If your idea of healing from a breakup has surpassed ice cream in bed for a week and moved into a full blown compulsive internet stalking obsession with no way out, then Camp Heartbreak is here just in time to throw you a rope. Hidden between 160 acres of thick Canadian forest, 2.5 hours north of Toronto, stands Camp Can-Aqua. Home to thousands of life-changing childhood memories, it will now also be the birthplace of a few life-changing adulthood memories as it transforms into Camp Heartbreak, a five-day, four-night camp-style experience designed for adults finding their way through heartbreak.
Intended for those navigating their way through recent divorce, separation, difficult breakups, long lasting heartbreaks and anything in between, this experience perfectly toes the line between structured healing and pure camp fun. Marquee offerings include expert-led lectures on the science of heartbreak and resilience, group therapy sessions, creative writing workshops, nature talks, stargazing and sound baths. Just as vital, though, is the childlike joy of play: paddleboarding and sailing, canoeing and kayaking, archery, high ropes, mountain biking, pottery, woodworking, arts and crafts, karaoke, DJ dance parties and campfires under the stars. Therapy and play are given equal billing — both necessary, both healing.
Greg Chociej, the mind behind Camp Heartbreak, is actually a local Toronto performer who you may or may not recognize from a classic Toronto stage: Second City. He’s been a cherished member of the arts community for 20+ years and that theatre DNA running through his veins shaped the worldview that brought us this experience. As he puts it, “everything that we do in drama generally is team-minded, especially improv.”
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That instinct — to turn pain into something communal — sits at the intersection of the arts community and what Chociej has now brought to Camp Heartbreak. The seed was planted long before the program existed.
“The idea turns five January,” he says. “I’ve been circling the breakup world and this idea for I’d say like 12 to 13 years,” explains Chociej, but the crystallizing moment arrived in the pandemic’s first winter: “I read an article in early January 2021 about how the divorce rate had skyrocketed because people were stuck at home and they weren’t going out anymore and all their problems were just magnified.”
From there, he put together a business case. The most important step was finding the space. “I was looking for a very specific kind of space, radiating with positivity and good vibes — one that has that feeling of summer camp built into it. I found that right away with Can-Aqua.”
His “why” runs deeper than clever programming. Chociej lost both parents to cancer — his dad when he was 14, his mom at 19 — and he never forgot how different grief is treated depending on the cause. “You tell someone that someone has died in your life. They generally try to protect you and hug you. You tell someone you’re going through a breakup, they want to get you drunk.”
He kept noticing the fallout, how many people have unresolved issues, and how culture tends to say, “Get over it, pal.”
He wanted a different path — one he once wished existed for himself. After the grief he’d dealt with in his early adult life, Chociej experienced a breakup 15 years ago and found himself shocked to his core by how deeply it cut.
“I just want a lake, a basketball, therapy and for someone to just get me out of town for a week. I kept looking for something like that and it just wasn’t around.”
Camp Heartbreak became his answer: “I call it emotional infrastructure, the process of creating these systems.” And those systems are intentionally balanced. “If you look at our scheduling it’s basically five sessions in a day where you’ll get two rounds of group therapy in the daytime and two rounds of activities,” he says.
The proof is in the transitions: coming out of a group session “in a bit of a tough shape and then hearing them laughing their asses off like in a canoe 10 minutes later, that to me was the goal.”
Though the experience is short and sweet, the community doesn’t end at check-out. “One of our session one campers emailed me last week letting me know, ‘We all still talk on WhatsApp and we all still support each other.’ That’s what I wanted.”
For Chociej, he knew he had created the right space after the very first night’s icebreaker, where he watched pure camp magic unfold in front of his eyes. “Within 20 to 30 minutes of them meeting each other, everyone was, already laughing and singing around a campfire together.”
“I think adults lose that sense of play,” he says, which is why he keeps weaving in music, games and silliness alongside the clinical work.
Camp Heartbreak is aimed at people in many heartbreak states: recently divorced, going through a separation, just out of a relationship, considering a breakup, hung up on an ex, consciously uncoupling, ready for a mindset change — and even those “sticking pins in a little doll as a form of revenge,” which the program copy lists with a wink.
If you’re ready to give your inner child the chance to play one more time, and finally let go of an ex haunting you this haunted season, the next session runs Oct. 2–6, 2025; early-bird spots are $1,598 + tax.
