The beautiful season, that moment when we open the windows and strut on the balconies, in the parks or at the campsite. Between pleasures and irritations, the neighbors seem in any case closer than ever. Summer is made for cohabitation. Today, camping, an opportunity for community life.
All regulars will tell you: go through the gatehouse at the Sainte-Madeleine campsite and you are instantly on vacation.
Potted hibiscus and oleanders, impressively large for our latitudes, frame a swimming pool and water features that look brand new. Behind it, a hygiene building (toilets) that also looks like it just came out of the factory. In fact, there are few visible traces of the venerable age of this campsite located near the municipality of the same name, in Montérégie, and inaugurated in the summer of 1967. “Expo 67 was supposed to bring us a windfall, but it didn’t have the desired effect,” says Cyrille Girouard, who bought the campsite from his father a decade later, in 1977.
He then ran the place for over forty years, before passing the torch to his two children, Isabelle and Patrick. “The succession is assured,” he insists, and he has seen the clientele get younger in recent years.
“In 1967, we had 18 trailers and we thought that was a lot. Today, there are about 275 lots,” says the patriarch, who knew the days before 40-foot RVs, when the 12 children in his family helped their parents plant and harvest corn, grain, cucumbers and turnips. “The expansions happened gradually, it wasn’t all at once.”
Mr. Girouard still spends his days behind the wheel of a tractor, driving through the streets of the campsite to ensure that everything is clean and safe, sometimes from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., without seeing the time pass.
The most faithful
But what gives substance to the experience remains the feeling of community. We don’t approach our neighbors to complain about proximity; on the contrary, “camping friendships are stronger,” says one of Berthe’s friends, Francine Tremblay. It was on her chic wooden terrace surrounded by openwork panels, worthy of a catalog of the greatest hardware stores, that the two friends found themselves on this hot July morning.
“We are friends all year round, we see each other in the winter too,” says M.me Tremblay, who is in his 15th yeare season. For his part, it is the peaceful aspect of the place that attracts him. The Girouard family has planted hundreds of trees over the years, and they have grown large enough to form an almost unbroken canopy above the numbered lots.
“We like living outside in the summer. And here, it’s quiet, it’s clean, it’s well-appointed,” the woman emphasizes, her little dog Toby at her feet. Her sister is practically her neighbor, another opportunity to get closer. Her condominium where she lives the rest of the year is not very far either, about ten minutes by car, in Sainte-Julie. Before retiring, she would go to work from the campsite, straddling the world of vacations and that of job.
Many couples or younger families spend the summer in this configuration, a kind of amicable agreement between a full break and the ordinary routine. Even today, many subscribers come from the eponymous locality or other nearby villages.
“I remember when families were large, we would see cars arriving full to bursting on June 24, as soon as school was over. The ladies would spend the summer with their kids, even if the husband was still working,” says Cyrille Girouard.
Life, family, camping
After all, vacation is a state of mind, and the spirit of the place is certainly that. Dinner time is drawing to a close at the restaurant, which serves five different daily menus to the holiday clientele, but also to those of the village. About ten campers, mostly men, have approached the pétanque court. The 1 p.m. game is starting soon, while women are cooling off in the pool.
“Saturday night is dancing. I go almost every week,” says Roger Richard, another long-time regular.
With all his brothers and sisters, there were nine Richards at the Sainte-Madeleine campsite at one point, to the point where one of the streets was named in their honour. Roger has been renting land there for 42 years. “She was 4 the first summer we spent there,” he says, pointing his chin at his daughter. Isabelle Richard is preparing dinner for her four children: “My two youngest are in the pool, and the two teenagers are in the cool of the trailer,” she explains.
So finding ourselves at the campsite was a family affair… the one already formed and also the one to come. “I met the father of my first daughter here,” says Mme Richard. As soon as school ended, she found her ” gang ” for the summer. “My mother organized Olympics, we trained for majorettes, there were ball tournaments,” she says.
Her best memory? “Go look on the posts in the cabin, it’s all written,” her father says with a laugh. Next to the large recreational vehicle is a small annex that has housed Isabelle for many years. “I painted everything,” she retorts.
Although the neighbours are closer than in Lavaltrie, where the Richards live the rest of the year, no one here mentions any fence disputes, inconveniences or promiscuity. The only disagreement in the family is about the clothesline: “I find it too ugly, I had it removed [à Isabelle] “, Roger says, smiling.
Three generations of Richards come together every year to enjoy the sun during the hottest weeks of the year.
“I’ve seen the children grow up. I’ve seen some have children of their own. We’re like a big family,” explains Cyrille Girouard, speaking of the campsite’s regulars. Or a big village, André Lefebvre, former mayor of Sainte-Madeleine, is tempted to say, who is passing the days of his early retirement by welcoming campers.
There are always a few “newbies,” Girouard says, including a few newcomers who “want to try the lifestyle.” And what is it? “You’re on vacation, you’re outdoors, you’re free,” the man says, greeting a camper who has just arrived. “He’s not just a customer, he’s a friend.”