A Nova Scotia parent says he doesn’t hear from his kids’ summer camp in southern New Brunswick unless something is wrong.
So when he got a call on Tuesday, a little over a week into a two-week session for his kids at Camp Glenburn, on the St. John River, he knew it was bad.
Sean Myles said he was told his 11-year-old daughter had been vomiting and had a fever. He was asked to pick her up at the Kingston-area camp as quickly as possible.
“We’re really thankful that they’re prepared,” he said. “You receive a call like that from a camp, as a parent, of course, you’re very concerned, but they made it very clear, very quickly that she was OK.”
The bug that spread through Glenburn and infected at least 13 campers, according to Public Health, has not yet been identified.
Since Myles lives in Wolfville, N.S., he recruited the help of family to get his daughter to Moncton, where he picked her up.
The next day he received another call. His son needed to be picked up because the camp was shutting down for the remainder of the session because of a stomach-bug outbreak.
This time, Myles’s brother, who lives in Fredericton, hopped in his car and picked up his own kids and Myles’s son as well.
Shilo Boucher, president and CEO of the YMCA Southwestern New Brunswick, which runs the camp, said organizers contacted Public Health as soon as campers started to show symptoms of a stomach bug, which included vomiting and diarrhea.
On Wednesday, she said, the camp was advised to shut down for disinfecting before the next group of kids was scheduled to arrive on Sunday.
Public Health, which is monitoring the outbreak, told CBC News it gave test kits to the YMCA to determine what the illness is. In the meantime, children and staff who are unwell were encouraged to see their primary care providers if their symptoms persisted or worsened.
Boucher said there are always illnesses that go around with a group of 150 campers, but Public Health and an on-site nurse are involved with keeping things running smoothly.
“This is just one of those things that’s happening, and our understanding is it’s happening across the region in terms of a virus,” she said.
“So we’re just lucky we caught it early … and we only [had to] close camp for a couple of days to make sure that we could do the deep sanitization.”
It isn’t the first time that a stomach illness shut down Camp Glenburn.
In 2018, an outbreak of norovirus ripped through the popular summer camp, forcing kids and staff to be sent home early. Camp officials disinfected the camp, but after the new group of campers came in, the camp closed for a second time and didn’t reopen for the rest of the summer because of the outbreak.
Boucher said they learned a lot from that outbreak. She said the camp has since bought a fogger sanitizing machine that they used during the COVID-19 pandemic to get into the camp’s nooks and crannies. She said additional hand sanitizer stations were also added.
Myles said he thinks the plan to shut down the camp was reasonable given the illnesses.
Jon Holt, the parent of another camper, agrees. Two of his daughters attended this summer, and one of them was at the session that ended early.
“Obviously she was disappointed,” he said, of his 10-year-old daughter.
“She understood that it was for the best. She doesn’t want to get the gastro. She’s had a gastro bug before. She knows what it’s like, and she knows that it’s highly communicable.”
Since his daughter didn’t catch the bug, a few kids in his Fredericton neighbourhood organized a “camp make-up day” at one of their houses with activities and crafts.
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“They’re making the best of it.”
Holt said he would much rather get a call from camp asking for him to pick up his kids as a precaution than get a call that there was an outbreak days ago that had spiraled out of control.
Camp Glenburn is a special place for Holt’s family. His oldest daughter has been there six times, his youngest has been three or four times and his wife was a counsellor there when she was younger.
“It’s a tradition in our family,” he said. “It’s one of their favourite places on Earth.”
This story was originally published in CBC News on Aug. 8, 2024.
Hannah Rudderham Portfolio 