Summer Camp

For most of the years between ages 11 and 22, I spent parts of my summers at a church camp in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba. 

The camp was what you might call rustic.  I’m talking pit toilet rustic.  The nearest phone was 30 minutes away, and we only had electricity during the day when the generator ran (if it wasn't broken).  Hair dryers and electric razors and other electric accessories were not permitted.  We had no showers, so we washed in the lake.  Later, when I was hired as a summer staff person, I looked forward to my weekly visit to the resort town across the lake on my day off for a hot shower and a visit to the laundromat.  Our baseball diamond was in the middle of a swamp, and we didn’t have anything fancy like ziplines or horseback riding.  Running into a bear on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night was a very real possibility.  It probably wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. 

I loved it.

I don’t recall much about the history of the camp, although I know it was built by Manitoba Baptists in the 1940s.  I have seen photos of the first corduroy road that led into the camp site, and heard stories about hauling sand in to create a beach.  My history began with a girls’ camp, where I bonded with another girl over a butterfly while we were driving to the nearby buffalo compound in the back of a station wagon.  Forty years later, we are still best friends.  I spent subsequent summers as a camper, then a volunteer counsellor, and eventually, a full-time summer employee. 

My memories of camp were rekindled the other day when I picked up a novel from the bookstore’s bargain table called The Firelight Girls, by Kaya McLaren.  It was a light summer read, certainly not Pulitzer-worthy, but the attraction was that it was about a group of women who gather to clean up and permanently close their beloved summer camp.

My camp, Camp Shänti, was built at the west end of Clear Lake, in Riding Mountain National Park. It faced eastward, toward the lake, and was surrounded on its other sides by trees of the boreal forest – spruce, jackpine, and a few aspens.  One of the Park’s hiking trails was supposed to pass through the camp, but it was almost always impassable because of the swamp just down the shore from us.  Bears often passed through the camp, occasionally investigating the garbage pit behind the kitchen and necessitating the placement of bear traps by Parks Canada, and in the late summer, we would begin to hear bugling bull elks looking for mates.  Occasionally we would hear wolves calling as we drifted off to sleep, and we frequently heard loons calling to each other.

Unfortunately, the camp was built on land that had been established as an Anishinabe fishing reserve, which had been taken from them when the Park was established in the 1930s.  After the camp closed, the land was returned to its rightful owners, and now it is part of the Keeseekoowenin First Nation.  Even while the camp was still operating, Anishinabe people would appear a couple of times each summer, and stage a peaceful protest, sitting on the lakeshore, affirming their presence on the land. Being young and white and ignorant, we generally felt threatened by their presence.  As a more educated adult, one of my biggest regrets is that we were so reluctant to engage them in conversation or attempt to create understanding and mutual respect.

Camp was full of amazing and wonderful and exciting experiences.  There was the time we went for a hike in the nearby forest and got lost.  Our leader was almost hysterical, even though we eventually ended up on a road.  We campers sensed adventure, and acted accordingly.  The time that some of the boys wandered off the trail during another hike in a rugged part of the Park and were well and truly lost for several hours.  The occasional road trips to the nearby bison enclosure, always filled with the anticipation of spotting the massive creatures.  On one trip, we encountered them up close and personal, turning a corner to discover that the bison were blocking the foot path that led from the parking lot to the interpretive area.  Overnight trips away from the camp, usually involving canoeing to a group campsite along the south shore of the lake, and almost always including high waves and winds and an eventual canoe rescue, the day ending with banana boats made in the fire and sleeping under the stars.  Countless campfires, songs and skits.  May long weekend camps when there was still ice on the lake; one memorable camp where we all hiked down the road to the “Indian Cemetery” after dark, and a couple of the boys decided it would be funny to pretend someone had been hanged from a tree.  I’m pretty sure some of the girls still get hysterical when they recall it.  The camp personalities, most favourite of whom I’m sure was Percy, who used to start every day by singing “Oh how I hate to get up in the morning” at the top of his lungs (and not particularly well!).  And the counsellor hunts, and the time my best friend fell off the bell tower where she was hiding and the camp director put Absorbine Jr. on her bruises (note: Absorbine Jr. is NOT an effective treatment for bruises, but it does bring out their various hues in a most spectacular way).  Off-site trips to a nearby neighbour’s cottage for special campfires.  And in the last summer, trail riding and wagon rides at a nearby guest ranch. 

And I must not forget the food adventures.  Our cooks were generally shall we say frugal, and the gobs of leftover porridge found its way into all kinds of unexpected dishes (as an aside, coming from a home where my dad regularly made the most delicious porridge, the cold, lumpy, gooey camp porridge remains one of the biggest disappointments of my camping experience).  We were once served spaghetti with no sauce.  One year someone donated jello mixes to the camp – root beer, watermelon and cotton candy.  Let’s just say that the jello found alternate uses.  Although the food was generally not very popular, the freezers full of home-baked cookies donated by Baptist ladies from all over the province were in high demand (my favourites were the monster cookies, which I discovered later were hoarded and saved for the “staff meetings” after lights out). 

Other events like Utensil meals, banquets, skit nights, water games, the year our lifeguard swam across the lake just because, pranks, homesick kids, chores, crushes, water fights, silly games (Train or Lighthouse, anyone?), nature, wicked thunderstorms, bunkbeds, canoeing lessons, newspaper-filled cabins and cars, and as the women in The Firelight Girls reminded me, moths and spiders and the ever-present smell of Pine-Sol in the toilets... so many memories...

The most life-changing thing that happened to me at camp was that my relationship with a certain man evolved to the point that during one particular day off, which we spent together, we became engaged.  The day itself involved the not-very-romantic task of doing laundry in town, followed by a totally unromantic dinner at a local pizza place seated next to a very large table of young families, with children who cried and wailed and whined throughout the entire meal.  However, it ended with a drive at dusk to a nearby scenic lake, where he popped the question (and I use that term purposely, because he later admitted that it was almost completely spontaneous).  On the drive back to the camp, we spotted a large bull moose grazing in a stream, and we stopped and watched him for several minutes.  I think it was a good omen; 31 years later, we’re still married.

Anyone who has fallen in love with summer camp will understand some of the universal experiences of camp.  There is the connection to the natural world, the camaraderie of living with a dozen or so other cabin mates, the freedom of being away from your family and the usual routines of life.  I always felt it was a sanctuary, but I never really considered that for many children, maybe it truly was an actual sanctuary, a safe haven.  In The Firelight Girls, one of the characters grows up with an abusive parent, and she reflects on the meaning of the camp in her life: 

     It was a completely safe place.  She kept expecting the feeling to pass, but it lasted while she lay on a warm boulder and let the radiance of the sun’s heat thaw her.  It lasted while they pitched tents, made dinner, and sang songs together.  It lasted as the talk of girleating bears gave way to snoring.  It lasted into the night and sank deep into her dreams, so that for once they were good.  She even woke up feeling safe and protected in this secret world.
    As the other girls rolled up sleeping bags and tents, seemingly both surprised and relieved that they had survived the night without being eaten by wild animals, Laura felt grief.  She didn’t want to go.  She never wanted to leave this sanctuary where she was hidden and protected from everything sick and mean and ugly.

I was never aware of campers who might have come from situations that were less than ideal, but I was young and naive, as were most of the other staff.  I only hope that for those kids whose lives felt “sick and mean and ugly,” the time they spent at camp gave them a reprieve, a sanctuary, and the strength to survive.

I spent one last summer at the Camp, the summer after I was married.  My husband was the director of the camp.  I knew that since we were moving to Ontario that September that we were not likely to return for several years, so I decided that instead of working at the camp, I would live there as the director’s spouse, with no responsibilities.  It gave me the opportunity to say goodbye to my heart’s home, although we did not foresee at the time that the camp would never operate at that location again. 

One of my most special memories of camp occurred during that last summer. 

Usually every summer, one camp consisted mainly of young First Nations children from Winnipeg.  These camps were always a challenge.  This particular camp was more challenging than usual.  The children were unenthusiastic about the activities that the staff had planned for the week, and unresponsive.  After a couple of days, the staff met to reconsider its approach, and decided to scrap their plans and try something different.  One of the highlights was taking the kids off-site to the bison compound.  Most of these children had never seen live bison before, since they were city kids, but the response when they encountered these animals, so important to their culture and history, was palpable.  The other highlight was a day spent completely in the water – canoeing, swimming, and water Olympics.

One white girl was not happy to be at camp.  She had attended camp in the past and had always been a bit of a handful, but during this particular camp she was downright unpleasant.  She spent part of her time bullying one of the First Nations boys who was small for his age.  One evening after supper, we were all heading from the dining hall towards the cabins, and we saw the girl wander off to the end of the dock.  She was obviously crying.  We were debating what we would do when we saw the boy veer off toward the dock as well.  We stopped and watched, and received a lesson in true compassion from a boy who most likely had not received much compassion himself during his young life.  Not one of us would have blamed him if he had gone up to the girl and pushed her off the dock into the lake.  Instead, he gently approached her, and when he was beside her, he stretched out his little hand and took her hand in his.  He stayed with her, silent, until she had stopped crying. 

Camp meant so many things to me.  I loved the people I met, the natural surroundings, the place.  I loved the fact that everyone had favourite cabins and counsellors.  I loved the familiarity of the place; as one of the characters in the novel muses, “There was something profoundly comforting about places a person knew in the dark, these trails like old friends she hadn’t forgotten.  The young trees had grown.  They looked different.  But it felt the same.”  Camp was home for my spirit, the place that, as another character says, housed my essence.  There was nothing like the anticipation of driving down the back road for the first time each summer, passing the Indian Cemetery, driving through the tall trees, and finally, at last, rounding the last corner and catching the first glimpse of the lake and then the camp.

I wonder if it would feel the same to me, even though the trees have grown and the buildings have been removed.  I wonder if I would remember to avoid that big tree root that was by the Chapel, or be able to find where the campfire used to be.  One day, maybe I will muster the courage to ask the Keeseekoowenin Band for permission to find out.  In the meantime, I treasure my memories about camp, and tomorrow, I will mail a copy of The Firelight Girls to my best friend.