Camp Carmangay - Carmangay

Serving Youth For 17 Years

Rustic western Camp Carmangay has incredible views of the prairies, river valley and historic train bridge with plenty of wildlife. Camp Carmangay is a beautiful ranch nestled just outside a small village in Southern Alberta, Canada between Lethbridge and Calgary in Vulcan County. Carmangay is located 62 kilometers from the North of Lethbridge and 150 kilometers south of Calgary. Camp Carmangay is a community resource and registered non-profit organization. Our mission is to provide a cost effective camp for disadvantaged youth between the ages of 12-25.

While challenging as it was to provide access for Youth to Camp Carmangay throughout the 2020 campaign, it is with a breath of relief to be able to say that our Organization did NOT close and while observing AHS guidelines as per social distancing etc., Camp Carmangay was still able to provide access to wide open spaces, campfires and lots of horseback riding to hundreds of youth. 2021 will be no different.

Anxiety is a killer, as is depression and the thought that no one cares can make loneliness such a heavy emotion. Having nowhere to go or having no one to speak to in the midst of it all can be too much to bear.

Everybody can only take so much and so horses and the adventures of the great outdoors are a couple of the resources we’ve made available. Camp Carmangay was built so that youth could have a place to go to. A place for a kid to be a kid, regardless of age or the reason to need to be one and there’s no special criteria for registration.

Although Camp Carmangay offers a multitude of opportunities for youth to visit and enjoy the pleasures of just being kids, there’s an objective and an initiative beyond the grounds of the Camp that extends into the bowels of our inner city in a front line capacity in the war against opiates and youth homelessness. It’s no longer enough to just bring kids to camp. The world has changed and the issues that be-fronted youth prior to 2020 haven’t gone away, they’ve just been percolating in isolation.

Once again anxiety, depression, outright fear and abuse in a variety of mental, emotional, psychological and physical degrees of intensity are being driven by the poison and power of opiates so strong as to be able to kill each and every time.

Youth throughout Southern Alberta are being decimated by opiates and the easy access to them. Death counts are reported by media in a percentage of National deaths as opposed to names and obituaries.

Extreme poverty, isolation and boredom can bring upon depression and a sense of desperation to go somewhere. As an example, for the Blood Tribe community the close proximity to Lethbridge makes the city an appealing destination but, as the majority of people are largely without the resources to cover travel expenses, so many find themselves abandoned shortly upon arrival and its not long before the street takes over and the shelter becomes the only refuge. Alcohol and opiate addiction run rampant and it’s becoming a regular habit, not one that disturbs so much anymore, that there’ll be another dead body in the Park; overdosed. There are too many homeless indigenous youth within in the city of Lethbridge. It’s not a personal choice for these kids.

They would prefer to come to Lethbridge and play basketball at the YMCA but times have changed drastically and severe cost prohibitive models have closed access to buildings that were originally built for the poor.

Camp Carmangay is known as a friend in all of the worst places and it’s an alarming statistic as per how many of the young people in the city of Lethbridge, now crippled by street opiates etc. are past attendees of Camp Carmangay. I knew them before they were victims of an unrestricted drug supply, when the majority were residents of various Government Group Homes and I know them now, as one of the most unique characteristics of Camp Carmangay is the long term relationships that are developed within our client base. It’s been a horrible cycle of abandonment for these kids and it’s obvious that life hasn’t improved for so many, post Government care.

A common denominator amongst addicted youth is the experience of a serious trauma. The chronic boredom is caused by isolation in communities that offer no substance or continuity in activities, social training or job opportunities and leave many young people without much hope to consider a future. These are environments where hunger, sickness and inhumane living conditions force community members to leave home in search of a better life.

Food, water and warmth are the three most important pursuits of the homeless population. Money is not always a blessing as there are a good percentage of homeless youth who are on A.I.S.H., but use the money to feed the insatiable habit of addiction, so almost $1,600.00 vanishes within the first couple of days of the month and hence the cycle of crime to feed begins.

“Christopher’s helping hand” (CHH) is an organization based out of High River whose mission is to clothe the homeless. The clothing supply inventory is made up of High-End wardrobe items such as hoodies and jackets, pants and footwear. Items of hygiene from tooth brushes to school supplies are also included with Teddy Bears and items to cuddle for kids who have nothing.

With now thirty years of engaging Street Youth to register into a Camp Carmangay program I have become well versed in where community resources exist and where an inter-agency co-operative initiative could have a dynamic impact on our communities.

Camp Carmangay has accepted the role of distribution of every type of item provided by (CHH) to and throughout the South Western portion of Alberta, starting from Lethbridge to Cardston and including Standoff and Blood Tribe Reservation communities like Leverne, Little Chicago and Moses Lake.

Orlando Calling Last, of the Blackfeet Nation spent twenty-five years at the University of Arizona teaching Native History. He holds an esteemed past and is regarded as one of the Holiest men of the Blackfeet peoples on either side of the border. It is he who orchestrated “Five hundred Tribes under One Nation.” Orlando is the keeper of the Beaver Bundle, the contents of which include a ten thousand year old Peace Pipe used at the signing of Treaty Seven. Orlando Calling Last knows the needs of his community and it is with him that Camp Carmangay has forged both a deep bond and partnership.

Inventory, sorted and packed neatly into the largest of clear item collection bags are delivered to Orlando’s home in the poverty stricken region of Little Chicago. Word travels quick when free blankets and sleeping bags become a part of a massive distribution of every sort of necessary item to keep warm and people started to come from all around. Two teenaged girls walked for roughly ten miles with t-shirts wrapped around their bodies and covering their heads because they’d been made aware of the warm clothing waiting at Orlando’s Trading Post. Neither was disappointed. There is never a cost.

It’s an area where people have frozen to death while trying to make it home. The Native Foster Home in Cardston loaded up a full busload of youth and brought them to Orlando’s Post. Typically, youth will arrive at the Care Facility with only the clothes on their backs and the impact of a simple gesture (like a teddy bear) has the same effect that children have when they get either a Christmas or Birthday present.

I can’t stress enough how powerful a smile can be for a child who hasn’t experienced one for any length of time. Its something the average person takes for granted but it’s the grassroots initiative of Camp Carmangay; that is to put a smile on the face of a child.

From the Native encampment in Cardston to the alleyways and backstreets of Lethbridge and throughout the Blood Tribe reservation people are being kept warm this winter.

Young addicts need to be able to register into a “decompression environment” that will allow for a stabilization period and time to process and focus on both thought and action to sobriety. Camp Carmangay is becoming that location and we are working in collaboration with community members so as to be an influence towards a more effective means of registration into a conventional drug rehabilitation program that will work and include post-support initiatives that will help the addict stay away from the street life. (i.e.) employment and housing.

Camp Carmangay is an experience where wide open spaces and starry nights combine with lots of fresh air, campfires and opportunities for every tormented heart and soul to rediscover a sense of life through horses and a different world than we know today; one that was slower with much more time to think and plan. Camp Carmangay’s environment is likely to decompress anyone who visits but is intended to impact those who are most confused and struggling with who they are in this world.

The lands on which Camp Carmangay is built are traditional Blackfeet lands that remain in their natural state and tell the history of a nomadic people. Directional Signs and Tipi rings are a part of a landscape that includes the site of the most ancient Indigenous “Sundance” site on earth dating back thousands of years. Camp Carmangay has always embraced the United Nations of Youth and in it’s own history of engagement with high risk youth has welcomed every nationality and gender into both the ease of its surroundings and its conducive potential to become a very powerful “decompression” interim step for youth who want to accept the challenge to overcome addiction. Please help us help our Youth.

As a year-round facility Camp Carmangay has a list of both Capital Project initiatives as well as both Programming and Monetary needs and would like an opportunity to elaborate on such. Should this letter create that opportunity it would be very much appreciated to receive a correspondence so as to further be invited to pursue this request for your support.

"Thank you very much"
Brian Nimijean