Friendship of 40 years begins at camp

“Do you want to go to the Men at Work concert with me tonight? I have a free ticket.”

It was Aug. 9, 1983, and I was a 14-year-old counsellor-in-training at Toronto’s Bayview Glen Day Camp. My older sister, Shari, who was 17 at the time, had already signed up to be a counsellor. She was always the one to find the jobs and then ask if they could use me, too, once she was in. That year, I got paid a whopping $100 for the entire summer.

It was my first summer of what would turn into many as a counsellor at various camps, and I was still finding my way, socially, a month in. I had met lots of people, sure, but I hadn’t made any friends yet.

The night before, on Aug. 8, Shari and I met up with a couple of school friends who had come down from their cottage to go with us to the Down Under double bill of INXS (the opening act!) and Men at Work at the CNE Bandshell. But once we got to the Ex, we were told to turn back due to bad weather — a lightning storm had forced the show to be cancelled till the next night. Our friends had to get back up north, so they handed over their tickets and suggested we find other friends to go with.

The next day, we went around Bayview Glen asking people if they wanted to go to the show that night.

Then I spotted Renée Letros, a new counsellor-in-training whom I had never spoken to before. She was 13, gangly, with big, expressive eyes. Like me, she was clearly also finding her feet in the social awkwardness of being an early teen. “Do you want to go to the Men at Work concert with me tonight?”

Renée looked shocked. “What? Me!?”

I confirmed that yes, I was asking her. “I have to go ask my grandfather,” she said. Daddy George, as she called him, was a bus driver at the camp, and he, of course, said no to a concert invite with two strangers.

While that intro didn’t go anywhere on that day, it did lead to one of the most profound and meaningful friendships of my life, and as of this summer, Renée and I have been BFFs for 40 years.

Throughout our teenage years she practically lived at my parents’ house, where we watched endless hours of MuchMusic videos, and took late-night car rides to 7-11 on the hunt for junk food — with my younger siblings, Traci and Jason, in the back seat after I was finally allowed to drive. All year we’d talk about how excited we were to get back to camp to spend another summer at Bayview Glen with our friends.

In our second summer as counsellors-in-training, we’d look for any opportunity to slack off to the break area, waiting for other counsellors to come hang out, pretty much avoiding work for socializing — as teens can do. That summer, I made $150.

In the summer of 1985, I graduated to junior counsellor, and Renée and I took care of a group of 10- to 12-year-old girls together. Now we had responsibility! I vaguely remember a sleepover in a tent, and the two of us laughing the whole night – likely at nothing that funny – that we woke the sleeping campers several times. The next morning, we somehow made a fire between us and managed to make pancakes for those poor kids, something I doubt either one of us could do now.

After high school, Renée moved away, first to California, then to B.C., where she started a family of her own. They came to Toronto for a bit, then moved to Montreal, eventually settling back in Victoria, B.C., with her husband and two kids. I always stayed in Toronto, keeping close to my family and working on my career, and eventually meeting and marrying my wonderful husband, Mark.

But we always kept in touch, first through letters and phone calls, and now mostly through social media. We stayed connected through so many triumphant highs and some devastating lows. It’s rare that a day goes by that we don’t message each other … to seek advice, to rant, to share a ridiculous TikTok video, and to laugh again (and again!) at some of the same things we laughed at 40 years ago.

Summer camp brought us together all those years ago, which is why I have such a place in my heart for the Star’s Fresh Air Fund, whose goal in its 123rd year is to raise $650,000 to send kids to camp who may not otherwise be able to go have their own adventures. Your donations will help change their lives, as mine was forever changed making a friendship that has lasted a lifetime.

This summer, on the 40th anniversary of the first day we met, Renée will fly ack to Toronto after

We always kept in touch, first through letters and phone calls, and now mostly through social media. We stayed connected through so many triumphant highs and some devastating lows

seven years to attend Shari’s August wedding. We’ll spend two weeks together, no doubt laughing as hard as we always have, while getting up to no good as usual, celebrating us.

Renée calls me her platonic life partner. I say, simply, she is a part of me. My family. My mishpucha. My sister.