French-language summer camps cancelled in Hamilton and Burlington, citing lack of funding and space

Two French-language camps that have been serving francophone families in Hamilton and Burlington for 16 years have been cancelled ahead of the summer season. 

The Centre Francophone Hamilton (CFH) told parents in early May by email that it could no longer run the camps after not receiving enough funding and not being able to find an affordable and available venue. 

"We were all pretty disappointed," said Marie-Pierre Tendland-Frenette, whose nine-year-old son, Hunter, had been attending and enjoying the camp for four years.

It was "one of the most affordable camps" in the area, she said, so having to suddenly find a different one was an unexpected expense. It was also a way to help Hunter stay connected to his Quebec heritage and many of his extended family members who don't speak English, including his grandfather.

Hunter was excited to go back again to camp this year, alongside his close friend, Tendland-Frenette added.

'We're just devastated'

The two camps ran for seven weeks and hosted 60 to 100 campers every year, according to Anika Kuhnert, CFH's board president. 

"We're just devastated that we can't offer this service to our community," she told CBC Hamilton.

The program had been running for 16 years, she said, and served kids from five to 14 years old.

Kuhnert said the camp and CFH serve a "huge" range of people, from very affluent people to newcomers or asylum seekers trying to rebuild their lives. 

"Camps are also super important for parents," she said. "Child care is so expensive right now and summer camps are an opportunity to find cheaper child care."

Province declined grant application 

CFH started seeing cuts in funding in the last year, despite having "great" enrolment numbers, Kuhnert said.

The situation worsened this year, said Kuhnert, when province declined CFH's grant application and the federal government only gave it partial funding.

Denelle Balfour, a spokesperson for Ontario's Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Gaming, told CBC Hamilton in an email CFH has received $350,000 in funding since 2021 "through various programs."

But the ministry said it did decline CFH's application for funding that it usually used to help pay for camp staff. 

CFH was also unable to find a place to host the camps because Ontario French-language school board Conseil Scolaire Viamonde's Burlington location, where they have hosted at least one of the camps for years, wasn't available due to construction work.

The school board also began charging for use of their spaces last year, which was an extra expense for CFH.

"We know that funding is limited and often difficult to obtain for community-based organizations even though they provide essential services and have a real positive impact in the communities they serve," said a spokesperson for the Conseil Scolaire Viamonde.

Kuhnert said not being able to find an affordable and accessible space was "the straw that broke the camel's back," but she doesn't blame Conseil Scolaire Viamonde.

The financial challenges the centre faces are ones that others in the "linguistic minority community" are also facing, she added.

Ongoing challenges for community 'frustrating'

According to Kuhnert, they received the funding they asked for when it came to English immersion camps for kids to learn English but not for French-speaking children to be able to speak in French, the reasoning being that there was "too much competition."

She sees the cuts as a "prolonged attack" on francophone culture. "It's not something new that our community has faced. It's just frustrating that it continues," she said.

Kuhnert said this is not a problem specific to the francophone community, and if anything, they stand in a "relative privilege" being a protected language unlike Indigenous languages and others spoken in the area, including Filipino language Tagalog and Spanish, she said. 

"We, as francophones, have a leg to stand on, which also means it's our responsibility to be fierce advocators for other communities who are linguistic minorities," she said.

Kuhnert said CFH wants to bring the camp back next year, but it's uncertain whether funding will return.

"We will persevere, we will come back, we will figure this out," she said.