Last week, we had our final meeting with our little Sparks from Girl Guides, going fishing in Shannon Lake. The girls were full of beans for a few weeks, so an outside meeting was a great idea.

The current weather hasn’t been quite what we’d usually expect for the end of June, but the anticipation of summer can survive wind, rain and most other impediments, especially if you’re a kid (or even a kid at heart).

My husband Martin and I will set out on our annual start-of-summer camping trip soon, and we got to talking about the nostalgia of camping when we were kids.

I was a kid whose family camped—first in tents and then in a borrowed tent-trailer the year we camped on Long Beach near Tofino. He grew up in a family of five kids, so his camping memories are more of going to summer camp or staying with his Grand-mère at her cabin in rural Quebec. Nevertheless, we shared memories of free days in the great outdoors,........

© Castanet