Summer Camp

It's the dead of winter. So, time to look into summer camp! Other parents have remarked that it's early still to be thinking about camp season. Not a moment too soon, if you ask me.

Until recently, my husband and I couldn't decide where to send our soon-to-be-nine-year-old daughter for camp. 

"Send her to a Habonim camp!" said my dad.

When I was nine he sent me off to a Zionist youth camp. It was great! I loved the Israeli dancing, making new friends and the cute boys. I was completely oblivious to the politics, though.

Never questioned why we raised the Israeli flag every morning or sang Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. Or why camp activities simulated kibbutz life: doing avodah (which on a kibbutz means agricultural work but at camp meant daily chores), Hebrew lessons, singing communist folk songs, intense political discussions, reenacting the Six Day War and the War of Independence, and camp “revolution," when the campers kicked out the counselors. 

That's what everyone did at camp, right?

It was only years later that a friend of mine, who had grown up near the camp, said she had "always thought it was a little cult-ish."

Not wanting to inflict the cult stigma on my own child, I figured we could be very Canadian and side-step the whole religious identity thing altogether.

My husband's camp sounded okay. Canoe-tripping camp, where my husband endured a variety of character-building activities, such as fleeing from bears, fighting off plagues of mosquitoes, eating cold beans from a can, starting a fire with wet wood and paddling upstream both ways in the rain.

It was a kind of enforced suffering for the noblesse oblige of Upper Canada, all done in the iconic landscapes painted by the Group of Seven. In other words, as religious as camp gets for WASPs.

When my husband tried to sell this camp to our daughter, her soft, pretty face crumpled in disappointment. “Okay,” she said, eyes downcast.

“But there are camps that have archery, Dad. And horseback riding, and climbing walls.”

“At tripping camp, you learn survival skills,” said my husband. “Navigation! How to build a fire! That other camp is like an amusement park.”

We almost had her. Our daughter, now only a little apprehensive about going to “Daddy's survival camp,” was starting to give in.

What we didn't anticipate? Miniature horses.

While we were looking at the web site of a camp my sister-in-law had once attended, my husband scoffed and pointed to the computer screen.

“Ha! Look at this,” he said. “Miniature horses, can you believe it?”

Our daughter's ears pricked up instantly. “Ponies?”

“No," said my husband quietly, instantly understanding his mistake. "Those--those really little ones." A listless look came over his face. A look that said, "I just promised my daughter a pony, now how do I take it away?" 

"It says here you can feed them," he said.

We were done. The price was about the same as the other camps, with just that one little thing—that miniature thing—that no one else had.

Next day, our daughter made a checklist of things she "really wanted" at camp. Just to help us make our decision. 

Top of her list? Miniature horses.

It was a genius move on the part of the camp. 

Can't you just picture the decision happening? Some eco-friendly board room, somewhere north of Toronto, by a lake. A couple of administrators sit around with the head counselor, scratching their heads, coffee getting cold.

“Our numbers are dwindling. We just can't compete.”

“We're an established camp, damn it! Think of our name! Think of our history. We've gotta do something!”

They work through the various options: Bouncy castle? Too young. Trampoline? Hello, head injuries! Ferris wheel? Too gaudy, and you need carnies to run it. Wouldn't go over well with the parents.

Things are looking a little desperate, until suddenly, a fist slams down on the reclaimed-wood table. “I've got it, yes! Miniature horses! Damn, I'm good. We will crush the competition!”

And they certainly did.