The Birth of Camp Arowhon
Lillian Kates' Big Idea
In 1929 began the Great Depression. Dr. Max Kates and his wife Lily, who had been living a prosperous life in Toronto, were hit hard – because people didn’t have money to eat, let alone pay their dentist.
Lily Kates decided to rescue the family fortunes by starting a children’s summer camp. Why? Because before the Depression she had always sent her two children, Eugene and Shyrle, to camp; the camps in the U.S. were like prep schools – too fancy, and the Canadian camps were too rustic and lacking in programs. So Lily figured she could find the middle ground between the two.
Lily Finds Camp of the Red Gods
Lily had visited Shyrle at Taylor Statten's girls Camp Wapomeo on Canoe Lake, and stayed overnight at the Hotel Algonquin near Joe Lake train station in Algonquin Park. She travelled up the lake to see what was there, and came across an abandoned camp called Camp of the Red Gods. The log buildings were magnificent, but it was an unfinished, overgrown, neglected property.
Red Gods had been the brainchild of Ernest Thompson Seaton, a famous naturalist and architect. Seaton designed and built the camp on Teepee Lake (then called Buck Lake) in 1929. Camp of the Red Gods was to be a family nature camp, but it never opened, thanks to the Depression.
Government Roadblock
Lily decided she would acquire the lease to Camp of the Red Gods and turn it into a children's summer camp. So she went to see the government person in charge of Algonquin Park leases, and asked him to give her the lease to Red Gods. He refused. Giving leases on government land to a woman and a Jew just wasn't done.
Lily Won't Give Up
Lily wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The man said he couldn't give her the lease to Red Gods, because there were too many creditors who had never been paid for their work on Red Gods – the carpenters who built the log buildings, the stonemasons who made the stone chimneys, the lumberyards that supplied the wood. Lily said to him: "If I find all the creditors. and I come back to you with letters from 90% of them saying they'll settle with me, will you then give me the lease? He could hardly say no, so the man (who clearly did not know Lily at all) gave her a letter agreeing to grant her the Red Gods lease if 90% of the creditors should agree settle with her.
He was sure that Lily would never be able to find most of the creditors in the bush near Algonquin, let alone settle with them.
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The Government Backs Down
Lily spent months traversing northern Ontario by train, by car and by canoe, to find the creditors who had built and furnished Red Gods. She found the stonemasons in tiny villages, the carpenters in the back woods, the lumberyards in the towns.
The Depression had laid them low: None believed they'd be seeing a cent from that Red Gods job. So when Lily offered them five or six or ten cents on every dollar they were owed, they were only too happy to settle with her and sign her letter. Something was better than nothing.
She went back to the government office in Toronto, marched in, and said to the man: “Here, you see. I've got signatures agreeing to settle from 90% of the creditors.” His face went ashen when she held out the letters. He had never for a second believed she'd succeed, and he had no intention of granting her the lease. But Lily knew she had him, and before long the lease was hers.
You Need Money to Start a Camp
The next challenge was getting the money to start a camp. She went to see her bank manager who held her mortgage. It being the Depression, he wasn't so glad to see her coming. "Mrs. Kates," she said, your existing loan is so old it almost has a beard." But Lily convinced the banker that if he didn't lend her $2000. to start a camp, she'd never have the money for her mortgage. So he gave in too.
The Name Arowhon
What to name the camp? Eugene had read a book called Erewhon, (the title being 'nowhere' spelled backwards) by Samuel Butler about a Utopia. Inspired by the idea of a perfect world for children, Lily changed the spelling to A-r-o-w-h-o-n, to sound Indian.
Finding Campers
Now she needed campers: As a member of Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple sisterhood, she had access to other cities’ Reform temples’ sisterhood lists. Lily borrowed her son’s compass and drew a circle around Toronto to identify all the cities within one day’s drive of Toronto: Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit and Cincinnati. Lily drove to each of those cities and the drill was always the same: She would check into a motel armed with a bag of nickels (because she couldn’t afford to call from the room), and she’d start calling.
To Mrs. Stein, she’d say: “Mrs. Rosen is sending her kids to my camp this summer, and she suggested you’d be interested for your kids.” Then, right away she’d phone Mrs. Rosen and say: “Mrs. Stein is sending her kids to my camp this summer, and she suggested you’d be interested for your kids.”
Before too long Lily signed up 60 campers for the summer of 1934.
The History of "Rustic Lounge"
As drama instructor that first year she hired Lorne Greene, a student at Queen's University (and the future star of the Bonanza TV series). Lilly promised Lorne a theatre when he was hired. Upon arriving at camp, he asked Lily where the theatre was. She said: “Later.” An hour late her asked her again. “Later,” said Lily. An hour after that they were in the Main Lodge at dinner and he begged: “Mrs. Kates, I have to know. Please just tell me where my theatre is." She said: "You’re standing in it." He, without missing a beat, replied: "Well it's a very rustic lounge" (At that time, theatre was most often found in vaudeville houses, which were called lounges.). So Lorne's first Arowhon play was a home-made satire of camp folk, performed by the senior girls and called Rustic Lounge. And that’s why, to this day, Rustic Lounge is performed by the senior girls every July in the Main Lodge. |
