I’ve always been fascinated by campers (or RVs, or motorhomes, or trailers, or fifth wheels; anything that you can add to your vehicle, tow behind it, or drive that will provide you with shelter when you go travelling).
This fascination dates back as far as I can remember, to when my father would take me and my brother to the boat and RV show that cropped up every spring at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver in the early 1970s. The boats were interesting in their way, but I loved exploring the RVs, with their cunning drawers and hatches and compartments, their miniature appliances, tables and benches that magically became beds, bathrooms that were tiny but perfect in every detail.
The funny thing was that while we went to the show and admired the campers — Dad seemingly as much as the next person — we never got one, and did all our outdoor recreating in tents. The first was one that we inherited from my maternal grandfather: a heavy canvas affair, probably dating back to the Second World War, which did the job of accommodating the four of us, but was the very definition of utilitarian.
It had precisely zero bells and whistles, and it always smelled vaguely musty, no matter how thoroughly it was aired out, but we lived with that during a camping trip through the Kootenays and then our journey across Canada in 1973, when Dad was transferred from Victoria to Ottawa. During our first full summer back east, in 1974, we spent part of our summer vacation camping in the Maritimes, and out came old faithful, still with that slight whiff of must.
Unfortunately, out came the rain as well, during our first or second night on the road, near Trois-Rivières. It poured, and we watched in dreadful anticipation as the roof of the tent sagged under the weight of all that water. Soon the rain was streaming in: not in a demure drip but as a steady stream. My parents piled everything in the centre of the tent — the only part that was dry — but this left little room for four people, so my brother and I were sent to spend an uncomfortable (but dry) night in the back of our station wagon while Mom and Dad held down the increasingly soggy fort as best they could.
We carried on camping in our increasingly musty-smelling tent, but by the time of the 1975 Maritime camping vacation we had a brand-new, modern tent which was larger, lighter, easier to assemble, and presumably more waterproof than the old one (which we did not mourn). It provided shelter once more when we drove back across Canada in 1977, after Dad was transferred yet again. On this trip the tent was rendered homey by a luxuriant spider plant that my mother had not wanted to leave behind, and which she carefully hung in the doorway of the tent every night, to the amusement of fellow campers.
RVs were far less common in those days than they are now, but we would often find ourselves tenting next to one, and I would gaze at it: not in envy, but in admiration of its clean, sleek lines, its compactness, its dazzling modernity. Such delights were not for us, but I could enjoy a bit of dreaming.
In addition to being much more common now than they were 50 years ago, many RVs have become luxurious beyond even the imaginings of my childhood self. Every day I walk along the road above the campground in Ashcroft, and cast my eyes over the vehicles parked therein, and feel that tug of fascination reaching out to me across half-a-century. But there are occasionally tents in the park as well, and I find myself admiring them too, and smiling as I recall those long-ago trips. They look small and neat, yet somehow defiant, holding out against their flashier brethren and harking back to a simpler time. I just hope they aren’t musty.
