What made a city boy’s first fish a keeper
A look at simple joys as the Star launches its 115th annual campaign to give urban kids a break
We’d canoed, hiked, picked berries and roasted marshmallows. But for my son Colum, then 6, it was all just a backdrop for the fishing. He was still standing on the dock casting out into the lake again and again as the constellations pierced the black sky, the rest of the group sat singing around the campfire, and the mosquitoes feasted on him until his face and hands were swollen with bumps on top of bumps.
He was on his second container of worms of the day, and his second change of clothes after following his line into the water, but he was still holding out hope of catching the first fish of his life.
“Get the net, Dad. I think they’re ready to bite. Get the net.”
I stood by with the net in one hand, a folded newspaper in my other hand swinging frantically around him in an effort to shoo the swarms of bugs away. I was still waiting to catch the first fish of my life too, at that point. I wasn’t confident in his chances.
But I was ecstatic to continue breathing the night air watching this city kid son of city parents obsess over his new outdoors hobby, suddenly more absorbing and more exciting for him than any of his video games or comic books or television shows.
In my adult life, I haven’t been what you’d call a great outdoorsman — I’m closer to a consummate indoorsman, to be honest — but watching Colum fish, and his sister Irene cook things on sticks over an open flame, and their toddler sister Mary romp through the forested paths like an overgrown chipmunk, I was taken back to my own early experiences as a summer camper. Where on weeks away I’d learn not just about swimming in lake water and singing “Down by the Bay” and making s’mores, but about identifying constellations, building fires and tying knots, while making friends and understanding the great ecosystem that lies outside cities. Learning about the world, and about myself.
And fishing, of course. Unsuccessfully, but happily.
“You have the net?” Colum asked. Reflecting on how camping had helped shape me, I thought: I need to make sure my kids get the opportunity to continue to experience this as they grow up.
This story marks the kick-off of the Toronto Star’s 115th annual Fresh Air Fund campaign, and it gives you, our readers, the chance to make sure kids in Toronto can develop those precious camp memories as they grow up. The fund works with 106 camps — 54 residential ones and 52 day camps — to support underprivileged city kids and those with special needs in gaining the life experiences, the friendships and the knowledge of the world that comes from the summer camp experience.
The fund was founded by crusading journalist John J. Kelso — who also founded the Toronto Humane Society and the Santa Claus Fund — in 1901 to provide excursions to lakeside parks (including the Toronto Islands) to needy children so they could enjoy the fresh air and natural environment. It was an idea that served tens of thousands of children in its early years and was copied in other cities abroad.
Kelso’s cause was adopted (along with the Santa Claus Fund) by crusading Toronto Star publisher Joseph Atkinson, whose principles of community service and social justice continue to guide the paper today. And in keeping with those principles, we carry on the Fresh Air Fund, giving new generations of Toronto children formative summer experiences that last a lifetime.
“We are very proud of the Toronto Star Fresh Air Fund’s tradition of providing young people in the Greater Toronto Area with a chance to enjoy the unique experience of summer camp,” says Star publisher John Cruickshank.
These days, 25,000 children every year benefit through the fund. Cruickshank notes that the success of the program is made possible, as it always has been, through readers like you.
“The generous donations of our readers can make a real difference for these children by giving them opportunities they might not have,” he says. “Summer camp can open a whole new world for them.”
The Fund’s goal this year is set at $650,000 — a relatively modest sum in a big city like Toronto, that makes a massive difference in the lives of children: it gives them the opportunity to experience more of what the world has to offer, to learn to build campfires and craft bracelets and ward off bugs and explore the world outside their neighbourhoods.
It gives them the chance to make new friends and develop new skills and the freedom to just wander around outside their day-to-day routine, to enjoy the summer warmth and play. I’m sure many of their parents would appreciate the same opportunity to temporarily escape the grind of their city lives, but I’m equally sure many enjoy the break offered when their kids get away for a while.
And I can understand first hand the joy those parents feel knowing their children are immersed in a new experience of a different world, seeing their minds and hearts open up.
“I got one! I got one!” Colum shouted, back on the dock, as his rod bent into the shape of a horseshoe. He turned the reel fitfully, welping in surprise as much as joy at the struggling creature tugging it from beneath the water. I was there with the net, as he’d advised me to be.
Finally he pulled a fish out of the water, a lake bass, only a hand’s length long. Too small to keep. But after I showed him how, Colum held the fish with me, keeping its sharp dorsal fins down, as I extracted the hook. And we put it back into the lake.
Not a keeper, but his first fish nonetheless, and one he’ll remember as among his first triumphant camping experiences. One of the first of many. If you have benefited from the Star’s Fresh Air Fund or have a story to tell, email lferenc@thestar.ca.