising goal of $50,000. By the time she made landfall at Marilyn Bell Park in Toronto, 27 hours after entering the lake, donations had mounted to more than $115,000 — and more were rolling in every minute. Fisher notes that while donations have slowed now, they’re still coming in from around the world. Donations can be made through the Camp Trillium website or by phone at 905-527-1992.