Twelve-year old Ryan Petrie of Toronto at the new facility called Ooch Downtown. Since 1984, Camp Oochigeas has been providing camp experiences to children with cancer at no cost to their families. Now they will have this urban camp for kids.Peter Power/The Globe and Mail
Last month, 12-year-old Ryan Petrie participated in Chefs' Creations, a weekly cooking class. Each of the evening sessions revolved around a different theme: breakfast in France, lunch in Mexico and dinner in Italy. For the fourth and final class, the kids prepared a dinner for their parents (mixed salad with balsamic vinaigrette, turkey Bolognese and cupcakes, if you must know).
Chefs' Creations might sound like any other extracurricular program for budding Batalis. But there's one major difference: all of the kids, including Ryan, have experienced cancer.
Ryan, who is currently in maintenance phase after nearly a year of treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, was among the first to try out the activities offered at Ooch Downtown, a city-based satellite of Camp Oochigeas, the 27-year-old Muskoka-based camp for kids with cancer.
"It just helps you forget everything, and lets you be yourself," says Ryan, who will also be attending a two-week session up in Muskoka this summer. "It's interesting having people around who are going through the same things you are … and it's just good to know there are other people that like doing the same things you do."
Ooch Downtown, which celebrated its official opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday, represents the realization of a five-year strategy that focused on bringing more camp, more often, to more young cancer patients.
The four-storey building at 464 Bathurst St., just south of College, is easily accessible by public transportation and minutes away from SickKids, where the camp has also offered ongoing in-hospital activities since 1993.
As opposed to the residential Muskoka camp, which features canoeing, kayaking, wilderness trips and a ropes course, Ooch Downtown boasts 18,000 square feet of indoor space that includes a sports court, teaching kitchen, two-storey climbing wall and boulder wall, plus a rooftop deck with a 360-degree view of the city.
There are arts and crafts stations set up with Boondoggle, markers and tie-dye kits as well as musical instruments and two rolling racks stuffed with furry, shiny, colourful costumes.
"Ooch Downtown offers the chance to get away," says executive director Alex Robertson, who has been with the camp since 2005. "Kids who are able to step outside and feel normal and have a couple of hours away from Mom and Dad - that's where they grow resilience and learn independence and social skills while making friends."
Parents have their own lounge where they can grab a coffee and connect with other parents. "The hospital is fraught with emotion," notes Sandra Ross, an oncology nurse at SickKids as well as an Ooch board member and volunteer. "So even though parents see each other, they're in their own stressed-out bubble. This is a safe place for parents to connect and remove the barriers."
But if they're like Ryan's mom, they will take advantage of the free time. "Ryan at Chefs' Creations gave my husband and I opportunity to go have dinner," says Monique Petrie. "I knew if anything was amiss, he would be in good hands and well taken care of."
As with the residential camp in Muskoka, all the downtown programs come at no cost to the families.
Ms. Ross points out that Ooch Downtown will be especially beneficial for kids who might be too sick to attend sleep-away camp or as a stepping stone for families who are less familiar with camp culture.
Ryan connected with Ooch the first day he was admitted to SickKids last summer. He had just settled into his hospital room and wandered down the ward to discover a group of kids making slime.
Volunteer Carly Ely points out, however, that the range of programming at the hospital can only go so far. "You're clearly limited at the hospital to a room or [the patient's]room."
Ooch signed a 10-year lease on the building, which also houses the camp's offices, formerly located at Yonge and St. Clair. The $1.8-million dollar project received the bulk of its financial support from four corporate sponsors - BMO, Sony PlayStation, Sporting Life and the Toronto Blue Jays - who donated $300,000 each.
The camp is not government funded and has annual operation costs of approximately $4.3-million (the 350-plus staff are all volunteers).
Mr. Robertson expects that Ooch Downtown's first-aid room, covered in a mural of Webkinz cartoon animals, will be used for comparatively minor cases. "Most likely scrapes and bruises rather than fevers," he says, adding that, in that way, it remains a traditional camp.
Through Ooch's partnership with the hospital, kids can be playing dress-up at the Bathurst building within a day of their diagnosis.
"Camp heals the healthy part; we treat the child who's sick but that's not the whole child," says Ms. Ross. "No child should see what the inside of a chemo room looks like; every child should know what a sports court looks like."
Amy Verner