Campfire Confessional

Canada has roughly a thousand overnight summer camps, many of them costing up to $1,800 a week. For those whose parents can afford it, this time away from home is a chance for a young person to gain self-confidence, environmental awareness, and emotional intelligence. Such opportunities have been less accessible to lower-income families, of course, and as fees continue to increase, even fewer people may get to know what that seasonal buzz is all about.

Rika Ruebsaat — a singer, teacher, and folklorist from Princeton, British Columbia — attended an Anglican camp in the West Kootenays in the late 1950s and early ’60s. A few years ago, she decided to record some summertime adventures like her own for posterity. “In order to capture the effects of summer camp,” she writes, “I knew that I needed to talk to people about their experiences.” So Ruebsaat tracked down fifty or so former...