Our History

Camp Gesher started as a camp of the Dror Youth Zionist Organization. Its membership was originally drawn from two other Dror camps:

• Camp Revivim, located in Huntsville, Ontario serving the southern Ontario area;
• Camp Kissufim, located in the Laurentian Mountains, serving the Montreal area.

Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa had the largest Jewish communities in Canada, and camps Revivim and Kissufim served those communities well for many years. In the early 1960s it was determined that amalgamating the two camps and relocating to a location midway between the three areas would best serve the needs of those Jewish communities. The current campsite was purchased in 1962 from Clarkson Duck Lake Lodge, a former commercial hunting and fishing camp. As the new location represented a “geographical bridge” between the three communities, the camp was named Gesher (bridge in Hebrew).

The transition occurred in stages. Camp Revivim closed in after the 1961 season and the campers moved to Camp Kissufim for the summer of 1962. Camp Kissufim closed after the 1962 season, and the first summer at Camp Gesher was in 1963.

In 1974, a historical joint meeting of parents and youth leadership of both the Habonim and Dror youth organizations took place in Ottawa, where it was agreed that both organizations would, “operate as one youth movement which will combine the membership of both bodies.” In the summer of 1975, Camp Gesher was chosen to be the first camp to test the merging of the Habonim and Dror Youth Movements. The success of that experiment helped expedite the eventual full merger of those two organizations in 1980.

Today, Camp Gesher is a proud member of the Habonim Dror Labour Zionist Youth Movement and of its role in the creation of this important Movement.