Rediscovering great outdoors changed my life
As pandemic taught us, spending time outside is key if we want to thrive
VICTORIA—There’s this anecdote my dad tells of the one time our family went camping when my sister and I were really small kids.
I was three and so I borrow this memory from him. But reportedly, as my dad and I took a walk out to the beach at Pinery Provincial Park near Grand Bend, with the waves of Lake Huron rhythmically hitting the white sand, I said: “Dad, I could live here forever.”
His reply was, “You can,” suggesting he could leave me there and so grant my wish. (He still laughs when he tells this punch line.)
A quarter-century later, I think about that anecdoteturned-implanted memory often. There’s a through-line somewhere in the history of my mostly urban-dwelling life between that moment at the Pinery and an evening last March, the day the pandemic was declared. On that evening I found myself on an ocean shore in Vancouver, watching kids dip their toes tentatively into the icy water and feeling suddenly certain that there would be a way to get through the isolation of the pandemic: by reconnecting with the outdoors.
That’s what the Star is helping kids do — and has been doing since 1901 — with its Fresh Air Fund.
The Toronto Star raises money every year to send kids to summer camp. This year, we’re working toward a goal of $650,000, and we’re asking our generous readers to make a donation so Toronto kids can attend one of 109 Fresh Air Fund summer camps and have the time of their lives.
Reconnecting with the outdoors for improving mental and physical health is personal to me. I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was for fresh air and movement in my teens and early 20s, living an indoor-first lifestyle in Toronto. It was moving to B.C. about three years ago — where the outdoors is everyone’s de-facto living room — that brought out the threeyear-old creature-of-the-Earth inside my adult self.
Now I’m a convert. I finally get what wiser people have been writing about and telling me my whole life, that spending time and moving around in the outdoors is a human need on the level of laughter and physical touch. You can survive without it, but it’s a key part of thriving.
That’s why I’ve been adamant since the beginning of the pandemic that governments should not be closing down outdoor spaces. And it’s why I’m glad to see Ontario Premier Doug Ford is allowing summer camps for kids to continue this year, with some extra precautions such as masking and cohorts. In this way, the Fresh Air Fund will continue to help kids get outside.
Have you ever listened to a kid talking about summer camp? It’s amazing how much they get right about what matters in life in the stories they tell: the friends they met; the best and worst chores assigned to them; the gratification of mastering their first trip in a canoe.
Whenever I think about the benefits of summer camp I imagine my little cousin Jack — though he’s going to university next year and not so little anymore — who spent his childhood summers canoeing and swimming in lakes with friends from all over the province and honing a love of music at music camp.
I’ve always admired Jack’s outdoor-first attitude, his eagerness to go outside and swim, play sports and invite anyone who’s willing to join, even if they’ve never played before. I asked him what he thought he learned at camp that he still draws on today.
He said it was “learning to socialize and meet new people.”
“At school, it was the same people from Grade 1 to Grade 8. Going to camp, you meet a whole bunch of new people, and you learn to relate to them,” he said. “Especially now, going to university next year, I think it’s going to be very similar.”
And there’s the daring aspect, too: taking swim tests to be allowed to go longer and farther in a lake with friends and encouraging new friends to join.
It’s entirely different from school. “It’s a different drive, grades versus just wanting to do it,” he said.
What a great way to explore.