2017 07: Kamp Kawkawa: Browse The Strips

Thursday July 20, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This series of strips is based on the wonderful and dilapidated "Camp Tillicum" just outside North Bay, Ontario.

Friday July 21, 2017

Lynn's Comments: We were not able to send our two kids to the same camp at the same time, but for the sake of the story, this is what the Pattersons did.

Saturday July 22, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Stories are made so much better when familiar characters share the same experience…so in the strip, Mike and Elizabeth went to camp with their best friends. Unlike the real world, a comic strip artist can make anything happen!

Tuesday July 25, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This was another serious comment. I have always wondered how a mother would feel if she lost her child to war. In jest, I could voice an opinion in very subtle ways.

Thursday July 27, 2017

Lynn's Comments: When I was a kid, Camp Kawkawa was the name of the camp my family went to every year. The cabins we stayed in are still standing on Kawkawa Lake in Hope, BC.

Friday July 28, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Luccia Messina is the name of a good friend and neighbour who lived across the street from me in North Vancouver. She moved to Canada from Sicily with her mother and dad and older brother, Pedro, and we have been friends since grade one. This was my way of saying "Hi" to her when she read the strip. Cartoonists do this all the time. It’s great to know we can send out a "hug" that might appear in 1000 papers!

Saturday July 29, 2017

Lynn's Comments: When I went to Brownie Camp in the 50s, the beds were old and the springs were sagging. The bigger kids always seemed to get the top bunks, and I remember being terrified as I lay on my lower bunk looking up at the perilously sagging shape in the bunk above mine.

Wednesday August 2, 2017

Lynn's Comments: During our offsprings’ retreat to Camp Tillicum, parents were invited to a family day so we could see what was going on. The dining hall was of great interest to me. I remember thinking how much fun it would be to sit with 50 other kids and eat wieners and beans.

Thursday August 3, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I had a chance to meet the two cooks who provided the meals, and it didn't take long to figure out why, at the end of the day, they were more exhausted than the kids were.

Saturday August 5, 2017

Lynn's Comments: My son, Aaron, told me that porcupines had made a hole in the girls’ shower hut. The rest of this story is all "What if?"

Monday August 7, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This didn't happen, of course, but as Farley Mowat liked to say, "If it didn't happen, it should have." The buildings at Camp Tillicum were old and in need of repairs, but nothing like this! Kids scoured the walls for knotholes hoping to see into the showers, and when none existed, stories were told anyway. I couldn't help being a bit jealous of my kids’ camping days at Tillicum. This was a place where great memories–true and false, could be made.

Monday August 14, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Every one of us can go back in time to remember a perfect starry night. Maybe it was on a camping trip or maybe on the edge of a city; looking up at the stars never gets boring, never gets old. How do you describe a perfect starry night? The over-used word "awesome" genuinely belongs here.

Wednesday August 16, 2017

Lynn's Comments: This is me at the age of 9 or 10. I was the class clown. I remember a teacher using that old cliché: "We're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you." and I wanted to say, "No! I want you to laugh AT me!" I often thought kids hung with me because I was the one most likely to take a dare, break the rules, and get myself in trouble. I guess I was. It was a way to be where the action was!

Thursday August 17, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I got a lot of mail on this one. There are a lot of lonely people out there. In school, surrounded by people my own age, I considered myself lonely.

Friday August 18, 2017

Lynn's Comments: The old adage, "misery loves company" described some of my early friendships. I gravitated to the kids who were on the outside looking in. We weren't exactly misfits…we thought we were misunderstood.

Saturday August 19, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Michael in the strip and my son in real life were named for a school friend - Michael VadeBoncoeur was destined to become a comedy writer. He eventually wrote for the CBC and created blackout comedy skits for places like Yuk Yuk’s in Toronto.

Thursday August 24, 2017

Lynn's Comments: These drawings were done before I began to pay real attention to anatomy. Check out the length of the kids’ arms. In real life their bodies would be impossibly long! As someone who once did anatomical drawings for a living, this surprises me!

Saturday August 26, 2017

Lynn's Comments: I remember my first kiss. It was in Teddy D’s attic. He and Joanne K and Terry M and myself were playing spin the bottle. When the bottle matched me up with Terry, we leaned forward and kissed on the lips. I remember the feeling. It was fast, dry, and his upper lip was really fuzzy.