GREAT SPACE: HAPPY CAMPER
A cute camper gets a facelift
They named her Pearl,
a reference to her gleaming creamand-white shell. But this cute 1959 Shasta travel trailer wasn’t looking quite so polished when she rolled up the driveway in May 2018 after a two-hour journey from Kingston. The cream paint was flaking off, the rust was creeping in, and it lacked the signature fins and Shasta logo — in short, the little camper was a definite fixer-upper.
And so Katie Cleary and her partner, Brent Schouten, set to work, returning Pearl to her original splendour in just three weeks so that their family could hit the road before Ottawa’s all too brief summer came to an end. They resealed the roof, replaced water-damaged ceiling panels, and put in new vinyl flooring. For Cleary’s birthday, Schouten bought her paint for the exterior. “I was so excited, I actually spent my entire birthday painting,” she says with a laugh. Another Shasta-themed present came from her mom — a pair of replica fins, just as jaunty as the originals.
Cleary’s is a busy household. A stay-at-home mom to Bentley, 6, and Willa, 18 months, she runs a horse stable on her country property and teaches riding lessons. That meant sandwiching in frantic refurbishing sessions while Bentley was at school and Willa was napping. Luckily, the trailer’s interior was in relatively good shape: the original wood cabinetry, Formica counters, and vinyl upholstery just needed a little TLC. Forays onto chat rooms for Shasta enthusiasts provided encouragement and advice. “They all said, ‘It’s only original once,’ so that helped me make the decision to change as little as possible.”
By late summer, the family hit the road, camping at nearby provincial parks and road-tripping to Cleary’s mother’s house in Oxford Mills and setting up in her yard. Everywhere they went, the little trailer was an instant attraction. On rainy days at the campground, Cleary says, Bentley would show up with an assortment of random new friends, everyone piling in to colour and play card games. Indeed, her son loved the trailer so much that when they returned home, she would park it at the far end of their farm property so that he could ride his bike over to “camp.”
The refurbishment was a lot of work, but when asked if she would do it all again, Cleary gives an emphatic yes. She would love to buy a second Shasta, fix it up, and tour it around to regional craft sales or farmers’ markets.
But even as she dreams of a second Shasta, Cleary is most focused on this summer’s family trips. “We have so much camping to do, so many memories to make. This really is our favourite place to be.”