Summer in the city is something special

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/06/2024 (652 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When I was 10 or 11, I went to Girl Guide camp at Caddy Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park.

It was, at the time, the single worst thing that ever happened to me.

It wasn’t because of the camp itself, which was objectively beautiful. It was just my first experience at a sleep-away camp and I was unexpectedly and violently racked by homesickness.

I only knew one other girl, a friend from my class at school who was also in my Guides troop. On the first night, when I was trying to fall asleep on my deflated and uncomfortable camping pillow now sodden with tears, I overheard her sniffling, too.

“The first night is always the worst,” she called out softly to me in the dark. This wasn’t her first rodeo, and she eventually stopped crying. But I never did. I think I cried the entire time.

It feels important to mention here that this camp was only four days long.

Obviously, my embarrassing inability to rise above earned me a lot of attention. A sympathetic counsellor with an English accent took me under her wing and nicknamed me Jenny-Wren. A cherub-faced blond girl named Reagan or Meagan placed both hands on my cheeks and said earnestly, “I feel very sorry for you.”

My homesickness was, in part, for my family, obviously. I would imagine, specifically, my dad going to Jumbo Video to rent that weekend’s movie without me, and my family gathering around microwave popcorn, and I would well up all over again.

I missed my normal pillow and not having to rise at dawn — in the summer! — to go swimming in a freezing lake.

But I also missed walking to Sev and getting Slurpees and candy. I missed whiling away days in the sprinkler with my best friend, who lived across the street. I missed the sun-dappled elm trees and freshly mowed lawns and hearing snippets of radio through open car windows. I missed hanging out by the paint-chipped wading pools I was getting too old for and chasing down the Dickie Dee man and burning my thighs on hot playground swings.

I realize, now, that I was also homesick for the city.

Part of this is confusing to me. I was, ostensibly, a lake kid; I grew up going to my grandparents’ cottage in Echo Bay, Ont., and I loved it there. But I really loved summer in the city.

I still love summer in the city, its arrival heralded not by the solstice but the first woman observed on Portage Avenue wearing underwear as outerwear.

The city comes alive in the summer in a way that feels like a gift. Outdoor cityscapes that were, six months ago, frozen and hostile are suddenly lush and inviting, the sun sinking in the west well after 9 p.m.

I love the full patios and beer gardens. The culture that spills out into public spaces in the form of the jazz festival or the fringe festival or Ballet in the Park.

Seeing the bikes, the dogs, the kids with painted faces and Popsicle-stained mouths, the packs of teens piling into Sev, as I once did, for Slurpees — I love all of it.

Leaving the basketball game on Wednesday night, I was struck by the way the golden-hour sunlight illuminated the buildings in the Exchange District. It made for the kind of photo I would take in other cities. I obviously tricked my phone’s algorithim, too; it suggested I share a “Winnipeg” album because it clearly thought I was on vacation.

Winnipeg is a summer city. It’s a summer city as much as it’s a winter one — maybe because winter cities know how to do summer right.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com