Camp Tamarack celebrated its 40th year of barrier-free camping with its Family Camp Day on Saturday afternoon followed by a spaghetti dinner, a silent auction and speeches.

Family Camp Day was open to the public and featured activities such as archery, chalk and bubbles, climbing wall, low ropes course, frisbee golf and campfires with s’mores and hot dogs.

“Forty years is great for us,” said camp director Cassie Bloy, also known as “Emerald” around the camp. “A lot of lives have been impacted by what we do here and how we do our activities and programming.”

The sleepaway summer camp offers weeklong programs for individuals of all abilities.

“We change camp to work for them,” Bloy added. “This is my fifth year with Camp Tamarack as the director for all those years and it’s my blood, sweat and tears.”

In 1976, the Grande Prairie Shrine Club came up with the idea of idea of starting a wilderness camp for people with disabilities in northern Alberta and northwestern British Columbia. After the Shrine Club obtained Crown land and started the camp in 1979, it handed over control to the Camp Tamarack Association.

“We evolved originally as a day camp for people living with disabilities, typically more on the adult end of things, and now we’re offering full sleepaway programming and adventure programming,” Bloy said. “We still offer adult programming. We have one week of programming with adults with special needs.”

Camp Tamarack currently has 55 beds for campers in cabins and 40 plus in teepees in addition to 18 beds for staff. Bloy noted that the camp would be “digging into the shoulder seasons” by offering spring and fall programming for schools and youth groups.

“I’m excited to see where Tamarack’s headed,” Bloy added. “Every year, we’ve been growing more and more to a point where we’re hitting our max capacity and we have as many staff possible here that we have physical beds for people to sleep in.”

More information can be found at camptamarack.ca.