Quality time

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/10/2019 (2352 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For 51 weeks of the year, Chloe Poirie fights the lung cancer she was diagnosed with when she was just 22 months old — but for seven glorious days during the summer, she’s been able to have fun at camp like any other teen.

Chloe, 15, has spent a week during each of the last two summers at Camp Quality, which is for children who are battling cancer and serious illness.

“It is pretty great,” she said recently. “I actually got to fish. It was the first time I ever got to fish. I didn’t catch anything, but it was fun.

“It’s a place where when people ask, “Oh, what do you have?” They don’t say, “Oh, you’re not like us.” It’s a cool place.”

Chloe’s mother, Marj Curtis-Poirie, said attending the camp has been a positive experience for her daughter.

“When we pick her up she is more outgoing and she is happy,” Curtis-Poirie said. “She is more confident in herself.

“After a week, it is like we are picking up a different camper.”

Camp Quality is celebrating its 15th year helping kids living difficult lives put their health challenges in the background so they can just be kids once in a while.

And not just during the summer; Camp Quality also hosts events for children and their families throughout the year. And it’s all provided free of charge, thanks to generous donors.

Camp Quality was born in Australia in 1983, when Vera Entwistle decided to create a program to support children with cancer and their families.

When Entwistle was trying to come up with a name for the camp, a doctor told her “no one can do anything about the quantity of life, but we all can do something about the quality.”

A few years later, Danielle Weidman, who had been assistant director of a summer day camp at Winnipeg Beach when she was 16, but wasn’t hired as director the following summer because she wasn’t 18 yet, was looking for something to do. Her mother Lois told her she had heard about a camp for kids dealing with cancer in the United States.

“She got in touch with them and talked to them,” Lois Weidman said of her daughter, now a pediatric hematologist/oncologist in Toronto who serves on the organization’s national advisory council.

“She was just looking for something different. They flew her to an Ontario Camp Quality camp in hopes she would be interested in starting a camp in Manitoba. She was only 17. Did I think she wouldn’t be able to pull off Camp Quality? Never. I knew she could do it.”

It took a year to organize, but in 2004, Camp Quality had its first campers at Camp Woodlands in the Interlake. A few years later, the annual camp relocated to Variety Camp Brereton, wheelchair-accessible facilities on Brereton Lake in the Whiteshell Provincial Park.

Last year, 64 children were able to attend the summer camp with the help of more than 70 volunteers. Children between the ages of six and 12 get a full-time companion to help them during the week. Depending on need, older campers share a companion with up to three others.

Lois Weidman, who has been the organization’s fundraising co-ordinator for 13 years, said the Manitoba camp is unique because it is the only one that is able to use a camp rent-free, thanks to a generous donation by Variety.

She said, in return, CQ has helped Variety’s camp.

“The first year I went I was the dishwasher,” she said, laughing. “After two days, I called my husband, who is in the restaurant-equipment business, and said, ‘You need to donate a commercial dishwasher as soon as possible.’

“The next year there was a commercial dishwasher there.”

Since then, she said her family has donated other restaurant-quality kitchen equipment, but the largest donation came when she was involved in raising money to build a new bunkhouse at Camp Brereton that can sleep 20 people.

“Variety has been so generous to us, and in return we’ve given back,” she said.

Ainsley Kullman, Camp Quality Manitoba’s director, said the children have access to the beach to swim and have the use of canoes, paddle boats, kayaks and other amenities.

Staff ensure all of the children’s medical needs are addressed while they are at camp.

“We can fully look at their needs,” she said. “Is the kid in treatment? Dehydrated? We don’t have a camp doctor, but we have a team of medical nurses on site.”

Kullman said the children and families also benefit from year-round activities and events that they organize, including going to Manitoba Moose, Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Winnipeg Goldeyes games.

“It is important to note we are a volunteer driven, non-profit, charitable organization,” she said. “We rely on sponsors and donors.

“Everyone here is a volunteer. We all have jobs and volunteer to Camp Quality on the side. I’m a full-time registered nurse. “We’re there to support the families.”

The Moose are helping CQ on Nov. 2, when they take on the Grand Rapids Griffins at Bell MTS Place. Fans will be able to purchase autographed Manitoba Moose hockey pucks, and the proceeds, along with those from the game’s 50/50 ticket sales, go to the camp.

As well, from Nov. 28 to Dec. 8, a Hockey Fights Cancer-themed Moose goalie mask will be part of an online auction, with proceeds going to CQ.

Chloe, meanwhile, is already thinking about next summer, her mother said.

“It would be a pretty bland summer for her without the camp,” Curtis-Poirie said. “She comes back with the same joy I had as a kid going to camp.

“Camp Quality is a pretty amazing thing.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca