Ask a celeb: Tom Green, Laura Prepon, Rick Mercer on going to summer camp as kids

Before they got used to luxurious stays in chic hotels, some celebrities lived for roughing it in sleeping bags and tents at summer camp.

With sleepaway camp season in full effect, The Canadian Press asked several stars about their experiences around the campfire.

Actor Tom Green says his parents sent him on back-breaking canoe trips as a teen every summer, despite his pleas to stay home to practise skateboarding.

“I would go on these intensive, almost military-style, test-of-endurance type things, where my parents shipped me, up to Northern Ontario near Timmins. And I had to go on these month-long intensive canoe trips with portages every day. I was not happy about it,” he recalls.

“Now in hindsight I was glad they did it, because it was a great experience and is definitely one of those memories where I remember being out there in the middle of nowhere.”

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Cult filmmaker John Waters says he had “a great time” showing his passion for gore in summer camp.

“I wrote a story there called ‘Reunion’ that I read every week to the campers, a horror story, a serial,” he recalls.

“At the end there was this hideous gory thing and then all the kids had nightmares and their parents called the camp and complained — and I’m still doing that!

“It was the beginning of my career.”

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CBC-TV personality Rick Mercer says he went to a camp at age 12 or 13 and then became a counsellor in St. John’s.

“It was a pretty low-rent summer camp. Like, literally like Kamp Krusty — it was like old military canvas tents, two or three beaten up canoes, lots of axes, chainsaws…. It was a good time, though. Good time.”

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“Orange is the New Black” star Laura Prepon went to camp in New Jersey when she was 11 or 12.

“I wasn’t really a fan of summer camp because I was kind of a free spirit and I kind of did my own thing,” she says.

“So, I didn’t really work well into the … schedules and everything. My mother was a very free spirit and … I’ve never been grounded, I’ve never had a rule in my life — and it’s kind of interesting because I feel like when you don’t have that, you’re actually more responsible and sane because you have no rules to rebel against so you don’t go out and do crazy stuff.”