DON'T SEND YOUR CHILD TO ECOLART. The owner of the camp is only there for two weeks of the summer and does not leave your children in the hands of qualified experienced people. My son attended the Montreal location in August 2017. The camp is run and activities are carried out by 18-25 year olds with NO QUALIFICATIONS. These are children supervising children. The result is a hazing game the kids are subjected to called Zorro. They are given challenges such as leaving their room at 1am to go into the lake and take selfies and climbing on abandoned railway cars and climbing on top of ambulances! When or if they don't do the challenges they are given punishments. Two given to my son were: having rotten eggs and milk (the counselor said urine too) thrown over his head; and having lasagna stuffed down his bathing suit. I still can't believe I paid over $2000. to have my son abused at the mercy of older teenagers and 20 something kids! Why didn't I ask for qualifications? I don't believe the counselors even get any training. In our province we have a program for young teenagers who want to work with kids. It's called High Five Principles and it teaches them to respect campers, to NEVER touch campers and to foster healthy minds and bodies. I have to question whether ANY STAFF have teaching qualifications, coaching qualifications, life saving qualifications, CPR qualifications, Early childhood education diplomas. The owner did have his brother sit in an office to give the illusion that someone is there to make sure everything is okay. I spoke with the owner after I picked up my son. The only thing he admitted was that having the boys running outside into the lake at 1am in the morning was not a good idea. In other words these challenges are not approved at all. Then he actually tried to blame my son! He said that had behaviour issues. I asked him to expand and he said he was running in the hallways. Wow, I've got to admit my son has serious behaviour issues! This is a kid who has NEVER got into trouble at school (unlike his brother) and tries to please everyone.
The final insult is that I was verbatim told by the owner that the kids in french immersion are given bracelets to signify that they need to be spoken to in french. This simply was not the case. Bracelets are given but to they signify anything to do with language. They were divided into groups based on age, overnight camp vs day camp and given names for that group. My son said the majority of kids in his group weren't in french immersion and wore the identical bracelets. read more