Mira Pines United Church Camp - Breaking Camp by Chris Hayes

Breaking Camp

Mira Pines Summer Camp will close this summer because of disagreement within United Church

BY CHRIS HAYES CAPE BRETON POST

SYDNEY - Mira Pines Summer Camp will be closed this summer and its future is in doubt because of a disagreement within the United Church.

Hector MacDonald, chairman of a committee of the Sydney presbytery which ran the popular camp, said Friday it will not open because of a disagreement with Knox United Church in Glace Bay, which owns the property.

Knox United has cancelled a 99year lease with the Sydney presbytery for the camp property, he said.

The grounds for cancellation of the lease were that the presbytery didn’t pay a nominal sum that was supposed to be paid each year, according to MacDonald.

He said the presbytery camp committee doesn't believe it has broken the lease, however, and he hopes to resolve the dispute and eventually reopen the camp.

David Price, a spokesperson for Knox United, declined to comment on the issue Friday, saying he wants to consult other members of the church executive council.

The camp has been operating for 15 years, MacDonald said.

Last year, 180 young people participated in different age group camps over seven weeks of summer.

The young people will he disappointed, he said.

"My biggest feeling is the kids are the ones who are going to lose out on this,” he said. "We adults end up going our way but the camp means a lot to the kids that have been going there:"

MacDonald said it's his understanding Knox United wants to sell the land, which is on the Trout Brook Road.

Michael Sidney, a former Mira Pines volunteer, counsellor, and director, said in a letter to the editor of the Cape Breton Post that he feels a profound sense of loss over the closure of the camp.

"In my seven years of varied staff experience at Mira Pines I have seen kids from all walks of life arrive at Mira Pines and become part of something larger;" he wrote.

"They became part of a community that welcomed them for who they were, not what they wore or what they owned.

"Hundreds of lives have been touched by the spirit of Mira Pines, but now all that hard work and care is being cast aside as if it were meaningless.”