An abandoned scout camp, along the Nottawasaga river, just a little east of Orangeville, Ontario.
Goodyear Memorial Scout Camp is an abandoned scout camp, along the Nottawasaga river, just a little east of my hometown – Orangeville, Ontario. 68 acres of land was purchased by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, in 1946, in memory of their employees who had passed away in World War 2. The property was donated to Scouting’s Lakeshore District, and in 1968, Scouts Lakeshore District bought the remaining 189 acres – totalling in 265 acres of land. Mississauga Region “leased the camp for several years and then purchased it from [Greater Toronto Region] in 1985” (Goodyear, n.d.). In 1997, Goodyear Memorial Scout Camp became a regional camp, in Ontario, until 2015 when it was “unavailable for use until further notice" "due to some recent and unforeseeable circumstances," (Goodyear, n.d.) according to the camp website. Goodyear Memorial Scout Camp is a prime example of a failed site as it is now a playground for urban and rural explorers. The camp features a lodge, two cabins, activity shelters, a variety of campsites, an archery range, confidence courses, frisbee golf, and 3 hiking trails which can be seen on the map in Figure 5; This map is located right outside the west entrance on a piece of plywood nailed to two trees. My friends and I would frequently visit the camp, once it was closed, to explore and document.
On the website it states that “redecorating [on the Birch cabin] has been a project of the GMSC Camp committee in the early part of 2014. Interior painting is almost complete, and plans are in place to paint the exterior as soon as the weather will allow,” (Goodyear, n.d.) but there is no photo to show that the finished exterior painting was ever finished prior to closing. As an explorer, I had visited the camp quite often, and I had painting on this building; The photo of the dark green painted cabin is presented in Figure 7 while Figure 6 displays the photo found on the website of the Birch cabin. Exploring sites like this allows for images to be documented over time.
To add, the camp was left with almost everything as is – mattresses on the bed, bunk beds still in the cabins, computers and documents left behind, old camp merchandise, and more. Space and place are usually “focused on concrete, particular zones of experience,” (O'Brien et al., 2010) but it should focus on a more abstract idea where we include nature and the environment. According to Leo Marx, “Both categories of nature—threatening and threatened—invoke a whole host of other emotions including awe, aesthetic pleasure, and spiritual transcendence” (Marx, 1996). The Goodyear Memorial Scout Camp demonstrates ‘machine in the garden’ because the older technology of the people before are integrated into these 265 acres of landscape in a ‘threatening’ way to nature with the number of things that were just left behind. The camp is perfectly integrated into the aesthetic of the ‘machine in the garden’ with the connection of nature, culture, past and the future.
Essentially, if it was not for urban and rural exploration, the aesthetics, imagery, and historical processes may not have ever been documented within the Goodyear Memorial Scout Camp after it had closed down.