The Dark Tourism Forum A Practitioners Perspective Case Study Two:

Dark Tourism and Great Excursions: An Initial Insight

I would identify myself as a dark tourism practitioner in Canada, although it is not an exclusive field of endeavour for me. Throughout most of my professional life thus far, I have been a journalist/producer employed at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), bringing to the attention of other Canadians stories from the fields of science, agriculture, heritage and current affairs in general. Though I am now employed through Great Excursions, I am still involved with CBCs French and English language networks as a freelance heritage columnist.

I am based in Saskatchewan. This central province of Canada is not generally perceived as having much clout nationally, especially on the tourism scene. Saskatchewan has a population hovering around 1,000,000 souls. Rural communities, here as elsewhere in the world, are facing major sustainability challenges. Yet visitors are always charmed by the experiences our province offers. From small town rodeos and guest ranch stays, to wilderness canoe trips in the boreal forest of the Canadian Shield.

Overseas operators do not consider this a mature destination. In the provincial capital, Regina, all our museums are still free. Therefore tour operators cannot sell them. The most popular tourism attraction is the casino, developed in the old 1912 Canadian Pacific Railway Union Station, and frequented mostly by Saskatchewan residents.

In Canada, long-haul tour operators tend to focus on the British Columbia/Alberta or the Ontario/Qubec/Maritime provinces corridors. Manitoba is known mostly for Churchills polar bear watching experiences, which are hardly typical of the provinces offerings. In Saskatchewan, the tourism industry is a work in progress, which means we have the opportunity to do things right.
Dark Tourism and Great Excursions: An Initial Insight

Saskatchewan was established in 1905it is a very young province. It was initially part of the Northwest Territories and part of Ruperts Land before that. From the middle to the late 19th century, dramatic events unfolded that would change forever life in the Great Plains.

The decimation of the bison populations, through uncontrolled culling, brought starvation and poverty to First Nations that had been relying on the bison economy for as long as 10,000 years. This forced aboriginal people to agree to sign treaties, starting in 1870s in Saskatchewan, that would turn traditionally nomadic societies into sedentary plains inhabitants, confined to reservations.

Industrial interests in Eastern Canada were looking for economic expansion opportunities. Ten years later, in 1883, they built a railway across our land and enticed settlers to come and prosper in this new land of opportunity.

In the Great Plains region, dark tourism sites traditionally involve aboriginal peoples and tragic events such as the Cypress Hills massacre of 1873, which led to the creation of the North West Mounted Police. The events surrounding the 1885 Riel Rebellion of the Metis people (descendants from the union of fur traders and aboriginal people) generated new sites of commemoration through battlefields at Batoche, Fish Creek and Frog Lake, to name a few. Some of these sites are now National Historic Sites. In many cases, the stewards of these sites are making remarkable interpretive contributions to bring out untold perspectives about the significance of past events.

Stories of cultural genocide are still fresh in the collective memory of Saskatchewan residents as well. We are reminded almost daily of the forced assimilation of thousands of aboriginal children through government-sponsored residential schools, because victims of countless abuses are still seeking compensation to help alleviate the wrongs of the past.

Dark Tourism and Great Excursions: An Initial Insight

I believe that these stories of drama, hardship, and remarkable bravery will contribute to the development a more compelling tourism image for our part of the world in the future. However, the issue of cultural appropriation must be addressed. Fortunately, there is an increasing awareness of the risks of cultural appropriation and interpretive legitimacy among tourism stakeholders.

There is not a field ploughed in Saskatchewan that has not yielded a projectile point, a teepee ring, a stone circle or alignment of some kind. The agricultural producers who are now the stewards of the land have historically played an important role in the development of avocational archaeology here, and our heritage legislation recognizes their contribution.

This phenomenon is likely experienced elsewhere, but I feel that our fascination for the exotic aspects and artifacts from other cultural groups who have used the territory before the arrival of European settlers has prevented us from interpreting Euro-Canadian heritage with the same dedication.

There are museums that preserve and interpret Euro-Canadian heritage here. They play an important role in providing visitors a basic framework of understanding of settlement practices. I feel there is a need to tie what is inside the museum to how we live outside in the places we inhabit. The ecomuseum concept and the way it allows the territory to become a laboratory for the exploration of identity, landscape and perceptions is a very attractive one to me.

This is where I am hoping Great Excursions can make a difference, through the adoption of an archaeological approach to the interpretation of our patterns of settlement. For instance, the morphology of railway towns reveals many distinctive patterns about on

Dark Tourism and Great Excursions: An Initial Insight

how inhabitants and visitors have perceived dwellings, yards, streets, neighbourhoods and the Great Plains territory itself through time.

From GIS analysis of the built environment and human patterns of mobility during settlement activities, as well as interpretation of maps and early photographs, Great Excursions is able to share some fascinating aspects of the city as a Southern Saskatchewan population-distributing machine.

These findings are now used as a basis for themed urban explorations or tours that interpret heritage in a new engaging way, based on events or specific aspects of EuroCanadian settlement activities in Saskatchewan. For instance, in 1912, a tornado ploughed through Regina. We invite participants to relive the anguish felt by boaters and bystanders near Lake Wascana as they witnessed the tornados fury and impact on the east side of the new Legislative Building. The tornado veered slightly westward as it angled over the lake. And it moved northward again, ploughing through the modern day Transition neighbourhood along McIntyre, Lorne and Smith Streets, to downtown, across the CPR line, to the Warehouse District and beyond city limits.

As winds picked up debris as large as houses, toppled elevators onto railway tracks and tore apart elegant multi-storey stone and brick buildings, a new map of the city emerged.

Based on exclusive archaeological research, we provide answers to questions like: what was the true extent of the damage? How did the city and its population overcome the tornado so quickly? Our analysis brings to light previously unknown facts about how the layout of the city, the resources within its midst and the environmental challenges that ensued affected local livelihoods. The experience provides exclusive insight into human adaptability in the face of large-scale disasters.

As we follow the footsteps of event witnesses, we become investigators who experience

Dark Tourism and Great Excursions: An Initial Insight

minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, how the forces of nature affected this community and brought out the best in times of hardship.

I should add to that we are now working with the Regina Plains Museum to create a virtual museum exhibit on the Tornado, sharing our resources with them. In addition, I will be curator for an exhibit on the 1912 tornado at the Museum this spring, for which my company will also be staging a redeveloped public tour/interpretation about the 1912 Tornado, staged in partnership with the Museum.

Claude-Jean Harel The Dark Tourism Forum

Dark Tourism and Great Excursions: An Initial Insight