Northern Getaway: Film, Tourism, and the Canadian Vacation [Paperback]

For more than a century, posters, advertisements, and brochures have characterized Canada as a desirable tourist destination offering spectacular scenery, wild animals, outdoor recreation, and state-of-the-art accommodations. However, these explicitly commercial displays are not the only marketing tools at the countrys disposal; beginning in the 1890s, film also played a role in selling Canada.In Northern Getaway Dominique Br?gent-Heald investigates the connections between film and tourism during the first half of the twentieth century, exploring the economic, pedagogical, geopolitical, and socio-cultural contexts and aspirations of tourism films. From the first moving images of the 1890s through the end of the 1950s, a complex web of public and private stakeholders in Canadian tourism experimented, sometimes in collaboration with Hollywood, with a variety of film forms  16 mm or 35 mm, feature or short films, fiction or nonfiction, professional or amateur filmmakers  to promote Canada. Spectators, particularly Americans, saw Canada as a tourist destination on screens in motion picture theatres, schools, and fairgrounds. Rooted in settler colonial representations that celebrate the nations unspoiled but welcoming wilderness landscapes, these films also characterize Canada as a technologically and industrially advanced settler country.Using evidence from a wide range of archival sources and drawing from current scholarship in film history and tourism studies, Northern Getaway demonstrates how Canada was an innovator in using film to shape and project a recognizable destination brand.

Northern Getaway investigates the connections between film and tourism of the 1890s through the 1950s. Using evidence from archival sources and current scholarship in film history and tourism studies, Dominique Br?gent-Heald demonstrates that Canada was an innovator in employing film to project a recognizable destination brand.

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