2002/02/01 by Lynda Jessup · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Environmental Science · Arts and Humanities · #Canadian Identity and History #American Environmental and Regional History #French Historical and Cultural Studies #Wilderness #Recreation #Tourism #Cultural landscape #Regionalism (politics) #Sociology #Landscape history #Work (physics) #Economy #Geography #Ethnology #Political science #Archaeology #Landscape design #Landscape archaeology #Law #Environmental resource management #Ecology
paper · doi:10.3138/jcs.37.1.144
openalex publication_date 2002/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Historians of Canadian culture have demonstrated increasing awareness that the Group of Seven and the ideas of nation advanced in and around their work were never as fully embraced by the public at large as once assumed. One reason is that the Group, and the cultural producers with whom they aligned themselves, worked from an urban perspective characteristic of Ontario regionalism. For Ontarians, the landscape in paintings by the Group of Seven was not a place of productive labour, nor a permanent home, but rather a place of recreation, a wilderness landscape of scenic value and spiritual renewal. Using the artists’ work in western Canada as a case study, this paper argues that this touristic experience of the non-human environment was intimately tied as well to the emergence of mass tourism, which took shape as a state-coordinated industry in Canada in the 1920s.