Thank you for helping the Fresh Air Fund send kids to camp
‘This pandemic year is filled with lessons, but one strong one is this: outdoor space itself is privilege,’ Bruce Arthur writes. ‘… The rich have long sent their kids to Muskoka while the poor send their kids to the park. And this was the year the playgrounds closed.’
I asked my five-year-old daughter what she remembered from our July camping trip. She said, “Moths.”
There was more, of course. All four kids rode their bikes up and down the campsite hills, exploring; the boys named the two roadkill chipmunks Squishy and Squashy, which they got from my old FoxTrot comic books. We had campfires and ate s’mores. We cooked breakfast on the portable stove and slept in the rough luxury of sleeping bags and air mattresses in our weathered eight-man tent. Our family loves camping. We go a few times every year. We were camping in Bon Echo Provincial Park. It’s beautiful there. But bad weather had wiped out our reservations three years running, and before we had kids my wife and I camped at Bon Echo and a tornado touched down at the other end of the park. We hadn’t been back.
And we were there, finally. It’s stunning: there are over 250 Indigenous pictographs painted on Mazinaw Rock, which rises 300 feet out of the lake. Many are near the water level and were probably painted from boats; the pictographs have been designated as a national historic site. The Group of Seven painted there when it was an artists’ haven run by prominent suffragette Flora MacDonald Denison. It is a beautiful place, even if the canoe rentals are closed.
But, the moths. And there were other bug issues, of course. We went to a largely abandoned beach and it was great until the only other family there left in a rush; my wife heard them say, I don’t know how they aren’t getting bitten. Their question was answered seconds later when the blackflies came for us, vicious and bloodthirsty and wicked. We flapped through the forest, running for our lives.
You can spray yourselves with chemicals to ward off the biting bugs. But there was nothing to be done about the clouds of gypsy moths that fluttered everywhere.
“Moths flying right into my face,” said my five-year-old.
Camping is about both discomfort and earned comfort. But the moths were everywhere, fluttering in your eyes, batting at the entry to the tent, dumb enough to end up in your mouth. We ate in the bug shelter a lot. It was a bit of a relief to leave.
And holy, were we lucky to be that uncomfortable. We got out of the house, into the woods, socially distanced, in a place where mom and dad’s phones had no reception, and where the pandemic was therefore reduced from a brain-suffusing global flood to a strictly local concern. We had to wait in line for the bathrooms, make sure the kids washed their hands, remain careful about distancing, and the showers were closed. But otherwise we didn’t think about the pandemic. Highly recommended.
And that is privilege. Owning an eight-man tent, six sleeping bags and bedrolls, a bike rack and bikes, a portable stove, a bug shelter and all the other camping gear that we have carefully curated for 20 years is privilege.
This pandemic year is filled with lessons, but one strong one is this: outdoor space itself is privilege. The pandemic is a mirror, and the virus preys on the most vulnerable and the reflection is stunning. Half of Toronto belongs to a racialized group and they accounted for 83 per cent of the COVID cases in the city. The bottom two earning tiers represent 29 per cent of the city and 53 per cent of cases. If you live in the northwest corner of the city, which is primarily Black, you have been especially failed.
Money in Ontario has always meant safety and comfort, and never more than now. With money you get a bigger house, maybe a cottage, access to health care and the luxury of being able to self-isolate at home. If you brought the virus back from the work you couldn’t do from home, to a two-bedroom apartment and a family of four, everyone got it.
It’s essentially the same divide that longtime Star publisher Joe Atkinson saw back in 1901, when the Fresh Air Fund was created to send underprivileged kids to camp. The rich have long sent their kids to Muskoka while the poor send their kids to the park. And this year, the playgrounds closed.
We still do this, even this year, to a degree. This year, the Star is still trying to send disadvantaged and special-needs kids to day camps. And even if it is less than we could normally offer them, it’s never been clearer that the need exists. Like Canada, Toronto likes to tell itself that everyone gets a fair shot, that everyone is welcome.
But the structural inequity, and the race-based inequality, are undeniable. This pandemic asked us to barricade ourselves in our homes. Schools closed. The kids have suffered through this, often more than parents.
A 2010 study from the University of Waterloo examined outcomes for day and overnight camps: It found children came out of it with measurable growth in terms of social integration and citizenship; environmental awareness; attitudes toward physical activity, emotional intelligence; and self-confidence and personal development. Girls in particular found much better levels of social integration and citizenship.
Families like mine had the luxury of a yard, outdoor space, a trip where the moths tried to fly into your mouth, and it was a privilege anyway. So many families didn’t and still don’t. You can still help send kids to day camps because kids can be outside safely and some kids won’t otherwise get the chance.
We have spent a lot of time reminding our kids how lucky they are; we remind them all the time that a lot of kids don’t have the luxury of the outdoors and everything that comes with it. A donation to the Fresh Air Fund, in the year the pandemic forced us to look in the mirror, remains one of the best possible ways to help.