We All Pee In The Same Lake

When I was a kid, camp sounded like such a carefree, fun summer experience, with kids swimming and canoeing and learning a craft they could one day improve in a progressive prison environment (hey, those wallets ain't gonna make themselves).

So it seemed like a no-brainer to enroll Pre-Schooler N in the summer camp program that his cousins attend every year. It's quite the bucolic place, with stretches of gentle beach, treed play areas and adorable Cape Cod meeting house that looks straight out of a 1970s Kristy McNicoll movie. It's carefree, it's tons of fun...

And it's three thousand dollars.

Oh, and that's just the initiation fee. You can add another 1500 bucks or so on top of that - annually - for the privilege of peeing in the wealthy end of the lake two months out of the year.

Now to be fair, this club has been around for a long time, and has a good reputation for teaching kids how to swim, paddle a canoe and get their tennis duds whiter-than-white. But for a place that insists all small kids be accompanied by its parents or babysitter (at an additional charge, natch) it seems like a pretty hefty price tag for what is essentially a hut on a bunch of sand.

Only the creme-de-la-creme attend this camp -- mostly Americans who spend their summers on Canadian soil, easily quadrupling the town's normal population for a couple months out of the year. They're generally easy to spot: trendy SUVs, unbleached hemp mesh bags filled with local produce, and tennis whites worn for any activity that doesn't actually involve sweat, rackets or little yellow balls.

Ok, so now I'm sounding like a reverse snob. But I question why a camp that offers pretty basic activities needs to charge such an exorbitant entrance fee. The fact they require references from existing members only amplifies my suspicion that the fees have more to do with keeping the wrong sort of people out than fostering a sense of community for the village's kids.

Luckily there's another camp nearby, with perfectly reasonable membership fees and nice facilities. It's sad that Pre-Schooler N won't be joining his beloved First-Cousin A for summer frivolities, but the idea that the rich kids should be cloistered from their unwashed middle or lower class brethren is downright repellent. God forbid a touch of K-Mart should sneak into their Prada world.

   

As Pre-Schooler N grows up, I can't help but wonder how we'll explain the disparity between the majority of our neighbour's kids and the wealthy few who segregate themselves behind walls of money and reputation. I realize that's going to be a recurring theme in school and life beyond academia, but it's still tricky to strategize and articulate these sorts of material realities without saying things like "the rich folks don't like to mix with everyone else."

When the reality, sadly, is probably just that.