The long road to summer
Date Added: 28-02-2005
The Globe and Mail - by Peter Cheney
With two jobs, two kids and two cars, Ted and Andrea Grace are living the non-stop life of the Toronto parent. And last weekend, they added yet another item to their already overloaded plate -- they packed up their son and daughter and made their way to the York Region Summer Camp Show, where they pondered offerings ranging from canoeing to computer programming to bagpiping.
"It's a quest," Ms. Grace says. "What isn't, these days?"
The Graces personify a Toronto phenomenon, which some parents take to extremes: the winter-long search for a summer camp. Many have driven for hours to see camps firsthand and check out everything from the diving boards to the dining hall. One long-time camp director recalls a family trying to find a camp that didn't have blueberry bushes, because they were convinced that their son was allergic. Another tells of a family that insisted on sleeping facilities that were guaranteed to be free of spiders. (The camp they finally chose offered to mount "spider patrols," but stopped short of a guarantee.)
For families such as the Graces, the summer camp hunt is a stress-filled enterprise. "It's a lot of work," Ms. Grace says. "But you want to maximize your opportunities."
Camping-industry veterans say the semi-tortured approach many urban parents take is a modern phenomenon, produced by the pressures of consumer culture and media that have made parents more aware of risk than ever before.
"Over the past 15 years, there has been a vast increase in the amount of research that goes into this," says Melinda Evans, a director at Camp Awakening, which caters to children with disabilities. "It used to be easy. Now, it's a project."
As Ms. Evans sees it, the new parental obsession with researching summer camps is part of a much larger pattern of increased supervision and control on the part of adults. By way of illustration, she noted that many parents accompany their children virtually everywhere they go until they're 10 or 11 years old.
"When we were kids, we were on our own," she says. "Parents today are much more afraid."
Ms. Grace and her husband began their research more than two months ago with a long list of concerns -- such as whether the circus school they're considering for their 10-year-old daughter Rachel has adequate safety nets and whether the food at the lakeside camps for eight-year-old son Jason will be to his liking.
They've cruised the Web, talked to other parents, attended camp shows and met with camp directors. "I can't even tell you how much time we've spent on it," says Ms. Grace, who operates a fitness company for parents and infants. "Except it's a lot. It goes on and on. . . . We're stressed-out. But I guess it's a good kind of stress. We're doing something for our kids."
When it comes to summer camps, Toronto parents have a world of choices. Ontario has so many camps that no one even knows how many there really are, but the number is generally agreed to be in the range of 1,000.
Hundreds of parents showed up at last weekend's camp fair to meet with camp representatives and peruse the bewildering array of offerings, which included camps for sports, canoeing, theatre, martial arts, rock climbing, nature education, children with disabilities and even one for kids who want to learn to play the bagpipes -- the Ontario School of Piping and Drumming at St. Andrew's College.
"It's something a little different," piping instructor Rob Crabtree says. "It's not something you see every day."
For overburdened parents, all these options can lead to something of a consumer's hell. "There's a lot available," says Doug Wolfe, who visited last weekend's show with his wife and two children. "You have to wade through it all."
Pam Lamont, the owner of Camp Mi-A-Kon-Da, on a lake near Parry Sound, says the months-long quest for a camp was unheard of when she was a child. Ms. Lamont, who went to Mi-A-Kon-Da for the first time when she was only seven years old (she later bought it), says her mother picked it by simply looking at a list and choosing the first all-girls camp she saw. "That was it," Ms. Lamont says. "She sent me for a month. And it worked -- I'm still there."
Today, Ms. Lamont says, camp owners face an entirely different scenario. Camping has become a customer-driven industry since many parents spend months researching the product.
To attract customers, many camps pay for professionally designed websites and brochures and produce PowerPoint presentations and videos that showcase their programs.
"Camps have to sell themselves now," Ms. Lamont says. But promotional materials, she notes, only go so far: "You spend a lot of time on the phone with people, and you have to go to shows so they can see who you are. Parents absolutely expect that because they're putting their kids in your hands."
John and Anne McGuire of Unionville began hunting for a summer camp for their two sons more than two months ago. "We think it's a really important choice," says Mr. McGuire, a product manager with BMO Nesbitt Burns. "You don't hand your children over to just anyone."
The McGuires have looked at dozens of camps. Their decision is complicated by the fact their sons have different interests and personalities. Jonathan is outgoing and interested in the arts -- one of the camps he attended in the past included creative writing and improvisational comedy classes. Grant, on the other hand, has a more reserved personality and prefers sports-oriented camps.
So far, this summer's plans call for Grant to attend at least four different camps: two hockey camps, a golf and skating camp, and an overnight camp near Unionville. They're still looking for the right camp for Jonathan, who has told his parents that he wants a "traditional" camp with a lake, canoes and campfires.
The McGuires have a long checklist. They want a camp that offers a wilderness experience but isn't excessively remote in case one of the children needs medical care as Jonathan did when he stepped on a sharp object while he was wading in a lake at summer camp two years ago.
Jonathan was rushed to the Bancroft hospital, which was less than half an hour away. Although the injury required nothing more than stitches, the consequences could have been far more serious had the camp been more remote.
"You need to choose carefully," Mr. McGuire says. "There's great potential for a tremendous summer experience -- but there's potential for disaster too. That's why we go to all this trouble."