Dear Camp Families and Staff,

We hope you are staying safe and healthy and getting along well at home. It’s hard to believe that 7+ weeks ago that our team was at our office getting into full gear preparing for the summer programming and staffing, including our March Break and Passover Break programs. No doubt, as the weeks tick by and the weather gets warmer, you’re continuing to think about camp and whether we’ll be able to open The Jack and Pat Kay Centre Camp for Summer 2020. We, of course, are keeping our fingers crossed and have continued planning for a fantastic summer, even as we live in a new reality filled with “what if’s” and an abundance of unknowns. Here is the information we can share as of this moment:

The health and safety of everyone in our camp community is always our highest priority.

Before we can open for the season, we must know from public health officials that it is safe to do so. In addition to our local health officials, we continue to seek guidance and advice at all levels of government, the Ontario Camp Association (OCA), and the Jewish Community Centers Association (JCCA). Many supporting organizations are currently preparing resources and guidelines, which we believe will be available within the next few weeks, to aid camps in making prudent decisions for this summer. We remain hopeful about opening camp, and we have an obligation to prepare safely and responsibly.

We are planning safely and responsibly for Summer 2020.

Although we don’t yet know exactly what the summer might look like (and it will likely be different from summers past), we are planning for many possible contingencies, including virtual engagement opportunities. We are hopeful that if camp can operate, it will be a great summer, and to the extent possible, will offer the hallmarks that you and your campers know and love: fun, friendship, Jewish identity-building, and memories that will last a lifetime.

There are many considerations that need to be taken into account as we make a decision on how camp will run this summer. This includes the decisions Ontario Public Health makes in the near future, as they will need to give camps in Ontario approval to open their doors. Should camp be allowed to open, we expect extensive guidelines to be in place that help to mitigate the risk. It is possible that these guidelines make opening camp impossible from a health and safety perspective, including interfering with our ability to operate as you would expect. In addition to this, we are also taking the following questions into great consideration:

In our March 27, 2020 update , we also addressed the possibility of dates and session lengths changing. This is also very much still a possibility, especially because this summer is a bit longer than usual (10 weeks) providing us with some level of flexibility. We are working tirelessly to answer these questions and many more, should Ontario Public Health make decisions that are favourable for holding some form of camp this summer. Answering these questions comes with some uncertainties and takes time as we await more information on how we can operate safely and responsibly.  

We will communicate with you as soon as we make a decision about Summer 2020.

We will share our decisions and the thinking behind them with you directly as soon as we’ve made them. Although you may begin to hear about other camps that have made decisions about summer operations, camps and organizations are working to assess their own factors to make the decisions best for them in a timely way. Many of the camps that have already decided to not run this summer work with vulnerable community members which in this situation would make it too challenging to operate safely. The processes and time frames from camp to camp will not necessarily align with each other. Please know we are taking absolutely everything into account to make the right decisions and we will let you know as soon as we have made this decision. Is there anything else you should be doing at this time? Not at the moment. As we shared in our April 17, 2020 update, we have pushed the fee and cancellation deadline to June 1, 2020. We will not be processing any transactions for camp fees before then. Our goal is to have a decision made before this date.

Our camp families, staff, and alumni mean the absolute world to us! Hearing from all members of our community makes us smile even when we’re hard at work putting all of these puzzle pieces together. Your thoughts and feedback go a long way as part of the decision-making process. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any information you would like to share on how you’re feeling about the summer, and thoughts about anything that we have perhaps not thought of. Always feel free to reach out to myself, Maya, or Naomi. We are here for you, and we’ll be happy to respond to your questions and feedback as well as we can at this time and in this era of so many unknowns.

In the meantime, stay engaged with us on Virtual J . There’s something for everyone! We send all the best wishes to everyone in our camp family and wishes for healing and wholeness to those who have been personally affected by this virus. We appreciate your patience, partnership, and on-going support, and we look forward to being in touch again when there is more information to share.

On behalf of myself, Maya, and Naomi, please stay healthy, stay safe, and stay strong. We will get through this, together. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Evan Roth

Camp Director, The Jack and Pat Kay Centre Camp

416-636-2267 ext. 3

evan@centrecamp.ca