Wishing everyone a happy and healthy holiday season and New Year. Please watch this special message from our Executive Camp Director, Janet Cottreau.
Click on the winter dining hall photo to be linked to the video.
The full script is found here:
Hello, I hope that you and your family are healthy and happy. We wish to thank all of those campers who sent us wonderful photos and videos about how they brought RPC home this summer, and shared their happy memories and photos of Red Pine Past. Thank you to those campers who are participating in the 100 for 100 campaign which helped us work on many infrastructure projects this summer. We are very grateful.
The next month will be a challenge trying to balance the traditions we have always carried out in December with the limits in place due to Covid-19. We are having to create new special moments for our families and friends and find new ways to celebrate that still have meaning to us all while being in different households and only mingling closely with a small, consistent bubble of people.
Right now, our Advisory Committee and I are working to figure out how to balance the traditions of Red Pine that so many people hold so dear with (or alongside?) the health restrictions that will be in place this summer. Our mission will continue to be to provide a safe, engaging environment where campers make memories and grow together.
Camp is only six months away! It is likely that a lot will change between now and then but no one can predict the timing of mass vaccination or exactly what course this virus will take. What we do know, however, is that we will have to take precautions and implement new procedures to ensure our staff and campers are as safe as possible. Such as:
• Screening campers and staff before arriving at camp
• Ask campers and staff to be honest about their health, and, if necessary, leave camp should they display symptoms of Covid-19
Our primary objective needs to be to keep everyone safe and healthy, and we can do that with our camper family help.
Over the next six months we will be providing regular communication about the new Covid practices being put in place for everyone’s safety. As we receive updated standards from the Ontario Camps Association and Public Health, we will provide you with information to keep you up to date.
A message that is consistent from all levels of Public Health at this time, is that we will need to limit the number of people in close contact with each other while at camp. This will reduce the spread of a possible Covid-19 case and, should there be a need for isolating or contact tracing, we will know exactly with whom our campers and staff were in close contact.
Based on our association recommendations, prior to camp, we will be asking you to identify who will be in your “bubble or cohort”. We hope to incorporate that aspect into the online registration system. Your bubble would be those, outside of your immediate cabin, who you might sit with while eating, relax with on the dock or play cards with each evening. All other interactions will have the necessary precautions as directed by our local Public Health department.
We don’t yet know the recommended group or bubble size, but we know this will most likely be a part of our day-to-day life at Red Pine.
As you celebrate over the next month in all sorts of safe, social distanced, creative ways, please remember that there can still be magic in the new ways we have to do things…just a different sort of magic. Happy Holidays to you all and I hope that 2021 brings you all great health and happiness!