YMCA Camps Belwood, Ki-Wa-Y and Wabanaki

The Kitchener-Waterloo YMCA offers 3 overnight summer camps: Belwood provides an introduction to overnight camping for younger campers, and a more challenging program for older campers. Ki-Wa-Y offers program streams including boating, climbing, drama, music, art, and a general program. Also offers girls only camp, and March Break camp in winterized facilities. Wabanaki, in Huntsville, Ontario provides a true northern camp experience with canoe and sea kayaking trips. Voyageurs extended trippers discover the beauty of Northern Ontario while canoeing, sea kayaking, and hiking. Leaders-In-Training–first of a two year leadership training program held at all three of our camps.

You really can’t go wrong with a YMCA camp, and there are a few very good reasons for that. The Y has been fully invested in camp programs since Taylor Statten first developed them for the Y in 1902. In the years since, the programs have grown and diversified, literally providing the models that the vast majority of camps looked to when they created their programs. The culture of camps has grown as well, and the organization now has an embarrassment of riches, from top-level administration to program staffing. Everybody involved is here because they want to be here, and have demonstrated a passion and ability to work with kids through the core tenets: mind, body, spirit. Because of the extent and breadth of the operations, the standards are set extremely high. It can be frustrating, at times, to fill out all the online registration forms, but, nevertheless, they are testament to how everything is run: professionally, with care, experience, and expertise. Between the three camps run out of the Kitchener-Waterloo YMCA, there is a diversity of options, allowing campers to grow from their first overnight experiences close to home, to intensive tripping in Killarney or sea kayaking on Georgian Bay. As such, the KW YMCA is a one-stop shop of the full range of quality camp offerings, and quality, established programs and locations.