The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps, 1920–55 by Sharon Wall (review)

If Canadians accept nature as being central to their national identities and imaginations, then certainly the ‘back-to-nature’ experience of attending children’s summer camp has played no small role as a cultural force. And if we agree to the merit in comprehending more fully how such a force has, over time, become implicated in Canadian lifestyles and leisure, then there is little to debate about the value of tracing the meanings of Ontario summer camps during interwar and post-war years. This was, after all, a place and time of tremendous growth in the camping movement; contexts from which j-strokes, handicrafts, archery, back pocket games, and bunk beds became solidified as annual features of summertime escape for tens of thousands of Canadian children. Indeed, these are also the multifaceted contexts that Sharon Wall, a history professor at the University of Winnipeg, has extensively researched and has skilfully re-crafted into a book reminding us that even seemingly benign spaces – nature, childhood, leisure – are never impervious to the problems of identity, authenticity, and meaning that condition modernity.

Wall’s monograph is an erudite compilation of six substantive chapters, an enticing introduction, and a far-reaching conclusion. Engaging a range of private, ‘fresh air,’ and agency-run camp settings, and acquainting readers with prominent personalities such as Taylor Statten and Mary Edgar, each chapter exposes how certain notorious aspects of modernity were included in the baggage brought to camp. For instance, layers of urban values ordered encounters with camp’s natural environment; progressive ideals of health and education influenced camp curricula; social categories based on class, gender, and race were performed and (re) constructed. Across chapters, Wall routinely calls out summer camp as an emblem of anti-modern nostalgia – that widespread, albeit unachievable, desire to transcend or escape modernity’s awful impacts and influences by returning to simpler times and simpler ways of living. Thus, while camp became a setting in which people, including children, attempted to control the creation of meaning and purpose in their lives, Wall’s retelling demonstrates that ‘via the camp, modern ways of thinking and feeling about numerous aspects of society, the self, and racial others were reinforced.’ All told, the book is much more a critical analysis of social, cultural, and emotional histories of the twentieth century than it is a simple history of summer camp.

While other readers with cherished memories of camp might respond squeamishly to this kind of interrogation, my apprehensions were put to rest by the text’s inquisitive and conversant tone and the balance of the archives, camp document excerpts, and oral histories of individual campers that flesh out critical insights. I also found the book to be an extraordinarily timely contribution. As children of today are increasingly diagnosed with what Richard Louv has pegged the ‘nature deficit disorder,’ Wall illuminates that such perceptions of youth in peril are symbolic of broader cultural developments that are not so easily remedied.

Notwithstanding these accolades, I was discouraged by Wall’s dedication to modernity as ontological truth. One consequence of this commitment is that it leaves little opportunity for thinking through or practising leisure as a space that could be, first and foremost, about becoming, adaptation, or transformation. This point, however, does not diminish my overall positive impression of the book. Above its polished prose and rich and probing content, the volume includes several provocative, if not charming, photographs, extensive endnotes and bibliography, and a handy index that will allow readers to determine the extent to which their camp was scrutinized. I strongly recommend the read to students and scholars in fields of study that are concerned with unpacking nature-society relationships.