Just Announced: The Children's & YA Book Awards Winners Explore Now
Time Travel: Tourism and the Rise of the Living History Museum in Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada

Time Travel: Tourism and the Rise of the Living History Museum in Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada

by Alan Gordon
Time Travel: Tourism and the Rise of the Living History Museum in Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada

Time Travel: Tourism and the Rise of the Living History Museum in Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada

by Alan Gordon

Overview

In the 1960s, Canadians could step through time to eighteenth-century trading posts or nineteenth-century pioneer towns. These living history museums promised authentic reconstructions of the past but, as Time Travel shows, they revealed more about mid-twentieth-century interests and perceptions of history than they reflected historical fact. These museums became important components of post-war government economic growth and employment policies. Shaped by political pressures and the need to balance education and entertainment, they reflected Canadians’ struggle to establish a pan-Canadian identity in the context of multiculturalism, competing nationalisms, First Nations resistance, and the growth of the state.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780774831536
Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
Publication date: 04/15/2016
Pages: 372
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Alan Gordon is professor of history at the University of Guelph.

Table of Contents

List of Figures vi

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Living History Time Machines 3

Part 1 Foundations

1 History on Display 23

2 The Foundations of Living History in Canada 49

3 Tourism and History 76

Part 2 Structures

4 Pioneer Days 107

5 A Sense of the Past 132

6 Louisbourg and the Quest for Authenticity 161

Part 3 Connections

7 Fur and Gold 193

8 The Great Tradition of Western Empire 213

9 The Spirit of B & B 235

10 People and Place 259

11 Genuine Indians 278

Conclusion: The Limits of Time Travel 303

Notes 313

Index 360

What People are Saying About This

Paul Litt

Alan Gordon is a master of interpreting present-day uses of history. This study applies his synthesis of the latest scholarship on modern memory and tourism to a fascinating collection of case studies in which he pursues the elusive quarry of authenticity to reveal more genuine truths.

Francoise Noel

Time Travel may be about living history museums, but it is also about so much more. It adds to our knowledge of the mid-twentieth century and the way in which Canadians looked for a national identity, grappling – or not – with the presence of other cultures in the Canadian mosaic.

Brian Osborne

In this groundbreaking book, Alan Gordon skilfully weaves together the work of leading thinkers in the fields of living history, tourism, historiography, museology, and heritage to advance our understanding of the development, and emerging theory, of living history museums.

From the B&N Reads Blog
Page 1 of

Customer Reviews