This is an excerpt from Canadian Camping Magazine – June 1956 – Duel Issues…There are Real Values in Short-Term Camping. Edited by Miss Mary Barker, National Council, Y.W.C.A
Few would deny the many values of a four or eight-week camp period. To be away from the city and in a camp setting for that length of time, can be a very wonderful adventure in so many ways. But the two week camp has its values too. Perhaps the most obvious one is that it gives many children whose families could not afford to send them to a four or eight-week camp, a chance to have a camp experience. Then too, there are groups that raise money to send needy or upset children to camp. The two-week camp period enables such groups to help more children, or, in some cases, to help at all, where the cost of a longer camp might be more than they could raise.
Some would maintain that two weeks is not long enough for a child to become at home in the camp setting, or to learn more than a fraction of what he could learn in a longer camp. On the other hand, camp is a very tiring experience for many children, If they are young children, if they have never been away from home before, if they are nervous, excitable youngsters, the continual excitement and adventure of camp drain their energies so greatly that two weeks is long enough.
Camp is important in a child’s summer – but so is the holiday with his family and the holiday at some pal’s home or summer place. The four or eight-week camp rules our other things for many children. The two week camper often can fill the rest of his summer with a variety of experiences that can be as valuable for him – though in different ways – as his time at camp.
Camp can be a magical experience that stays in a very special corner of a child’s memory. And perhaps this magic can be produced and sustained more easily in the shorter period. This is especially true in campsites that do not have the possibilities of the northern lakes and woods. Two weeks can be packed with fresh, new adventures and oys, and the child goes home before any trace of boredom or restlessness can creep in.