The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps, 1920-55 (review)

University of Winnipeg historian Sharon Wall has written a significant and important book. The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps, 1920-55 is concerned mainly with the study of leisure in Ontario within the context of childhood studies. Additionally, Wall makes a notable contribution to the study of modernism versus antimodernism and the history of summer camps in central Canada.

This book fills a sizeable gap in the historiography concerning summer camps in Canada. While excellent American studies by historians such as Susan A. Miller, Leslie Paris, and Abigail A. Van Slyck have appeared recently, there have been no comparable monograph-length studies in Canada until the publication of The Nurture of Nature. While this book can be criticized for concentrating, yet again, nearly exclusively on the Ontario experience, it does speak to a broader Canadian experience not previously explored.

Wall's book is meticulously researched with primary sources drawn from an impressive range of sites including but not limited to archival collections, private collections, interviews, newspapers and periodicals, and government documents. She has also drawn on the best Canadian and American historiography concerned with the histories of childhood and children, the environment, sport and recreation, and summer camps. Her central argument is that her findings are commensurate with American research that summer camps, although shaped by antimodern sentiment and nostalgia for a simpler time, were tied to the emerging urban industrial world from which many campers thought themselves to be fleeing (p. 256). For Wall, the influence of the antimodern in this period was continually tempered by the fascination with emerging modern influences and practices—a set of contradictions that highlights larger processes operating in Canadian society at this time.

Wall has organized the book into six lengthy chapters and a conclusion that is concerned primarily with the conflicting modernism versus antimodernism influences on the Ontario summer camps. The first chapter is an exploration of the dual nature of the summer camp—the modern and antimodern factors—a primary discussion in different parts of the study. Space and in particular, the natural landscape, are critically analyzed as a way for young campers to escape the urban condition. The second chapter focuses on the private camps for the richest Ontarian children. Wall likens these camps to exclusive suburbs or social clubs in that they provided another escape from class mixing and in fact reinforced the prevailing class cultures of the time. The third chapter explores the flourishing fresh air camps of the day that reinforced the modern belief that regular experiences of leisure should include the entire Canadian nation, regardless of income and status. Wall's fourth chapter examines the effects of educational psychology and progressivism on the attendees of Ontario summer camps. The fifth chapter analyzes camping, gender, and sexuality within the context that summer camps from their beginnings were considered as the rightful space for young boys. The final chapter considers the modeling of the "Indian" experience at Ontario summer camps. This racialized demonstration of twentieth-century antimodernism was offset by the very modern child-rearing methodologies of experts coupled with the overriding desire for stability and control.

The greatest strength of Wall's book is her critical analysis of the major themes that she broaches, within a Canadian context. Modernism, recreation and leisure, the environment and summer camps as they were experienced by and for Ontario children in this era are no longer ignored. Regardless of whether or not you agree with her position that the collective experience for these Ontario children was indistinguishable from that of the American children, Wall's meticulous and exhaustive research cannot be questioned. Wall also argues very persuasively that there was an overriding factor of class that differentiated the experiences of children hailing from different backgrounds. While the antimodern conflicted with the modern in all camps, the experiences of campers in diverse settings were much different. Her chapter on the private...