Camp Pine Bluff
Thomas Loretto
Camp Pine Bluff was a summer camp for boys several
hours north of Toronto, on Drag Lake. I went there
each summer, from 1970-1974. I doubt that it still
exists. The camp was probably sold in the late
'70's for some amazingly low price, and the land
today would go for several million dollars. Enrollment
was typically around 25 kids, and my parents paid
about $125 for me to go there. That is about $520
in today's money.
Activities – On Camp The
sessions at Camp Pine Bluff ran for 2 weeks. There
were the typical activities to keep the kids occupied,
including swimming, water skiing, archery, target
shooting (.22 caliber rifles), arts and crafts
and campfires. On Friday nights we would go into
town and see a movie. There was no horseback riding.
There was 'pop and candy' every afternoon. Those
days, pop cost a quarter, and candy cost about
15 cents. The thought of having pop with candy
now appalls me, but I loved it then. There was
an 'Olympics' the last weekend of each session
with a bunch of contests. I won the running race
my last year at the camp, and set a Camp Pine
Bluff record in the process. That alone should
have enticed me to do cross country, not football,
in high school – but I got sucked into the
peer pressure thing and (nearly, not totally)
wasted 3 autumns, collecting splinters on Friday
nights.
The campfires were pretty special; we all sat
around the fire and the camp leaders told scary
stories. One time they told one about a spook
that had invaded the grounds of the camp. They
got the camp dog worked up; he was barking up
a storm thinking something was lurking out there
in the dark, and because the dog was worried,
so were we. It turned out to be the director of
the camp; he ran in from the woods toward the
campfire and we all tackled him, thinking he was
some sort of boogey-man. He was lucky to have
survived. They had two campfire tricks that were
pretty cool. One trick was to start the campfire
by thrusting a stick into the heart of a pile
of wood that had been carefully and nicely piled
before we got there. The whole thing erupted in
flames when they rammed the stick in there, and
we were left to speculate how it happened. They
told us that they were just really good at starting
fires, but a bunch of smart-aleck kids said they
had some explosive device at the bottom which
ignited when it got hit by the stick.
The other trick involved a wire that went from
the fireplace to high up in a nearby tree. They
told us the fire would start by itself. Then,
a flaming ball of something traveled very quickly
down a wire that was strung from a nearby tree,
to the fire. The flaming ball hit the fire and
all the nicely piled wood burst into flames. It
was pretty neat.
 One
of the more unique activities were the steam baths,
which we had once or twice a week. Steam was generated
the steam by pumping water from a canister through
a nozzle onto a basket of glowing rocks that had
been sitting in a fire all afternoon. We all stood
around the steaming, hissing basket of rocks stark
naked – about 25 boys and a handful of counselors.
This was conducted in a room built just for this
purpose – a small wooden frame cubic structure
covered with heavy plastic. It was just big enough
to hold all of us. We did get pretty sweaty in
there; the method worked well; when the rocks
ran out of heat we all ran out the hut and down
the path onto the dock and jumped into the lake.
It felt great. By the way – skinny dipping,
and standing around stark naked in a steam bath
with a bunch of boys, would never happen at a
camp in the Middle East. In this part of the world,
your private parts are private, and private means
no one besides your mate sees them. Gang showers?
They just don't exist in the Middle East. Over
here, in locker rooms in the Middle East, you
get your own individual shower, with a curtain.
Canoe Trip – Algonquin Park
When our parents registered us for Camp Pine Bluff,
we had the choice of signing up for a 6 day canoe
trip in Algonquin Park. Algonquin Park is a canoe
park in northern Ontario – about 4 hours
north of Toronto. On these canoe trips, you paddled
from one lake to the next, all day, and set camp
late afternoon. In between the lakes you had to
portage your canoe along a designated trail that
was marked with a white sign posted on a tree
that you could usually see from your canoe a good
distance away. The campsites were marked with
yellow signs and were easier to spot because you
could also see the cleared area.
I signed up for the canoe trips each year. I
had no idea what I was getting into, the first
year I signed up. I had never been in a canoe,
and I didn't ask any questions about how the trip
was going to be conducted. I just said 'yes' when
my mother asked me if I wanted to sign up. We
drove to Algonquin Park from Camp Pine Bluff in
the back of an Econoline van, which had
2 seats. The camp director got the driver's seat,
and the canoe trip leader got the passenger seat.
The rest of us sat on the corrugated steel floor
in the back, for about a 2 hour drive. It might
have been longer than two hours; whatever it was,
it seemed like a long time in pretty uncomfortable
conditions. Econoline vans, you may recall,
had no windows in the back. We didn't have anything
to look at except each other. We could see out
the back door; we were supposed to watch the canoes
and make sure they weren't falling off the trailer.
One time, I did see a canoe slipping off the trailer,
and we stopped the van before it fell off. I was
rewarded with free pop and candy for my vigilance.
I thought this was a great reward. There is so
much pop and candy handed out these days that
I don't think a random, free, pop and candy is
equally appreciated.
Trip 1 It turned out that the
first trip, in 1970, was not really representative
of the rest (the other 4) trips that I did. The
counselor that led us on this trip was an American
Indian and (later) labeled 'lazy' by the camp
directors. They said he was lazy because he only
took us on a very short trip, and it was supposed
to be a lot longer than that. The guy's name was
Mike; I was in the same canoe with Mike. I liked
him. Mike talked like an Indian and I ended up
talking with the same accent, for the rest of
the summer. Mike found a spot on top of some cliffs
on Joe Lake that he liked a lot, and we just stayed
there for about 3 or 4 nights. His excuse was
that we were all a bunch of little kids, so we
weren't strong enough to do a proper trip, which
would have involved paddling all day every day,
and changing camp each night.
The first night of this trip we camped by a dam
that connected Canoe Lake (the starting point)
and the next lake (Baby Joe Lake). The portage
between these lakes was a measly 200 meters, and
somehow Mike decided that even though this was
not an official campsite (you're not supposed
to camp along a portage), this was where we would
stay the first night. This spawned the first of
a number of events that would have closed the
camp to litigation years later.
Potential Litigious Incident 1 The base
of the dam was a good swimming hole, so we all
jumped in and hung out under the waterfalls at
the dam. One kid – Franky - was a pale pudgy
kid with glasses. Franky slipped at the base of
the falls and smashed (lost) his 2 front teeth.
He was taken back to Camp Pine Bluff (somehow,
I'm not sure how he got there), and he had his
teeth fixed for probably a lot more money than
it cost his mother to send him to camp.
Potential Litigious Incident 2 The next
day we paddled to the cliffs that Mike found so
attractive. Mike determined by using a length
of rope that was as long as our canoe, that the
cliff was 35' high, and the 2 ledges below the
cliff were 17' and 6' above the lake. Mike was
a good diver and he did beautiful swan dives from
the 35' ledge. I don't recall any of us doing
that, but I know it was decided that all of us
had to jump, or dive, from the 17' ledge, and
if you didn't you were a 'chicken'. Well –
I hadn't seen 'Rebel Without a Cause' –
but I was responding to similar influences when
I decided I had to go off that ledge, like it
or not. After several questions about my status
as 'chicken', I finally got the mind to go off
that ledge. I made some terrible entry which hurt
my head a lot. It was in no sense of the word
enjoyable. It was my only leap from that ledge
but I only needed to do it once, to shed the chicken
label.
Potential Litigious Incidents 3 and 4
Another cool thing that we discovered on this
same trip was a neat way to dispose of empty Raid
cans. We used Raid to fumigate the tents before
sleeping, so mosquitoes would stay out of the
tents. We were issued old heavy Army surplus canvas
specials, with no screens. We carried them on
portages in rolls longer than any of us. There
was not a stitch of nylon on any of these tents.
Anyway, the turnover of Raid cans was pretty quick
with the nightly fumigation of about 4 or 5 tents.
What to do with the empty Raid cans? Our counselor
enlightened us to a nifty disposal site –
the fire. After dinner, as we relaxed around the
campfire – the same fire that we had used
to cook our dinner – we tossed the empty
can in the fire and within a few seconds, watched
it blow up and send a flame high into the trees.
We all thought it was incredibly cool, but years
later it dawned on me that this was an inherently
dangerous act – most notably given the possibility
of shrapnel flying into any of our young bodies.
Well – this never happened, and no tree
ever caught fire from the huge flames either.
As for the fumigation policy, I think DDT had
been banned in 1968 or '69, so by 1970 we were
probably using some other inherently lethal or
mind altering chemical to inhale all night.
Mike didn't come back the next year. I was upset
when I showed up at camp that summer and found
out pretty quickly that he wasn't around. Later,
I heard from one of the two directors that Mike
was 'lazy'. The director told me that he was supposed
to take us on a long trip and all he did was take
us to a lake one or two short portages from our
start, and camp on the cliffs several nights until
it was time to head back. Well that was good enough
for me, and I didn't understand what our director
had to complain about. What he didn't mention
were the incidents with Franky's smashed teeth,
the raid cans, or the cliff diving. Each of these
incidents today would have invited litigation,
and protection against such claims would send
the cost of the camp from the measly $135 or so
that my parents paid, to perhaps 3 times that.
Trip 2 On the second trip, which
was the summer after my 7th grade, we went on
a 'serious' trip. We were led by one counselor,
Jerry, who had been in the military (he always
wore his green jacket with the corporal stripes
on the sleeves). It was on this trip that I first
experienced, without putting into words, the concept
'are we having fun yet'. There were a number of
factors that contributed to this feeling. We had
to paddle across vast stretches of water, frequently
into the wind and over whitecaps. It was hard
work and it seemed to take forever to cross some
of the lakes. We had to portage the canoes to
the next lake; this meant hauling out the bags
and taking two trips across trails that were from
300 to 1800 meters. I think they averaged about
600-800 meters. On the first trip we took our
bags and the tents. Then we came back for the
canoes and took the canoes on the 2nd trip. It
took two of us to handle the canoe. If your technique
was good you could do it alone, but we were a
bit young for that. There was one all-league football
player in my high-school who I was told could
portage the canoe by himself. He had just completed
6th grade and I remember being incredibly impressed
by this feat of Herculean proportion. Woody Hayes
came to our school and offered him a scholarship,
which he accepted. He didn't amount to much at
Ohio State.
The other thing that took 'fun' from the experience
was the weather. It rained a lot. It seemed as
though every time you looked up there were grey
clouds overhead, usually dropping light rain.
On this trip, and each of the trips I did the
following three summers, we never stayed at a
campsite more than one night. It was always, as
I thought of it, 'paddle and portage all day,
set up camp, get firewood, cook the food, clean
the dishes, go to bed, take down camp the next
morning, and off again.' This left little time
for fun. What I didn't understand then, was why
so many other people seemed attracted to this
activity. There were lots of people using this
park. We exchanged hellos to many canoers on the
open water, and along the portages. One thing
I did notice was the preponderance of what I knew
were attractive women. Each of them, it seemed,
had a male partner. It got to where I believed
the reason they were having fun and I wasn't was
because they were 'together'. These convictions
congealed more with each trip. But in spite of
the awareness that I was not having 'fun', I continued
to sign up (there was no pressure from anyone
and it was totally optional) for the canoe trip.
Something in the back of my mind told me it was
the proper thing to do, and that the camp experience
was not complete without it.
Potential Litigious Incident 5 Before
the second trip, the camp director told us that
the previous session's canoe trip had had several
encounters with bears. He smiled as he told us
that many of these encounters were in the night;
the bears had actually stuck their noses into
the tents, looking for peanut butter. 'Not to
worry' he told us; the bears wouldn't hurt us
and if we made enough noise they would just go
away. Peanut butter was a staple of our diet.
Each day for lunch we had at least 2 peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches. The bread was flattened
fluffy white that had been stuffed in someone's
back pack. It had usually been flattened so much
that the slices had to be peeled from each other.
The peanut butter and the jelly were carried in
big half gallon cans, in someone's pack. Our packs
were kept in our tents at night, with the half
gallon cans of peanut butter and jelly in the
packs. So it is no wonder that the bears paid
the group frequent visits. The last time I remember
seeing a bear was on my first trip; we saw one
swimming across a lake and then get out on shore
and walk around a bit. This was a real highlight
for me. In spite of the peanut butter and jelly
in our packs, in our tents at night, I never saw
another bear.
Trip 3 In the Olympic year 1972,
we had a counselor named Bob Jagow that looked
like Mark Spitz. I didn't realize this until about
a month later, after Mark Spitz had become a household
word because he had won 7 gold medals in swimming
at the 1972 Olympics, and set 7 world records
in the process. This girl that I liked from my
hometown had the popular (at the time) poster
of Mark Spitz in his bathing suit with his hands
on his hips, smiling, with his 7 gold medals around
his neck. The poster was for sale everywhere;
I am almost positive I saw it in the K-Mart in
Niagara Falls.
The next year at camp I met this kid named Billy
Nimmelman (that really was his name). He was a
friendly kid who was good fun and he pointed out
to me that as we watched Mark Spitz on television,
in the Olympics, we had probably made the comment
– 'Hey – that guy looks like Bob Jagow!',
and then – after Mark Spitz became famous
anyone that saw Bob Jagow probably said 'Hey-
that guy looks like Mark Spitz!'. When Billy pointed
this out to me, I realized immediately the irony
and humor of these comparisons.
Trip 4 A big bear of a guy with
a full beard named Tom, and Mark Spitz's look-alike
Bob Jagow, led us into a more northern portion
of the park (my memory tells me they led us to
Cedar Lake – and I have not been back to
the park in17 years), where previous trips had
not been. The camp directors felt like this group
of kids was 'seasoned enough', and big enough,
to make a longer trip to more 'uncharted' waters.
The directors did warn us that during the trip
the previous session, the whitecaps in Big Trout
Lake were so big that they caused Big Tom's canoe
to pitch, and sink. We were told that whoever
was in Tom's canoe would have to be big enough
to counter his weight. I was deemed big enough
and I rode in Big Tom's canoe on this trip.
Basically, what happened on the previous trip
was that the pitch caused by the whitecaps in
Big Trout Lake sent the front end of Big Tom's
canoe, and whatever little kid was sitting up
there, pointing skyward, and Big Tom's end went
pointing 'lake-ward'. So the rear of his cane
went below the water-line, filled with water,
and went under. It was, in hindsight, not unlike
the manner in which the Titanic went under –
except that Big Tom's canoe did not snap, or hit
an iceberg.
It was during this 4th trip that I finally developed
a sense that I was enjoying this 'work' –
that it was making me feel 'strong, like a man'.
I was 14 at the time. At the campsite one night
I was cutting wood for the evening meal and I
overheard Big Tom tell Bob Jagow – 'Tom's
(me) a pretty strong kid'. I was getting off on
cutting this wood, and getting off on the awareness
that I was strong, and could do physical labor,
all day, for many days. The uncharted waters of
this trip took us to a portage that connected
Big Trout Lake and Burntroot Lake. No previous
Camp Pine Bluff canoe trip had gotten to Burntroot
Lake. At the end of the portage between the lakes,
we found what Big Tom called a 'poacher's cabin'.
It was a big open room dug into a small hill on
the shore of Burntroot Lake. It was entirely self-supporting.
It was too cool to pass up and we all slept in
that poacher's cabin that night. I have –
to this day – wanted to return to that spot
and see that poacher's cabin. I haven't seen it
since we left it that morning, bright and early
about 6AM. Bob Jagow got us up at some ridiculous
hour of 5AM, because he wanted us on the water
by 6 so we could 'beat the whitecaps'. He knew
that the whitecaps would build over the course
of the day, as the wind speed increased, and he
didn't want to be stuck out in the middle of Portal
Lake, paddling against them.
Trip 5 My last year at Camp Pine
Bluff we did the longest trip in the history of
the camp. We covered 100 miles in 5 days, not
6. We finished a day early because the 5th day
it rained all day long, and there seemed little
point in setting up camp that night in soaking
wet tents, with the sense that we could get back
to civilization if we just pushed it pretty hard.
'Civilization' was the outfitting shop on Canoe
Lake – the starting point for 3 of the 5
trips that I did. We made it back to Canoe Lake
just as the sun was setting. The several years
of experience that many of us had by now had turned
us to the 'efficient portaging and paddling machines'
that we needed to be to cover the territory we
made on that last day. At Canoe Lake, we used
the showers and cabins there and hung out with
all the impressive ladies that just a couple of
years earlier I sensed made this park such an
'attraction'. Now, under this random circumstance,
they were occupying the same turf. Nothing transpired
between me and any of these ladies; maybe we exchanged
some greetings and some comments about what a
grand feat we had accomplished (100 miles in 5
days). I know I felt incredibly proud about what
we, I, had accomplished.
Failed Greetings On my last
trip, there were two guys named Keith and Doug
that had been going to Camp Pine Bluff as long
as I had, but always to the earlier session. This
was the first time the three of us went to the
same session. Keith was a big black kid from Niagara
Falls; he went to LaSalle High School, and Doug
was a white kid from 'the Heights' in Lewiston,
and went to my high-school. He was not in my class;
I think he was a year or two behind me. I am mentioning
this because in spite of the fact that we thoroughly
enjoyed each other's company during this two-week
period, and had been on the same 100 mile canoe
trip together, we ceased to communicate after
that. And this was not for the lack of opportunity.
I know that I saw Doug on occasion in our school,
and I think the most that happened between us
was an exchange of glances. I also know that I
saw Keith at a Varsity basketball game between
Lew-Port and LaSalle; he was standing in his uniform
at one end of the court before the game. I had
the opportunity to greet him and all I did was
sit in the stands and stare at him, trying to
come up with some possibility that maybe it wasn't
him.
This phenomenon of 'silent failed greeting' was
not peculiar to Doug and Keith. I remember it
happening with two other kids in my neighborhood
– Owen and Gary. Owen and my brothers and
my dad used to fungo baseballs on many occasions
in the big field across the street from our house.
We shared countless 'sporting' experiences with
Owen. We had a chemistry and humor that made these
experiences enjoyable. As we took turns at the
bat, we would announce the new batsman in the
same monotone style of the announcer at Fenway
Park. 'The next batter, Carl, Yastrzemski.
Number 6, Yastrzemski.' But years later,
during one of my return trips to Lewiston from
– I think – college, I saw Owen in
a store in Lewiston and we didn't even say hello
to one another. He looked away and I stared at
him, quietly, and walked on. That was the last
time I saw him.
Gary and I used to go out in the fields at the
end of our street and look for snakes. On one
occasion, a bunch of us were walking home from
a field several miles from our house, and a guy
offered us a ride. We all stared at each other
wondering 'should we accept the ride' –
because our parents had told us countless times
'don't take rides from strangers'. But we got
in the car anyway and the guy drove us home, with
no incident. Another time, we walked home from
a closer field and I had something like 2 garter
snakes hanging from my hand; they were holding
on with their teeth. We knocked on my parents'
door and when they opened the door I held up my
hand with the two snakes hanging from it and they
freaked out. They went inside and grabbed one
of my snake books to make sure that the snakes
that were biting me were not poisonous. I was
an 'expert' on snakes (at the ripe age of about
11) and no matter what I said to them they had
to back it up with the 'manual'. Anyway –
the point of this is that in spite of these shared,
positive experiences with Gary, when I saw him
years later in one of the supermarkets; he was
a cashier at the time and he was ringing me up,
we didn't even say hello to each other. It was
as if we didn't even know each other.
I don't think this kind of 'failed greeting'
is unique to me but it was common enough (I could
cite other examples) that it makes me think there
was something peculiar about our neighborhood
that spawned this type of dysfunction. Jimmy Carter
called it a malaise.
Epilogue After the summer of
10th grade I stopped going to Camp Pine Bluff.
I must have talked about our experiences enough
to turn my parents on to them, because 3 years
later my brother Ken and I went up with my dad
on the 4th of July weekend. It was quite an initiation
to wilderness camping, for my dad and my brother.
The bugs were terrible, and during a terrible
thunderstorm one night, lightning hit a tree at
our campsite and the tree fell down, next to our
canoe. My dad was amazed at our luck – that
the tree did not fall on our canoe, and crush
it, or fall on us, and kill us.
Well with the bugs and the lightning, my brother
Ken decided never to go back. But my parents and
I did several of these trips over the next 10
years. They were not rigorous; my dad just wanted
to get to a nice campsite toward the interior
of the park, and stay there, and relax. I was
still too young to appreciate the concept of relaxing,
which I am all too appreciative of now. My dad
also taught me how to properly prevent bears from
entering the campground. He read on the park map
that the food was supposed to be kept in a box,
or a pack separate from anything in the tents.
The box was supposed to be tied up in a tree,
hanging from a strong branch. So every night after
dinner we went through the routine of tying a
long rope with a rock at the end of it to the
box, and tossing the rock end of the rope over
a strong tree limb. Once we did that, we could
pull the box up and leave it suspended in mid
air, out of the reach of any bear.
I wasn't really concerned about bears. I had
gotten away with keeping one-gallon cans of peanut
butter and jelly in our tents with us, as we slept,
for years, and besides – some of my greatest
memories were of seeing bears in the park. But
my dad wanted nothing of that excitement –
and now I realize that my dad was taking the proper
measures, and that – when it came to concerns
about bears - the camp directors were slackers.
My last summer at Camp Pine Bluff was 31 years
ago. My two week episodes at this northern Ontario
camp were bright lights during a time otherwise
filled with pimples and adolescent angst. Now,
I may have to spend $1500 for my kids to have
the same experiences.
Card illustration by Steve
Willis; doodle by John Schilling
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