Evangelizing Overnight Camps at Upcoming Summer Camp Expo

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Overnight camps are the furthest thing from too many kids' minds. These have many benefits as promoted by camps and some famous camp alumni. Parents can learn about these many benefits at an upcoming Summer Camp Expo in Toronto.

Residential Camps from across Canada and the northern United states are preparing for the upcoming Summer Camp Expo at Roy Thomson Hall, Saturday February 26, in Toronto. The Expo, hosted by Our Kids Media, presents a unique opportunity for overnight summer camps to show and tell parents about the benefits of life in a camp in the northern Ontario bush. Interest in summer camps wanes noticeably each year as kids spend more time on screen, at shopping malls or otherwise immersed in urban life.

The camps are not the only ones lamenting declining interest in traditional summer camp. Recently, a number of celebrities weighed in on the value the summer camp experience had to their development. Some of their comments and anecdotes, originally presented in Our Kids Go to Camp magazine (another product of Our Kids Media), highlight the value of overnight camps.

Steve Paikin, host of TV Ontario's The Agenda, says camp is more critical today than ever before. "It's so important to get out of cities nowadays and see some green, get in a canoe, go swimming in a lake... you're just not tapping into everything you can be as a person if you only live in an urban environment twelve months of the year."

Seth Godin, "America's Greatest Marketer," author of 12 books, progenitor of squidoo.com and other successful web entities, says that time at Camp Arowhon in Algonquin Park was critical to his success. "It enabled me to become a well-known public speaker, a teacher, a writer, an impresario. All the good things in my career are a direct descendant of what I did and learned in the Park." Camp is a unique way of opening up new creative channels, says Godin. "Summer camp encourages kids to solve interesting problems. The rest of life tends to be about becoming a compliant cog in the endless machine of industry."

Jane Taber host of the CTV show Question Period says that camp was pivotal to her childhood development into a confident, outgoing adult. "Camp gave us [not only] an appreciation for the outdoors [but it also] gave us independence, responsibility and a respite from the city and city friends. Camp let us succeed." She attended Camp Mi-a-kon-da as a child.

Both Camp Mi-a-kon-da and Camp Arowhon are overnight camps in Ontario. Parents can learn much more about the benefits of overnight camp directly from the camps (including Camp Mi-a-kon-da and many others) at the upcoming Camp Expo, Saturday February 26.

Learn more about the Summer Camp Expo.

Investigate overnight summer camps.