JUG320S: The Canadian Wilderness

1
JUG320S The Canadian Wilderness

• Week 7 Tourism
• Professor Emily Gilbert
• http//individual.utoronto.ca/emilygilbert/

2
Todays Themes

• I The Tourist Gaze
• II Tourism for the Nation
• III Managing the Tourist
• IV Future of Tourism?

3
I Tourism

• The myth of the wilderness as virgin,
  uninhabited land had always been especially cruel
  when seen from the perspective of the Indians who
  had once called that land home. Now they were
  forced to move elsewhere, with the result that
  tourists could safely enjoy the illusion that
  they were seeing their nation in its pristine,
  original state, in the new morning of Gods
  creation (Cronon)

4

• Tourist or romantic gaze
• Importance of the cultivation
• and display of good taste
• Aesthetic sightseeing pictures and the
  picturesque
• Emphasis on solitary views, on unique experience
• Organizing the tourist gaze role of government,
  train companies, artists to shape tourist ideal
  in wilderness
• Tourists as consumers of the landscape guides,
  accommodation, transportation, etc.

5
II Tourism for the Nation

• Early 19thC
• Outdoor recreation begins to become popular
• Emergence of urban parks movements

6

• 1850s
• Curative holidays taken by wealthy city-dwellers
• More middle-class recreation hunting, fishing,
  canoeing church and youth organizations, eg
  summer camps
• Rise of leisure time where people look for
  meaning

• A sportsman and two Mi'kmaq guides on the
  Restigouche River (detail), 1880s (Camp Harmony
  Angling Club)

7

• Sportsmens club movement
• eg Forest and Stream (1873-) editor Charles
  Hallock
• Clyde and Emma Young,
• Youngs Wilderness Camp
• 1932

8

• 1876 artists and Intercolonial Railway
  picturesque development of tourism
• 1880s-1890s
• The building of the CPR and uniting Canada from
  sea to sea
• Economic nationalism and dominance of central
  Canada
• Expansion of empire outward

• Last spike at Craigellachie, Nov 7, 1885

9

• Banff National Park
• Created 1885
• Banff Springs Hotel built in the Scottish
• Baronial style designed by architect
• Bruce Price
• Rebuilt in the 1920s after a 1926 fire

10

• 1900s
• Rise of the scouting movement
• Woodcraft Indians
• Youth program established by Ernest Thompson
  Seton in US in 1902
• Seton an author, naturalist, artist Wild Animals
  I Have Known (1898)
• Told boys stories of Native Americans and nature
  stories later published
• Boy Scouts
• Founded by Lord Baden-Powell in UK (1907)
• 1910 Woodcraft Indians merge with Boy Scouts of
  America
• 1921 Brownies established (for boys and girls)

11
III Tourism for the Nation

• 1911 National Parks Branch of the Department of
  the Interior formed with first Commissioner James
  Bernard Harkin (1911-1936)
• Importance of money from domestic and
  international tourism
• But also the service they render to the people
  of Canada importance of play spirit to
  Canadian nationalism
• Paradox unpsoiled wilderness but also
  therapeutic playgrounds

12

• around WWI governments began promoting outdoor
  activities
• acquired parkland
• built recreational facilities
• drew up wildlife regulations
• wrote resource-management policies
• zoned cabin and cottage lands to control
  development
• WWI park internment camps to develop road
  infrastructure largely unemployed or destitute
  men (Ukrainians) to lay 400 miles of scenic roads
  by 1930

13

• 1931 Unemployment and Farm Relief Act creates
  public works projects in national parks workers
  at Banff build new bathhouse and pool at Upper
  Hot Springs, and work on roads
• WWII more internment camps set up, at Lake
  Louise, Stoney Creek and Healy Creeklargely
  filled with Mennonites from Saskatchewan
• Japanese internment camps set up at Jasper
  National Park, with internees working on
  Yellowhead Highway and other roads

14

• Increasing importance of car travel as new
  freedom
• Increase in accessibility by 1920s more than
  half tourists to Rocky Mountain Park arriving by
  car
• Development of infrastructure roads, auto
  camping facilities (campsites, cabins)
• CPR and CNR worked with National Parks Branch to
  develop facilities, eg Banff-Windermere Highway
• 1923 Jasper Park Lodge built luxurious style
  centre surrounded by bungalows

15

• Jin-me Yoon
• Souvenirs of the Self, 1993
• Group of Sixty-Seven, 1996/7

16
III Managing the Tourist

• 1950s
• More leisure time, more money, more cars
• Rise in mass market for recreational services and
  commodities
• Canadian Outdoor Recreation Demand Study
  released reports 1968, 1969, 1972 outdoor
  recreation a component of national character a
  public need

17

• But also more concern over preservation
• US Wilderness Protection Act of 1964
• Canada National and Provincial Parks Association
  of Canada former 1963 (later the Canadian Parks
  and Wilderness Society)
• First endangered species legislation setting out
  national environmental policies
• Bid to hold 1972 Winter Olympics at Lake Louise
  withdrawn because of environmental concerns
• From late 1970s, National Parks Act begins to
  shift emphasis to conservation and ecological
  integrity

18

• Algonquin Provincial Park
• 7,725 km2
• 1,500 km of canoe routes
• 2,000 km of logging routes
• Established 1893
• First Park surveyor
• James Dickson
• First Chief Ranger
• Peter Thomson

19

• Strict control of access and movement
• Zones historic recreation/utilization nature
  reserve wilderness development zones
• Parkway Corridor and the Interior

20

• Elite classism of tourism
• High-tech (efficiency and finesse) vs. low-tech
  (tradition and naturalness) equipment
• Status associated with remote camping escape and
  aesthetics
• Aesthetic and experiential consumption of
  landscape
• Park structures help produce meaning

21
IV Future of Tourism?

• space can be made to hide consequences from
  usrelations of power and discipline are
  inscribed into the apparently innocent spatiality
  of social life (Edward Soja)
• unproductive activity planned with the
  greatest care centralized, organized,
  hierarchized, symbolized and programmed to the
  nth degree (Henri Lefebvre)
• spaces sometimes lie just as things lie (Henri
  Lefebvre)

22
ECOTOURISMFocus on local flora and
faunaconservation of biological and cultural
diversity, and the protection of
ecosystemssustainable use of biodiversity, and
local employment opportunitiesconsent of local
community, and aboriginal peoples, and
profit-sharing and co-management with
themincrease of environmental cultural
knowledge minimal environmental impactsmall
ecological footprint