It all started in the summer of 1995. Lucie Binette, a mother of two young children, who was working part time, was looking for a part time daycamp for her children.

After many phone calls to all the daycamps of the area, she realized that this kind of daycamp did not exist! That summer, a good friend of hers, Johanne Charest, offered to take care of her eldest, who was 9 years old at the time and her youngest, who was 5 years old, went to her regular daycare.

When the summer was over, she said to her friend : "If I don't find a daycamp for part time for next summer, I will start my own!"

Her good friend then answered : "If you start one, I'll join you!" Then they started to do some research to see if it could work; a visit to the CLSC to study the demography, a meeting with the Recreation Director of the City of Dorval to study their daycamp, phone calls to the different daycamps of the West Island to find out their costs and services.

After discovering that this daycamp could very well work, a phone call to the City of Dollard-des-Ormeaux was made to find out if their support in this project was possible.

Bettina Fraser, Recreation technician of the municipality at the time, was immediately thrilled by the idea! She suggested that they should register the daycamp as a non-profit organization and she proposed the project to the City Counsil to get it approved. Another mother, Louise Hénault, and a City Councillor, Colette Gauthier, joined the group and the DDO Daycamp was founded!

On the other hand, the municipality had some demands.... The name of the camp was chosen by it and, although the mothers wanted only one chalet to start with, the City asked that 2 chalets be used the first year (Fairview and Spring Garden).

Lucie drew up the Camp logo and Bettina took care of designing the flyer and finding a director. During this period, another mother, Michèle Patry, also joined the group. The new director, Christian St-Pierre, started work the night of the registrations. At that time, the Camp had a maximum capacity of 130 children and about 50 people registered that night.

That year, the camp did not even own a computer! Louise was doing the accounting, Johanne was helping Christian with the puchases and Lucie was preparing the meetings, was keeping constant contacts with Christian, was checking out the parks, was looking for subsidies, ect...

The camp was almost full by the beginning of the summer, and registrations kept coming in throughout the summer. It went so well that the Camp was full the whole summer! The following summer, a new chalet was added, Terry Fox. In 1998, 2 new chalets, Sunnybrook and Westwood (Adventure Club), were added . Then, in 1999, the C.I.T. program was started. Finally, Elm Park was added in 2002 to try to accomodate all the demand!

Now, every year, the waiting list keeps getting longer. Regretfully, there is no more parks available to accomodate more children. The possibility of using a high school was proposed but the cost of this solution would have doubled the fees for the parents.

One thing is for sure, the primary objective of this daycamp is and will always be to have a fun and bilingual daycamp for children and affordable for their parents!