After Darkman and I spent the day exploring the Toronto area, I drove as quickly as I could to reach Camp 30 in Bowmanville, Ontario before sunset. We arrived at Camp 30 by 8 P.M. and upon exiting the car we could see (and smell) that something was wrong. Smoke could be seen billowing the upper windows of one building. We walked around to the rear of the building where I walked inside the building. I found that a bonfire had been lit using part of a wooden pallet. Arson is nothing new when it comes to abandoned buildings but this was my first time encountering one.
Given the potential for the fire to spread to the walls, Darkman notified the fire department and provided a description of the two males we had seen leaving the area. The response time of the fire department was less than five minutes. The police arrived and took a statement. We hadn’t seen the youths lighting the fire so it could be they weren’t involved.

Had I not arrived 20 minutes late and had we not stopped for gas we might have arrived before this fire was set. As the fire department and police were taking care of the situation I remarked to Darkman, “This is going to bring us good karma”.
The police indicated that these calls occur almost every day. A suspicious fire already destroyed one of the Camp 30 buildings in 2009 and the cycle of inevitable destruction is ongoing. Once a building is abandoned, attempts are normally made to try to preserve it from vandalism and mischief. Boards will be put up, doors will be locked and security will make the occasional patrol. Graffiti will begin to appear on the outside of the buildings and glass will be broken.When interior access becomes available at an abandoned location, the graffiti spreads like a plague and almost every pane of glass becomes broken. We’ve seen it happen in abandoned hospitals, houses, and schools.
Unless a property owner continually maintains security of their property it can easily be destroyed completely in a month along with it much of the resale value. At Camp 30, attempts had been made to place large boulders in front of the doors and to place fencing in front of windows. Now makeshift ladders have been erected leading to the now smashed windows. Doors that once were blocked with boulders are now open. Security used to check up on the property regularly but the patrols are sporadic now. The fencing placed in front of the windows has somehow been bent down to ground level. With an absence in security and the remote location of this property, the vandalism has left the buildings completely trashed. My partner in karma and I continued to explore while the fire department and police finished their work. By 9:20 PM the sun had set and it was time to leave Darkman decided to have a quick cigarette before we left. As we were standing outside the car, I saw a small dark animal moving through the grass next to the road. I asked, “Is that a squirrel or chipmunk in the grass?” We didn’t pay much attention to i,t however the animal continued to rustle about in the grass just a few feet from us. As we moved closer to the grass we realized that these were two small kittens.


Very nice to read of the Karma Kittens. Made me smile.