Thousands of children attended summer camps in twentieth-century Ontario. Did parents simply want a break, or were broader developments at play? The Nurture of Nature explores the history of summer camps and sheds light on a wider phenomenon: the divided consciousness that informs modern assumptions about nature, technology, and identity.
Wall examines how two competing tendencies – antimodern nostalgia and modern sensibilities about the landscape, child rearing, and identity – played out in the camp’s interaction with nature, its class and gendered dimensions, its engagement with emerging ideologies of childhood, and in the politics of race inherent in its "Indian" programming.
The Nurture of Nature offers a fascinating discussion of the summer camp’s contribution to modern social life that will appeal to students and practitioners of the history of childhood, the natural environment, and recreation or anyone who has been packed off to camp and wants to explore why.