Bolton Kids Camp

Upon first glance, an abandoned kid’s camp sure doesn’t sound exciting, especially considering the sleepy town it was located in.  However once we arrived and realized how old and extensive the place was we spent two whole days there. This camp must have been a pleasure for city kids to visit while it was operational from the 1930’s onward. It’s actually for sale, and it’s to be hoped that it doesn’t see much traffic other than the local juvenile vandals we ran into who were smashing windows.

Its located on a 340 acre site of varying topography with a water feature for teaching kayaking and swimming. It’s fairly hilly with about a 500 ft elevation change from the top near a recently built school which is now decommissioned, to the lower camp section with 32 wooden cabins, a large main lodge with dining area and auditorium, a repair shop, a caretakers house, a gym and large pool. There are other buildings used for training and dining. The school alone is over 10,000 sq. ft.

Map of school and Camp.

We found the kitchen and the dining hall to be the most interesting spaces, since they contained complete kitchen facilities and the tables and chairs for the eating areas. Additionally there were the old pan-abode cabins which still had odd prizes and trinkets lying around like plastic “champion trophies” and dolls awarded to studious kids who were “model campers”. It was quite surprising that the buildings were almost all open and accessible. Sadly this gave an opportunity to some ‘kids’ and the kitchen and mess hall area were totally trashed between our two visits, probably less than two weeks apart.

This is what the children who were selected to be campers experienced. This camp provided that “ outdoor camp experience” for over 70 years for Toronto children who couldn’t go up to the cottage areas like the Muskokas and Kawarthas during the summer holidays. Considering it sat idle for more than a decade,  it’s truly amazing that it managed to stay in the overall good condition it was in. This is most likely due to the fact that no one knows it’s there, so there is no vandalism attributable to “visitors”. As is the case with all good locations, as soon as it ended up on a certain UE website, the place was picked, trashed, and vandalized to the point it’s now unrecognizable two years later. Remember kids, keep quiet.

Photos by Kathy and Jan.

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