Many B.C. summer camps specialize in helping kids adapt to modern economy, but it wasn't always this way

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      Some parents have acquired deep insights about summer camps—mainly because they’ve been sending their kids to them for so many years. B.C. government employee Caroline Richardson is just one example.

      The mother of an 18-year-old son and 15- and 12-year-old daughters laughed when asked how long she’s been enrolling her children in summer programs.

      “Starting at kindergarten and Grade 1, they all began going to day camps,” Richardson revealed to the Georgia Straight over the phone.

      Her kids have been to local educational camps as well as overnight camps in B.C. and Ontario. Her two oldest children also attended an overseas summer camp in Brittany, France.

      “They were in French immersion, but there was still a lot of English chitty-chat,” the Dunbar resident said. “That was a way of getting them fully immersed in nothing but French for two weeks. It was quite successful.”

      So what advice does Richardson have for others?

      She believes that it’s best to begin kids with a weeklong experience, even if they’re feeling a little anxious about this beforehand.

      “As a parent, make sure you’re positive and encouraging,” she emphasized, “but a little bit of tough love helps on the summer-camp front—because I can’t tell you how often my kids have seemed reluctant at the outset and then came home and they’d had the time of their lives.”

      The vice president of the B.C. Camps Association, Stephen Jackson, is also the program director at the Stillwood Camp and Conference Centre in the Fraser Valley.

      He told the Straight by phone that anyone in this industry will say that for young people, the biggest benefits of overnight camps are an increase in self-confidence and improved social interactions.

      "These two together are a pretty big one-two punch in terms of how kids grow up," he said. "That has huge ramifications for the future as they're stepping into careers."

      Jackson added that there's something special about being away from parents for a longer period of time because it takes youths outside of their comfort zones. But he emphasized that it's also important for families to conduct their own research and be confident in the staff who are working at these camps.

      "You would be surprised at the number of times where parents come to camp and there surprised by something significant," Jackson said. "We often think to ourselves: 'Did you even go to the website?' "

      Last year, Richardson’s middle child created a film with fellow day campers in Vancouver, which impressed her and other parents. Her son once came back from six weeks at an Ontario camp much more talkative and feeling more confident than before he left.

      “I felt like by the end of the school year he had retreated so far into his electronic devices,” Richardson recalled. “When we got him back from the six-week camp, he was like a different person.”

      (Left to right) Kaitlyn, Cayden, and Katriel Carino have enrolled in Geering Up camps at UBC because their mom is priming them for careers in science and technology.

      STEM camps grow in popularity

      One of the biggest decisions for parents is whether to send kids to day camps in town or to overnight camps, where they’ll be separated from the family for longer periods of time.

      An East Vancouver mother, Sandra Akers, told the Straight by phone that her 10-year-old daughter has enjoyed day camps at 4Cats Arts Studio and the UBC Farm, but next year she may go to her first overnight camp.

      Akers advised other parents to book early and do plenty of research. She added that as kids grow older, they become more discerning and want to have a greater say in where they’ll be spending their time.

      “There is so much choice out there: everything from girls’ rock-band camp to ecology camps to full sporting camps,” Akers said. “So if you just take the time to look at what’s out there, there’s literally something for every child.”

      In addition to arts-oriented and filmmaking camps, there is also a vast array of educational day camps on so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects. Camps can teach kids coding, digital media, mathematics, and engineering.

      Vancouver mother Khristine Carino has high hopes for her three kids, so she’s signed them up for the weeklong Geering Up science and engineering day camps at UBC.

      The university offers bursaries, which she said is helpful for families like hers. Her 12-year-old daughter has been attending these camps since she was in kindergarten.

      “I’m priming my kids to get into science and technology careers,” Carino, a director of the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology, told the Straight by phone.

      UBC historian Leslie Paris wrote a book about the growing popularity of summer camps in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

      Camps emerged in response to industrialization

      Summer camps weren’t always so specialized.

      Leslie Paris, a UBC associate professor of history, is the author of the 2008 scholarly book Children’s Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp. It examines the origins of summer camps in the late 19th century in the northeastern United States and the evolution of this industry until the 1940s.

      The industry reached its peak in the 1950s, with approximately one in six American children attending them.

      “By looking at the early history of camps, I could trace changes in nostalgia for an imagined time before industrialization,” Paris said. “I could trace changes in childhood and how children were considered by adults. I could trace the expansion of the idea that children were entitled to recreation and pleasure.”

      This dovetailed with legal reforms after the start of the 20th century that promoted the protection of children, including compulsory education for an increasing number of kids.

      “There is an idea that started in the middle class in the 19th century—but that’s extending to working-class children as well by the early 20th century—that children should be protected from many of the responsibilities of adulthood,” Paris noted. “And that includes child-labour laws.”

      There were “fresh air” summer camps as well as settlement-house camps, which Paris described as the predecessors of community centres. And the vast majority of the kids who attended them were white.

      “It was a period of significant urbanization and industrialization in the United States, so we can read camps as places where grownups were teaching children in their care a kind of nostalgic vision of the American past,” she said.

      Paris explained that in the 1970s some traditional summer camps folded as a result of an economic recession, a shrinking share of children and teenagers in the population, more divorces, and cheaper air travel, making it easier for families to travel with kids.

      That corresponded with a proliferation of specialized-skill camps devoted to activities like football, basketball, and tennis. The 1980s saw the rise of computer camps, which set the stage for more specialization in the future.

      “Today, parents and kids are interested in a greater variety of skills,” Paris said. “But there are also many parents and children who still value the more traditional camp experience, with its campfires, canoeing, and overnight hikes.”

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