This week my family participated in a quintessentially Canadian rite of passage: We dropped off our 7-year old son at sleep-away camp for the first time.
For the next two weeks, there will only be letters going back and forth between us. At least I hope he’ll write back — we stuffed stamped, return envelopes into his knapsack.
He’ll bunk with a few boys his age in a very rustic cabin with no electricity, and will be wholly free of screens. He can’t call home, unless there’s a real emergency.
He will fish, canoe, swim and — the best bit, according to him — learn how to use a knife for woodcarving.
My son has lived on three continents in his seven years, and watching him become attached to his Canadian life since moving here two years ago has been fascinating, and heartwarming. So when he came to us earlier this year asking to go to summer camp with his school friends, we took a leap of faith.
Parents I asked about the experience reminisced about core memories formed at lakeside summer camps in Ontario and elsewhere, and urged me to sign him up.
They told me about the independence the experience gives young Canadians, helping them develop foundational skills to navigate nature, water and the woods, safely, communally and enjoyably.
This, I thought, was about our son beginning to build the quality I have most admired in Canadians since moving here: grit — for him and, in some ways, for us, building our courage and trust in letting him go.
Grit is not necessarily a central goal in raising children where I come from. Greek parenting is focused on smoothing your children’s way, making things easier for them. I attended overnight camps as a preteen and teenager, but they were not tech-free, nor were they as focused on nature. I called home regularly. So I got a few raised eyebrows when I told family and friends back home about my son’s Ontario camp plans.
Another telling reaction came from my father, when he heard the costs involved: “Are you sure you don’t want me to pitch him a tent in the olive grove and give him some farming work?” he jested. “It will be free!”
The cost of overnight summer camps in Canada varies, with the most affordable being about 500 Canadian dollars a week, and the highest-end ones 2,500 dollars a week or more.
Historically and culturally, the experience has been a building block of the Canadian middle class, but financial pressures on both the camps and the parents, and changes in regulations, attitudes and standards, have driven those costs up.
The Canadian Camps Association is the professional body that represents about 750 accredited camps around Canada that host more than a million kids a year, create 42,000 jobs for young people and generate up to 3 billion Canadian dollars in revenue. It identifies rising fees, pressures on family budgets and changes in parents’ attitudes as trends that can keep children away from overnight camp, and the organization is working with its members to counter those dynamics.
Information on summer overnight camp attendance in Canada is limited, but it seems to track U.S. trends, showing that camps have become increasingly expensive and are squeezing out children from less privileged backgrounds.
The camp industry has transformed since the 1990s, said Matt Wilfrid, the executive director of the Canadian Camps Association. He pointed to three major pressures: costly upgrades to water, sanitation and safety standards; post-Sept. 11 insurance spikes; and a shift toward more hands-on parenting.
But he added that Canadian summer camps are adapting, focusing on expanding access for more families from diverse backgrounds.
Mr. Wilfrid said that 80 percent or more of overnight camps are nonprofit, charity-led, religiously affiliated or otherwise subsidized. Several camps also serve children with specific disadvantages — for example, those with incarcerated parents.
“I never want a family to think that they’re priced out of the experience, no matter what type of camp,” he said. “You should always ask the camp if there’s any subsidies or bursaries available.”
The Canadian Camps Association is also lobbying the federal government to increase the tax-deductible amount for camp fees under the child care expense deduction benefit through a pre-budget submission, an initiative that Mr. Wilfrid said has supporters from across the political spectrum.
“We have a lot of members of Parliament that are champions of the camp experience in Canada from across the aisle,” Mr. Wilfrid said. “We can have very different beliefs on everything in Canada, but across the aisle, summer camp is this like beacon of hope and joy,” he added.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Canada bureau chief at The Times. She lives in Toronto.
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