This is the editor’s comments from the February 1951 issue of Canadian Camping Magazine, the editor was Mary S. Edgar:
Definitions of camping are many and varied. From a collection of them, the following are submitted for your cogitation. The first comes from an article in a recent issue of Saturday Evening Post. “Camping – a warm-weather bivouac which absorbs the energies, bewilderment, affection and devilment of some half-million jet-propelled youngsters every vacation time.”
From the pen of the well-known writer, Angelo Patri, comes the following: “Camp is a bit of life in the open where children are to gather educational experiences from nature; a place where they may listen to the silence of the stars and perhaps hear God speak. A place where they may catch His whisper in the still forest, and see His hand in the faint traceries of a wild flower’s petal. Make sure it is like that, and the uniform won’t matter.”
From Dr. Mary L. Northway’s “Canadian Camping – Its Foundation and Its Future”: “If camping is to continue its development in the future we, the camping people, must believe in it. It is our child, so attractive, so interesting that many people want to claim it as their own. Camping is not school, though it is educational; camping is not case work, though it is concerned with the welfare of the individual. Camping is not a physical fitness program, although it is concerned with developing well-being and enjoyment through sports and athletics. Nor is camping psychiatry or psychotherapy, although it may well resolve the conflicts and anxieties of children and give them practice in the fundamentals of psychological health. No, camping calls on all those institutions and uses their assets in its program. It also contributes its unique resources to their efforts. Camping can give so many new insights to education and social work. We see children as campers and come to understand them differently than the teacher of the psychiatrist. These insights it is our duty to pass on to the more formal fields of child guidance.”
In the constitution of the Canadian Camping Association, its first object is stated as being: “To further the interest and welfare of children, youth and adults through camping as an educative, character-building and constructive recreational experience.”