End of an Era

Sad news from my hometown--Camp Algonquin will soon be closing. (Archived Tribune article here.) For decades the camp has given inner-city kids a reprieve from city life and exposure to nature they might never have had. I grew up in Cary, and I remember seeing batches of newly-arrived campers disembarking from the CN&W train, all wide-eyed and excited. (And, incidentally, also completely out of place in the culturally homogeneous community that Cary was in the 1960s and 1970s.)

I guess a rural campground is a luxury for an urban social service agency that finds itself hard-pressed just to keep kids alive in the city. They've been blessed to be able to keep the camp running for as long as they have. Hopefully the proceeds of the sale will be wisely spent on its city community centers.