As a summer camp counsellor when he was 18 years old, William Shatner deliberately scared the pants off his campers by telling ghost stories.Illustration by Photo illustration by The Globe and Mail. Source images: Manfred Baumann, Getty Images
Even between acting gigs, Montreal-born William Shatner, 94, relied on his “only skill set” – his performative chops – to keep himself busy. They proved especially useful up in the Laurentian Mountains, when as an 18-year-old counsellor at an all-boys camp, the future Captain Kirk earned the fear and respect of underprivileged teens by acting out ghost stories. The gorgeous scenery, free horse-riding and epic international canoe trip were memorable too, Mr. Shatner told us for this latest instalment of “How I Spent My Summer.”
I mostly worked as an actor from the time I was 6, with a few exceptions. One of them was in the early 1950s, the summer after I’d graduated high school but before I started university at McGill, when I held a job as a camp counsellor at Camp B’nai Brith up in the Laurentians, about 60 miles outside of Montreal.
I got the job because nobody else wanted it. It was for lower-income kids from the city to come get a country experience. It was actually part of a farm with a wonderful farmer who, as part of the children’s entertainment, would slaughter a pig in front of them every so often. The blood was drained and caught for blood pudding.
This was a rough camp of war orphans; all boys, and lots of them uncontrollable ones with lots of trauma and big behavioural problems. No wonder they couldn’t fill the job. Babysitting a bunch of teens who’d seen nothing but death and destruction? No thank you.
The kids were 15 and 16 and I was only 18, and the only way I possibly could handle them was through storytelling. Specifically, I’d tell ghost stories – and soon enough I was in pretty high demand. Every night, I chose a different bunk – there were about 15 or 20 – to tell a different ghost story. I deliberately scared the pants off those kids.
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I used everything I could remember from my acting lessons. There was a whole lot of Edgar Allan Poe. Acting was my only real skill set and also therefore my favourite part of the job. The worst part was the kids. I’m joking, but these were all rough city kids who were afraid of the trees in the dark. I thought that was funny and used it to my advantage to make my stories extra terrifying. And if someone didn’t behave that day, I wouldn’t go to their bunk. The next day, if they wanted a story, they’d behave.
The counsellors lived in the bunks too, though I think we might have had a little partition or something. The living conditions weren’t great and neither was the pay, which was nothing. Did I say before this was a job? It was more like volunteering.
There were things for us too, though. To celebrate at the end of the summer, the head camper offered eight of us counsellors a canoe trip in an eight-man war canoe. We went up the Saint Lawrence to the Richelieu, along the Richelieu to Lake Champlain, the length of Lake Champlain in portage to Lake George, the length of Lake George in portage to the Hudson River and down the Hudson to New York. We paddled from Montreal to New York in eight days. It was absolutely incredible and we were on the news. The tune of the media coverage was “crazy Canadians paddle all the way here.”
The mountains were beautiful and the farmer had horses we were allowed to ride. I learned to fall off a horse very easily there. That was the summer I fell in love with horses, actually. When I came to Los Angeles many years later I started a charity called the Hollywood Charity Horseshow, which I’ve run now for over 35 years with Priceline and the Bank of California. Every year we raise $400,000 or $500,000 for veterans and children’s charities–just like Camp B’nai Brith.