The way summer lingers—my father’s memories of Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts

August 24 | 2020

As we near the end of August, some of us may be recalling our childhood summers spent at camp in the Muskoka lakes or the Laurentian mountains. For my father, Archie, who suffered from dementia in his final years, the memory of his summers as a counsellor at Camp B’nai Brith https://cbbmtl.org remained vivid right to the last. In my new memoir, The Smallest Objective, I describe the setting of this camp where Simon, my father’s father, served as the second president: “The property was classic Laurentian and indistinct — scrappy conifers, low mountains sloping one into the other, a lake that didn’t conform to any known geometry.” Seen here is my father (right) in one of his favourite roles at camp—helping to oversee the kitchen. 

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