These Gander volunteers are bringing an abandoned kids' camp back from the dead

It's overgrown and a little spooky, but a group of Gander volunteers are coaxing an old Boy Scout camp back to life.

Camp Hancock used to be a thriving Scouts Canada property, right off the Trans-Canada Highway near Gander. It opened in 1990, but by 2016, the Scouts decided to close it in favour of a larger, central camp.

Now locals want to reopen the camp so kids in the region can spend time in nature.

"We have to sustain it under our own funding, which we are quite happy and willing to do," said Scouter and volunteer Steve Lundrigan.

"Our mandate is to open this up to all youth groups," he said. "Cadets, the Girl Guides, and even any sporting and school youth groups … this is what this is designed for."

The work hasn't been easy, though — the property has sat untouched for seven years.

"As you can imagine, Newfoundland wilderness, when you leave it alone, it will recoup everything," Lundrigan said.

"The property itself here is a beautiful property, but when we came back in the spring, to no surprise, it had grown over considerably. The Newfoundland alders are a quite intriguing little bush. They will grow quite rapidly when given their freedom, and that's what happened here. So the entire property here was completely rolled over with alders."

Volunteers also had to remove and replace rotten decking and a wheelchair ramp, but Lundrigan says they were lucky to find the buildings on site in good repair and still watertight.

He says the community is playing a big part in the project too. Local service clubs like the Elks and Rotary have donated money, and the bunkhouse is actually a former military building from the base in Gander that was taken apart and rebuilt on site.

The group hopes to have Camp Hancock back up and running — and looking markedly less eerie — by next September.

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