Time Travel

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

By: Alan Gordon

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Hardcover | 15 April 2016

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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.

An appetite for commercial tourism led to the rise of living history museums. They became important components of economic growth, especially as part of government policy to promote regional economic diversity and employment. Alan Gordon explores how these museums were shaped by post-war pressures, personality conflicts, funding challenges, and the need to balance education and entertainment. Ultimately, the rise of the living history museum is linked to the struggle to establish a pan-Canadian identity in the context of multiculturalism, competing anglophone and francophone nationalisms, First Nations resistance, and the growth of the state.

Industry Reviews

Gordon's research is meticulous and his writing exceptionally coherent. Time Travel is an excellent study of how priorities and preoccupations guide historical interpretation, and an important addition to the study of Canada's heritage industry.

-- Ryan Porter * Canadian Literature, 236 *
... Gordon pulls together a staggering amount of materials to provide a compelling glimpse into the history of living history. He illustrates the contradictions that abound-the tensions between scholarship and entertainment; between National and multicultural remembrance; between the colliding narratives of settler and Indigenous histories. There is more to be written on this story, and Gordon has made a significant contribution to this area of historical scholarship. Time Travel is a useful roadmap that scholars might utilize to explore the fascinating contradictions and interplay between narrative, history and authenticity, so exemplified in the living history museum. -- Sean MacPherson * BC Studies *
As a comprehensive history of public history in Canada, Time Travel is a welcome text. ... Time Travel does a wonderful job of connecting experiments in living history with that national past. -- Claire Campbell, Bucknell University * Historical Studies in Education *

Time Travel is an important book that provides keen insights in the understanding of the emergence of living history museums in mid-twentieth century Canada... In a masterful way, Gordon guides the reader through some of the intellectual debates that shaped the making of the living history museum movement.

-- Review by C. Kurt Dewhurst, Michigan State University Museum * Great Plains Quarterly 38.4 *

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