When I was a teenager, I worked for two years as a counselor-in-training at a place called Camp Billings in Fairlee, Vermont (a paperless illegal immigrant!). On the evening of my 16th birthday, the whole camp assembled for in the dining hall for a meal and the mandatory singing of jesus-y folk tunes. Halfway through Green Grow The Rushes-O, the mood suddenly got extremely ominous as the early evening summer sun seemingly disappeared out of the sky, to be replaced out of nowhere by a Mordor-esque oppressive black that made everyone instinctively stop dead in their singing tracks. Maybe a minute or two passed before the storm started. I still to this day have never experienced anything remotely like it — it felt as if the cabin we stood in had been suddenly been transported into some kind of end-of-days meteorological cataclysm deep within Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The view outside the window was almost total black, and the entire place shook like it was about to explode. Less than 3 minutes later, it was over as suddenly as it had begun.
Under the now-beaming sunshine, the campers and staff timidly stepped out to survey the scene, and a grim scene it was indeed. Half the camp had been completely destroyed — cabins knocked to the ground, tents in the middle of the river, canoes in the middle of the parking lot. Carnage. Walking through the devastation, my eye was drawn to the upper branches of a tall oak tree. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Stuck 30 feet in the air was a cake — my birthday cake. It had been sitting on a trolley by the kitchen when the storm hit, and had been sucked away into what we now understood had been a tornado.
~ MATT ZAGURAK
I went to Bible camp when I was 8. I was the youngest camper there. I shaved my legs for the first time, and learned the verse: “sex is evil, evil is sin, sins are forgiven, so sex is in”. The only thing remotely church-y I remember learning is that a peace sign is allegedly and upside down cross with the arms broken. I drew peace signs without a line all the way down the middle for years for fear of letting the devil into my life.
I was on my very first diet while at this camp and remembered salivating when all my friends got goodies at the canteen. My Mom thoughtfully informed the kitchen folks at camp of my weight-loss goals, and they were sure to provide me with fruit cups while all the other kids indulged in ice cream and smores.
During camp I had my first crush on a 12 year old boy named Gordie. He wore plaid shirts and cut-off jeans and smacked a leach off his leg with a frying pan. I couldn’t get enough of Gordie. I actually followed him around camp and tried to sit next to him at every meal. I wasn’t the only girl with a crush on Gordie that summer, and I remember him asking a couple of his groupies to “get that girl away from me”.
I’m not sure if I lost any weight that summer, or became a better Christian, though I did decide that I was never going to summer camp again.
~KATIE CAMPBELL
I was a counsellor at camp in the Laurentians about 45 minutes north of Montreal. MY boys were about 11 or 12 years old. I am a gentle guy, but developed a reputation for crafting the most creative of punishments when my kids got out of line. One activity that every bunk must participate in – boys, girls, young and old – is the end of summer dance show. No way out of it. Eleven and twelve-year-old boys do not love to dance. But for once every two weeks, 45 minutes of rehersal just must get done. My boys were particularly out of line one hot July afternoon in the dance hall – interrupting, calling the dance instructor names, running in and out of the hall for no apparent reason, etc. I warned them lest they want to fall victim to the most creative of punishments. They would not relent. The disruptions continued. I gave second chances, third chances. The disruptions continued. Their favorite activity – rollerhockey – was to take place after dance. But not this afternoon. Instead, once dance had finished, I interned them to their bunks for an hour. I made them sit on their beds. I placed a stereo in the middle of the bunk and played their dance rehersal song (Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity”) on repeat. Loudly. Over and over again. Virtual insanity.
Suffice to say they never acted up in dance again. I didn’t yell, or scream, or threaten. I simply created a punishment. Creatively.
~DAVID KANDESTIN
As new immigrants to Toronto in the eighties, we lacked the funds for luxurious overnight camp.
My parents did occasionally send us to daycamp, which involved schlepping out to garbage-strewn parks and dubious ponds in the suburbs. I have a photo of half a dozen little girls posing like beauty pageant contestants, sitting in a mud puddle on some lawn. Another time, some kid somehow impaled the roof of his mouth with the stick to his candy apple. I guess they sharpened those sticks for the poor souls at daycamp.
Mostly I remember the school bus rides we’d take to our sad destinations: slimy kids screaming, farting and being cruel to each other. One would flip his eyelids inside out. It was like our own Garbage Pail Kids trading card.
The school bus driver was some crazy teen channeling Michael J Fox in Back to the Future. He’d blast Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine, gun the bus, lean back and steer using his feet, each one straddling the big wheel.
The kids went nuts for this, and as far as I know, there were no casualties.
~ZOSIA BIELSKI
I was at Camp Couchingching in Orillia. On this one particular day, we had just learned to make twine bracelets (got addicting to continuously make a bunch of them). Later on we moved on to another activity – volleyball on a tennis court! Instead of playing with volleyballs we improvised and used large workout balls – dangerous I know! I don’t exactly remember why I took a break from the game – possibly my low attention span. Anyways while everyone was playing I decided to climb up on one of those tennis referree high chairs – maybe 6 – 8 ft off the ground. Needless to say I felt very cool up there. I even decided to whip out my twine and continue to finish this dumb bracelet. Then it began to lightly rain, and we were all directed to head in to our cabins. I decided to climb down this chair ladder with my body facing forwards. Within the first step down the board ripped off and I went plunging down on to the court, landing on my side. I landed on my elbow joint specifically causing it to fracture and dislocate to the top of my arm. The following hour was spent cursing every swear word a kid could know and an the worst ambulance ride ever!
~ROBERT LOSCHIAVO
My parents enrolled me in the Lake Superior State hockey camp and I was all set and excited to go until it got close to actually going. Everytime it got to be one more day closer I would get a lump in my throat. I was used to going on sleepovers for two days at a time but this time I was going to be away for seven days in place where our parents weren’t around at all in a foreign city in a foreign country, Soo Michigan.
I remember the lights going out the first night in the army barracks (how suiting) and the tears started to come to my eyes. For seven days the likes of Doug Weight (of soon to be New York Rangers fame) was going to be yelling at us and calling us girls probably and making us do wall sits (where you lean against the wall and hold it in a sit position, hard) for minutes at a time for acting out of line. This was a big mistake!
We got up to eat in the morning and they fed us absolute dog food. Remember the krusty the klown camp? I would have begged for that gruel. Then they pushed us out onto the ice at an ungodly hour. I think we skated for a hour and then did some “dry land” training. Did you know that you live on the dry land? I thought I just lived on land, nope – everything is compared to ice now for seven days.
Then we’d go back out on the ice and do some puck handling exercises and some passing and if you showed it was your second time on the ice in the first four hours of daylight you got told to hustle. If you kept “dogging it” you had to do pushups. Hockey camp is soft-core military camp.
We’d go into the video room which was great because it was your time to fall asleep. The videos were always produced by his production company with absolutely no sense of humour for if they did they would have chosen a less hilarious namesake for eleven year old hockey players, Bonner Video! Pronounced exactly how you would want to pronounce it to facilitate a round of eleven-year-old boy gut laughs. Apparently the one “n” was silent. “Bon-er video presents GREAT ICE HOCKEY SAVES!” Americans had this thing where they had to specify what kind of hockey you were playing because they had field hockey but I never really heard of the legends of field hockey. I think they stopped this nomenclature some time ago.
It was alienating listening to American kids all day, telling us how much better America was, and we’d just shrug our shoulders and agree.
“We make all the movies and make all the cars and what do you guys make?”
“Uh…We make really good pizza and Kids In The Hall. But more importantly Gretzky is from Canada.”
“Gretzky sacks!” They would say with that Upper Peninsula twang. “He’s married to an American so they will have American kids.”
I would go to bed at night, homesick, and I’d secretly cry myself to sleep. All the guys would go sneak out and I would for a bit then I’d slip off into my bed, put my head on the pillow and slowly cry myself to sleep. This worked for a few nights. But a combination of the really horrible chow they gave us coupled with the crippling emotions and next thing I know I’m throwing up. It just happened one night, something snapped in me and I threw up all over the bathroom. All over the bunkroom we were in. All down the hallway. Doug Weight couldn’t keep up. I think at one point he had to take off his ball cap to wipe the sweat off his brow from constantly working on picking up my puke. They wondered where it all came from.
It came from my broken heart. I was so homesick. I lasted until Wednesday and then my gut gave out. My parents had to come with Aurora’s pizza and that got me through to the scrimmage and then I GOT THE HELL OUT OF LAKE SUPERIOR STATE HOCKEY CAMP.
~JP NAPHAN
Stay tuned for “Summer Camp Illustrated: Part 2. Send your summer camp stories to tiffythompson@gmail.com
Also check out: Your Landlord Stories: Illustrated
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Tiffy Thompson is a writer and illustrator for the Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter at @tiffyjthompson.
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