This week, summer settled in. The news isn’t worth reading for a while. The backyard is halfway between being under some control and being taken over by weeds. Any songbirds that are coming, have come. A lot of neighbours have disappeared to their cottages. I’ve slipped into a summer break like a pair of favourite sandals. Then, the other day, my daughter dropped by.
“Taking two of the kids to summer swimming camp,” she told me.
“Yup. It’s summer,” I sighed.
But then part of that phrase kind of settled on my brain. I thought about forests and lakes and cabins and mosquitoes and campfire songs. “Summer camp” brought back a whole backpack’s worth of memories, some of them innocent (the senior camp boys had smuggled in skin magazines), others physiological (getting sick on bags of candy or green apples), still others psychological (being embarrassed because my mom had sewn my name on every sheet, blanket and piece of clothing I’d brought to camp).
I think it was the summer of 1958 when a couple of the neighbour’s sons – Roger and Bob Middleton (they were neighbours yet again as adults in the Uxbridge area) – convinced their folks they should go to camp. And why didn’t several of the other kids on the street come along? My folks consented and I joined the adventure from Scarborough north into Muskoka, to “Camp Wa Ye Kwa Kana.”
To this day I have no idea if the name stood for anything but an insult to the local First Nations’ names in that part of north-central Ontario. If so, I apologize. But for years afterward, I cherished the T-shirt with that name on it like a red badge of courage. And courage was indeed what I’d needed to get through summer camp.
The first hurdle to get over – albeit it didn’t take long – was homesickness. I remember later committing all the lyrics of Allan Sherman’s 1963 hit song, “Hello Muddah. Hello Faddah,” to memory and laughing myself silly about how afraid I’d been about leaving home for two weeks. However, as in the Sherman song, I discovered there was so much to do at camp that I very soon forgot about Scarborough, my own bed and even my own Muddah and Faddah.
I was having so much fun horseback riding, making handcrafts and spending the rest of the day in the water trying to master the basic skills to obtain a Red Cross tadpole certificate. The trick was to survive the Teutonic demands of the swimming counsellors.
“Kick harder! Stroke faster!” they’d shout. Then when I could almost envision that Red Cross badge sewn on my bathing suit, they’d blurt out, “No, no, no. More laps. Stay underwater another 15 seconds.”
Otherwise, the camp counsellors treated the campers with respect, unless they wanted to impress counsellors of the opposite sex, or if they wanted us junior campers into our bunk beds and out of the way, so that they could party at night. My recollection of our own cabin counsellor was that he was firm but fair, fun-loving but not funny, and generally considerate of the fact we were kids there to have fun. The breakfast counsellor, however, was like Mrs. Hitler. One morning, as I was about to wolf down a slice of toast loaded with strawberry jam, I heard her from across the dining hall.
“Stop!” she screamed. “Where are your manners?” Then, she raked me over the coals for not slicing the toast in two before I devoured it. “No toast for two days,” she told me was my punishment. I could have cried. I loved strawberry jam on toast.
Now, did I mention that this camp was co-ed? Of course, I recognized that right away, when I saw girls around the dining tables, sharing the swimming lessons and at the campfire for singsongs each evening. But there were certain parts of the camp that were definitely NOT co-ed. And I discovered that by accident one day, when I took a different route from the beach back to my cabin by myself. As I ventured up the path, I realized it was uncharted territory. That became clear when I heard reaction from inside one of the unfamiliar cabins along the path.
“It’s a boy,” I heard a girl scream. “What’s he doing here?”
The camp was co-ed, but not co-habited. I guess I had zoned out during that part of the reading of the camp rules and didn’t realize the girls’ cabins were off-limits. Anyway, the shriek got me hoofing down that path as fast as my little legs could carry me. Fortunately, nobody recognized me so I was spared punishment for that.
So, summer camp taught me lots of useless stuff about breakfast etiquette, recognizing boundaries and earning badges. Fortunately, I didn’t have the heart or the opportunity to tell my grandkids what to expect at camp. As with every summer adventure, they’ll have to learn for themselves.