Do you know what your kids did last summer?

How About Nudity and Pole Dancing at a Day Camp?

thestar.com

Published On Thu Nov 03 2011

Jennifer Pagliaro Staff Reporter

Children were rewarded at a Markham day camp last summer for such things as pole dancing, taking off their clothes and sucking a counsellor’s toe, the Star has learned.

One Markham mother (whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of her children), said she knew something was wrong when her 12-year-old daughter and her friend were tight-lipped after she asked about their third day at the Town of Markham-operated Camp Chimo.

“They just looked at each other and said, ‘We can’t tell you,’” the mother said.

When she asked them why not, the girls – who were enrolled in the first two-week session of the Voyageurs program for 12- to 14-year-olds — told her their counsellors had said not to tell their parents what they’d done that day.

“And then I said, ‘Well, you have to tell me,’” she said.

The girls said they’d played a game called “What would you do for an ice cream bar?” where campers were split into groups and were rewarded with treats for completing various tasks.

First, her daughter told her she’d licked the inside of a porta-potty wall.

“The counsellor said if you do that, you can earn an ice cream bar,” she said her daughter told her.

The mother said she tried not to overreact. She told her daughter she could have gotten sick.

But then the story continued.

Her daughter said she’d also rubbed ash from the campfire on her face and washed it off in the muddy river running through Milne Dam Conservation Park, where the camp was being held, off McCowan Rd.

“And then she said, a girl laid down, she pulled up her top, I spit in her belly button and someone else drank it,” the mother said. “So they were doing body shots with spit.”

Her daughter told her other kids did worse for an ice cream snack — pole dancing without pants on and running around the outdoor camp with their shorts on their heads.

One girl sucked the toe of a male counsellor hired to work with special-needs campers, she said.

“When a male adult counsellor asks a 12-year-old girl to suck his toe and I’ll give you an ice cream bar, that’s sick,” the mother said.

Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti confirmed the game took place at the camp on July 6 and involved 38 campers.

Full story HERE