I for one am stoked! Tourism and History in Bruce-Grey-Simcoe

Have we snow? I offer three words. 'Wax up dudes.'



So says historical figure John Graves Simcoe in Bruce-Grey-Simcoe's new advertisement campaign, highlighting this area of Ontario's yearly winter wonderland. In the ad on the radio John Graves Simcoe is purportedly raving about the ski conditions in the county that was named after him. If you look at the advertisement campaign on the web, Sir James Bruce, 2nd Earl Charles Grey and Lt. Governor Simcoe all have something to say. An historic photo of them has had ski gear added to it, and the photo speaks. Simcoe's contribution is mentioned above. Bruce says 'Another robust winter is upon us. I for one am stoked!,' and Grey says 'I quite fancy skiing. Especially the Apres."


Many tourist sites are also historic sites. If you think of a location and you are trying to think of what there is to see there, often you think of the old structures and the museums, the sites where specific events happened. No? Just me? Well anyway, for the sites where it is less about seeing and more about doing, like skiing and theme parks and mini putt, history perhaps plays less of a role. However those kind of tourist sites often break out around historic locations, because those places have been interesting to generations of people, like Niagara Falls, or Wasaga Beach. Skiing is a little different though. The hills are not centres where people have been coming and going for centuries, like harbours, or river intersections. But it is the best place for skiing.

I thought the campaign was so interesting. First of all, people are actually going to engage with historical photos of some of Ontario's first founders. These are not people that are well-known. I am familiar with John Graves Simcoe myself, but I even have not done a lot of research about Charles Grey or James Bruce. People are still not going to know who they are, but they are at least going to realize that the county's are named after specific people. This is the most interesting kind of historical education, because it will open the door for certain people to ask more questions, and it brings that tourist approved historical significance to a tourist attraction devoid of that kind of connection or cultural significance.

How effective it will be as an advertisement campaign is harder to judge. I will certainly remember it. And it's quite clever.

Historic Northern Peninsula - Grenfell Centre

Someone recently told me that the tourism industry has replaced the fishing industry as the main economic staple in the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. I can see this, as there is really only one set of roads to take you to all pertinent locations, but there are a million signs warning you when you get closer to the attraction that you were bound to pass anyway. Of course, by the time you pass by the advertising has convinced you that you want to go in.

I decided, being an avid history nerd, what other tourist, history based attractions I could take in while up in the Northern Peninsula. I came across a fairly unexplored gem. For all history nerds I highly recommend the Grenfell centre. Its interpretation centre was highly informative and well set up. Clearly whoever designed the exhibit was well versed in museum theory, as most of the exhibits they had were text and information, so they tried to intersperse it with models, audio and other things not necessarily used by Grenfell or in the work of the Grenfell mission, but that had cultural relevance nonetheless. The house, part two of the exhibit, was just as interesting, though less well interpreted and hardly mentioned in the early exhibit. The walk up behind the house was also interesting, vigorous and informative, with plaques useful to tourists unfamiliar with the local landscape.

Of course I was the only one in there. On a Saturday. Of an open house. So..., despite the massive funding that clearly went into the establishing of the museum and the exhibits, they should probably invest a bit more in advertising. Like so many museums they have probably hit that catch twenty-two of getting funding once they get visitors and needing funding to get those visitors. Perhaps as well it is just because the subject matter has not been well linked to the other historical based tourist attractions, or because the house itself, despite signage, is hard to find tucked up behind the hospital. Or maybe it is only really interesting to people who are history nerds.

However, between all three parts of the historical interpretation this was not just a museum about the Grenfell mission, but I believe it is the only museum in the area which talks about local history. It is here that I learned about the American airbase, what Partridge berries look like, when roads came to the area, about local crafts, how the fishing operations worked at the turn of the century and what demographics made up the early population of Northern Newfoundland and Labrador. I think the museum would do well to emphasize some of this in their advertising. Maybe then they might get a few more visitors.

P.S. For fellow London Ontario-ers/Public History students, Grenfell has been inducted into the Canadian Medicine Hall of Fame in London, and in the interpretive centre one of the only artefact exhibits contained turn of the century medical equipment, something we got to investigate this year.