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Summer camps provide a special time and space for youth growth and transformation. This growth is possible, in part, due to the physical and social isolation that contribute to the liminality of traditional residential camps. Camps act as a sort of 'bubble' in which alternative realities, norms and identities emerge. For many campers and camp counsellors, the community and personal relationships that develop at camp produce feelings of acceptance and belonging. Positive camp experiences do not occur by happenstance and as such, youthful camp counsellors often feel immense pressure to deliver on the promises that camps offer. This article explores the challenges faced by counsellors as they seek to create and maintain this liminal space. This paper discusses camp counsellors' own reflections on their personal struggles with social isolation and the need to be accepted, effects of gossip in the close-knit community of camp, a lack of private time or space, and the emotional demands of caring for campers. The article concludes by suggesting how we might reconsider camp counsellor experiences and offers strategies to support counsellors as they navigate and negotiate camp experiences for both themselves and their campers.

Summer camps have been conventionally associated with the positive development of individual character through the promotion of recreational 'fun.' However, popular narratives obscure more critical questions concerning the power-knowledge relations that have shaped the provision of summer camp fun as a significant site of child development in Canadian culture. In this article we examine how camp counsellors mobilise particular discourses about the benefits, or 'good', and 'fun' of camp to govern themselves and the campers that are in their care. We draw on Foucauldian notions of governmentality to problematise that which is often assumed as the 'truth' of camp experiences. We discuss how the 'good' of camp often draws on psy-discourses and those of entrepreneurial selves to improve or add value to campers' lives. Additionally, 'fun' discourses and practices can work to produce manageable and docile campers. We conclude the article by identifying the implications of the research for developing a critical approach to the management of young staff who work to provide a broad range of recreational experiences where benefits and fun are promised.Camping Association, 2009). This may be an unrealistic promise. Adolescent staff are responsibilised to do this within a few weeks in a recreational setting. Such descriptions of camp experiences create idealistic, if not unrealistic, expectations for parent purchasers, child consumers, camp managers and camp counsellors. As the everyday authorities charged with managing campers conduct, camp counsellors are enmeshed in a complex web of powerknowledge relations (Foucault, 1980) and, as such, are required to negotiate discourses of 'good' and 'fun' camper experiences. A more critical understanding of how camp counsellors experience these discourses and power relations can offer insights for camp managers, camp organisation and, more broadly, child and youth recreational associations (i.e., sport, music, arts, dance, clubs) on how to support youthful leaders who are also responsibilised in the shaping of the conduct of their charges.Using analytics of governmentality (Foucault, 1980), we undertake an analysis of how discourses of 'good' and 'fun' are taken up by camp counsellors to shape camper experiences. We include insights into the tensions and dilemmas that arise as camp counsellors negotiate relations of power as they attempt to mobilise techniques that will produce the 'promised' camper experiences. We wish to disrupt assumptions of 'good' and 'fun' that shape camper experiences and open up the possibility for understanding and acknowledging diverse camp counsellor experiences. Our contribution seeks to extend the empirical research on camp experiences through a discursive analysis of power-knowledge relations that come to govern camper and camp counsellor experiences as well as their subjectivities. Considering camp experiences through governmentality

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