Themes common to the week’s readings were the variety of natural environments across Canada and the tourists that came to see these places from far and wide. Belshaw starts us off by touching on the changes in society that allowed for larger numbers of tourists to visit the country. These changed include: technological innovations like automobiles, economic growth around the world that gave people spare capital, and a new found focus on filling leisure time productively.1 Jessup brings up the changing attitude towards the vast wilderness of the country, and speaks of how the Canadian population began to become nationalistic over the diversity of the large country’s lands. The Group of Seven is also discussed in regards to how the ideas of ‘wilderness’ and ‘natural beauty’ were being sold to the population.2 Jessup also speaks about how the Group of Seven painted works that were completely uninhabited, and showed no sign of any peoples living in these areas before white settlers arrived. Sandlos speaks of conservationalism and efforts to save large herding animals like bison and caribou . Sandlos addresses how the Group of Seven portrayed the northern parts of the country as barren wastelands, which dehumanized the regions and discouraged tourism.3 Canada was situated over the United States, and was home to many business interests of Englishmen. Canada used this economic and political situation to promote tourism to the country.4 It is argued that countries that share a lot of trade with one another probably have a lot of tourists travelling between them, it is also argued that countries with strong tourism relations most likely increase trade.5 Canada was a large, ever expanding country with plentiful flora and bountiful fauna, and was a highly desired tourist destination.

 

 

Sources

 

 

  1. John D. Belshaw, Canadian History: Post-Confederation, Vancouver: BCCampus, 2015.

 

  1. Jessup, Lynda. 2002. “The Group of Seven and the Tourist Landscape in Western Canada, or The More Things Change ..” Journal Of Canadian Studies 37, no. 1: 144. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 14, 2017).

 

  1. John Sandlos. “From the Outside Looking In: Aesthetics, Politics, and Wildlife Conservation in the Canadian North.”Environmental History 6, no. 1 (2001): 6-31. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.tru.ca/stable/3985229.

 

  1. MacKenzie, David. “An Early Effort in Cultural Diplomacy: The Canadian Co-operation Project and Canadian Tourism.”International Journal 68, no. 4 (2013): 576-90. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.tru.ca/stable/24709360

 

5. Easton, Stephen T. “Is Tourism Just Another Commodity? Links between Commodity Trade and Tourism.” Journal of Economic Integration 13, no. 3 (1998): 522-43. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.tru.ca/stable/23000524.