Camp Adelaide to close end of 2019

By Chad Ingram

Published Nov. 20, 2018

Camp Adelaide is to be closed at the end of 2019 and put up for sale in 2020.

As first reported in the summer of 2017, the Ontario Girl Guides plan to sell of a number camp properties owned by the organization during a three-year period, Camp Adelaide among them. None of the properties are currently up for sale.

Of the 17 Girl Guide camps located throughout the province, 16 will be put on the market.

Located just west of Haliburton Village off Highway 118, the 500-acre property has been owned by the Girl Guides since 1959.

“Ontario Girl Guides has been examining our camp usage and financial data over a number of years,” Susan Birnie,

Girl Guides Canada’s Ontario commissioner, wrote in an email to the Echo.

 

“Simply put, we do not use the camps enough to pay for the property maintenance and infrastructure improvements that will be needed over the next 15 years.

We decided that we should concentrate on our strength, which is programming for girls, and remove ourselves from the burden or property maintenance and management.”

Birnie indicated that outdoor experiences will continue to be part of Girl Guides programming, and that many camping of the camping opportunities currently taking place do not actually occur on Girl Guides-owned properties.

“Camping and outdoor experiences will remain an integral part of our organization,” she wrote. “We are undertaking partnerships and collaborations with hundreds of entities across Ontario that offer spaces for traditional tent camping, as well as some that provide indoor accommodation, catering and programming. At present more than half of our camping experience occur at locations that are not owned by Girl Guides of Canada, so we are confident that safe and accessible opportunities will serve our members’ needs. We will create the same great learning opportunities and memories, but the locations will be different.”

The Girl Guides were able to purchase the camp in 1959 thanks to a $3,200 donation from Adelaide McLaughlin, for whom the camp is named, and her family.