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Description area
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History
The Edgewood Camp and Conference Centre (Camp Edgewood) was a Lutheran camp run by the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. It began in 1936 at Fishers Glen on Lake Erie, moved to Edgewood Park in Eden Mills in 1944, and closed in 2017.
In 1936 the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Canada (Canada Synod) opened its Lutheran Boys Camp (LBC), a summer youth camp located at Fishers Glen on Lake Erie, a few kilometers west of Port Ryerse. The LBC was the first Lutheran summer camp in Canada. Though the desire to open a permanent Lutheran summer camp had be raised by the Canada Synod Luther League in the 1920s, a summer camp committee was not established until 1934. The first camp in 1936, which was an experiment to see if establishing a Lutheran summer camp was feasible, saw 56 boys aged 10 to 16 register and attend. Under the leadership of Ernest Berner, the camp`s first director, the Synod decided to continue the summer camp, with the hope of establishing girl and family camps. With 125 girls registered, the first Lutheran Girls Camp was run in 1940, also at Fishers Glen, under the supervision of Dorothy Rudolph Hall. Camp activities included crafts and hobbies, nature study, word working, athletics, swimming, hiking, bible study, campfires, and musical and drama programs.
In June 1944 the Canada Synod purchased Edgewood Park in the village of Eden Mills, just east of Guelph, as the permanent site for the Lutheran Summer Camp programs. Over one thousand people attended the dedication service on July 30, 1944. While Edgewood Park continued to be used for children and youth camps, it was also used for adult and family retreats, year-round camping, Luther League and Synodical Brotherhood meetings, as well as for programs given by the Guelph Y.M.C.A. and the Salvation Army. The name Edgewood Park was replaced with Camp Edgewood in the 1950s, and by 1990 it had renamed to Edgewood Camp and Conference Centre. Edgewood Camp offered a variety of camp programs for 80 years before closing in 2017.