The Globe and Mail

The car loaded, Un Ho Choi, his wife Christine and 15-year-old son Danny will wave farewell to the city and battle traffic early Saturday morning to reach their coveted campground along Lake Erie. Among their personal firsts: nights spent in a tent, roasting marshmallows over a campfire and covering themselves with mosquito repellant.

“I really want an understanding of the Canadian culture and to enjoy this good country,” said Mr. Choi of his first camping adventure, only three months after moving from Korea to Canada and into his home in Oakville, Ont.

Parks across the country are hanging high hopes on families like the Chois. Facing dwindling attendance, park officials want to draw new Canadians and children of urban families into the great outdoors. And the demand is there – new programs that gently ease fledgling campers into the experience have had a positive response, inducting newcomers into the quintessentially Canadian world of canoes, sleeping bags and black flies.

The number of visitors to Canada’s national parks has dropped 22 per cent from 1995, while the country’s population has increased nearly 18 per cent – prompting Parks Canada to ask why. One realization: Not enough attention has been paid to the needs of the nation’s transforming demographic.

“We have to change with it,” Ms. Wilson said. “We have to understand better what type of equipment people need, what type of instruction, what language they need to communicate in, how to package the programs on the Web.”

Using information gleaned from focus groups, Parks Canada is “working with what we’ve heard from current visitors and potential visitors, what they define as camping, and that’s not always as rustic as sleeping in a canoe under the stars, which is maybe what we saw 30 years ago,” said Ms. Wilson. Some, she added, “are looking for something safer. That’s definitely what we’ve heard from new Canadians. They want to explore, but sometimes in a more bounded kind of way.”

Parks Canada is setting up new pilot projects to address the issue. Some parks are offering alternative styles of accommodation (such as yurts and teepees), “all-inclusive” turnkey camp experiences (No cooler? No problem), and learn-to-camp tutorials. One camp in Manitoba organized trips to introduce target groups to traditional Canadian camping.

At the same time, new Canadians are adding their own twist to the Canadian camping experience. Vivek Shetty and his wife, Rashna, who moved from India to Mississauga, Ont., in 2008, left late Friday to reach their pristine campground on the southern shores of Lake Simcoe. But when the Shetty family gathers for mealtime, it won’t be an intimate gathering around the campfire, cooking hot dogs. Fifteen other relatives and friends will join them at Sibbald Point Provincial Park for traditional Indian meals – chicken curry, rice and naan.

“I’ve been told that it is fun,” Mr. Shetty said of his first camping trip. “I like adventure so I would like to explore.”

The Mohanraj family, with their nine-year-old daughter, Oviya, were so taken by their camping experience over the Canada Day long weekend that they’re leaving for Tobermory on Saturday, with seven other families. They bought a bigger tent this time (a six- to eight-person one), and along with the hamburgers, hot dogs and corn, they’ll also pack tandoori chicken and curry.

“If I told my parents about camping they would say, ‘Why are you paying to sleep on the pavement and on the grass?’ They think I am crazy,” said Ramachandrarajah Mohanraj, who arrived from India in 2003 and now lives in Scarborough, Ont. “But we really enjoy camping.”