This morning, I read an article in the Globe and Mail about the transformation of Truro's old Normal College into the public library space. This afternoon, I read an article on CBC's website about the ongoing transformation of Lunenburg's old Bank of Montreal building into an investment firm. When I read the article about my hometown of Truro, I felt proud. I love the way that in Truro, old buildings are being repurposed for today's residents: for example, a few years ago, the old fire station became the Farmer's Market space. Meanwhile, in Lunenburg, the town is undergoing a transformation of its own.
Lunenburg's
THING is cultural tourism. It sells an atmosphere, a feeling of small
fishing villages that have all but disappeared. And the fact that these villages have all but disappeared only make it's appeal grow, as Jim Overton observed in his 1996 book on Newfoundland tourism Making a World of Difference: "It is even popular in some tourist literature to introduce the
imminent demise of “the ‘Real’ Newfoundland,” making it even more urgent for
tourists to ‘taste’ a way of life which is in jeopardy" (p. 117). When fishing and sea-based occupations became less lucrative, Lunenburg turned to tourism to survive, and it succeeded in this, selling this disappearing way of life and this heritage.
Wanda George of Mount Saint Vincent University has done some work on the town of Lunenburg, studying how tourism has affected the culture of the community. To summarize a 2005 journal article, tourism in Lunenburg has in fact served to mummify the local culture. The past is viewed with nostalgic and authentic, and anything resembling that past is seen as "the real" culture, even if it is viewed with the eyes of outsiders. Those who can sell the traditional culture, now suddenly valuable, are the ones who become successful. The ones who may have traditionally created the culture may be excluded from it.
This article demonstrates and argues that the commodification of rural resource-based culture at a specific point in time can signify the decay and eventual demise of that particular culture, and, moreover, it invokes the arrival of a new culture to displace it. This new culture is one that is fixated on tourism and based on a set of tertiary and commercial characteristics, one which is not based on the values and traditions of the previous culture in spite of commercialising those life ways into its economic product. Through commodification, the previous culture that evolved as a social construct
gives way to a new construct – a commodity for commercial exchange (p. 91).
So what we have going on in this community is outsiders defining what the culture is. And so when I read about Garth Turner and how he visited once six years ago, decided he liked the area, and almost immediately bought property there, I see this process in play. From the article:
A lover of older buildings, he was worried about who might buy it and what they might do with it.
"I
was kind of thinking, 'If I don't do it, this might turn into a pizza
joint, a dollar store or, God forbid, another hipster café, and so maybe
it has to have a more dignified use, so here we are," said Turner, a
financial adviser and analyst whose previous careers have included work
as a journalist and federal cabinet minister.
This was the point of the article when I got angry. You know, Nova Scotians, especially rural Nova Scotians, are quick to be accused of innate conservatism and of resistance to change. But this resistance to change is very sensible. We are not anti-innovation or anti-entrepreneur, but we are anti-some dude from Ontario "worried about who might buy" a historic building in the middle of our place. The residents of Lunenburg, I am sure, do not need this sort of paternalism. I thought about the contrast with Truro, where beautiful old buildings, and even some not-so-beautiful buildings, are transformed to become spaces that make the town a more pleasant place to live. Unlike Lunenburg, Truro is not burdened with trying to approximate what an old fishing town should be like. For Truro, which does not rely on tourism as much, there are no expectations to be quaint or charming. So it can be whatever it likes, and I quite like it: for years we had about five large chunks of the Berlin Wall jammed onto a vacant lot beside the Bargain Shop (they have been moved now). Truro just does its thing, and does not pay undo attention to whether outsiders accept its thing. Lunenburg does not have that luxury: an economy with a basis in tourism means that the tourists have the most say in what the town is like. Will a private investment firm bring any benefit to those who reside, year-round, in Lunenburg? Perhaps it will.
So here is the paradox, which Garth Turner has so aptly illustrated: For primary-industry communities who can no longer rely on that primary industry, they may turn to tourism as a way to make ends meet. Instead of fish, Lunenburg now sells its culture. But this selling of culture, intended as a survival mechanism, is contributing to the death of the community. Garth Turner, attracted to Lunenburg partly because "people really honour their background and heritage," and meanwhile he is building a business which, as far as I can tell, will only help Lunenburg resemble Toronto. Who belongs in Lunenburg, now? Where are the profits of all this tourism going? And what's wrong with hipster cafes?
