A spectacular sundown, close to Rimouski. (Shutterstock)
When vacationers consider Québec, the St. Lawrence River is without doubt one of the primary issues that come to thoughts, particularly the extensive, jap a part of the river’s estuary, with its spectacular sunsets that give guests the sensation they’re on the seaside.
In Le fleuve aux grandes eaux (The river of nice waters), Québec filmmaker Frédéric Bach portrays a province divided by the St. Lawrence River into the north and south shores. The river, itself is proven as a freeway within the age of schooners and coastal transport, a playground for boaters and kayakers and a backdrop for guests to ponder on an after-dinner stroll in the summertime.
Panoramic view of Rocky Bay and the islands of the St. Lawrence Estuary in Rivière-au-Tonnerre, on Québec’s North Shore.
(Shutterstock)
But how did the river develop as a vacationer vacation spot? And for whom?
As a professor at Université du Québec à Montréal, the place I’m the analysis chair on the dynamics of tourism and socio-territorial relations, I’m within the improvement of tourism trajectories in non-metropolitan communities. This angle led me to work extra particularly in jap Québec.
This article is a part of our collection, The St. Lawrence River: In depth.
Don’t miss new articles on this legendary river of outstanding magnificence. Our consultants take a look at its fauna, flora and historical past, and the problems it faces. This collection is delivered to you by La Conversation.
From ‘white boats’ to automobiles: The river stays central
Touristic concepts in regards to the St. Lawrence River date to the start of the cruise business within the nineteenth century. A veritable empire of passenger transport was created with the formation of Canada Steamship Lines in 1913, which administered the well-known “white boats” cruise circuit of steamboats. These boats introduced the economic aristocracy of the time to the jap a part of the province, creating summer time hotspots in Cacouna, St-Patrice, Métis-sur-Mer, Murray-Bay (La Malbaie) and Tadoussac.
The democratization of car transport at the start of the twentieth century modified the hierarchy of vacationer locations, whereas sustaining the centrality of the St. Lawrence as an attraction. Vacationing gave solution to practices related to excursions, which, amongst different issues, would remodel the Gaspé Penninsula into a brand new vacation spot. The customer travelling by automotive creates a picture of freedom.
A highway alongside the ocean, within the Gaspé Penninsula. The democratization of the automotive within the twentieth century introduced in regards to the creation of latest circuits across the river.
(Shutterstock)
This new picture was additionally constructed in an institutional method. The St. Lawrence turned related to concepts that match the goals of native elected officers and civil servants, comparable to financial improvement, service supply and leisure actions.
This group had its personal concepts about what vacationers wished. Regional tourism associations produced photographic promoting representations of the St. Lawrence. Economic improvement businesses justified investments in highway infrastructures. Cultural organizations performed on representations of the St. Lawrence of their programming so as to justify upgrading their services to fulfill the wants of peak season vacationer visitors.
An ideal instance of this example is the concerted effort that led to the Québec authorities’s 2014 St. Lawrence Tourism Development Strategy, which explicitly acknowledged the significance of the St. Lawrence River to Québec’s tourism business and proposed measures to develop and handle tourism exercise across the river.
It this fashion, the technique reinforces the worth of the St. Lawrence to Québec’s id, whereas magnifying it as a fantasy vacation spot for vacationers.
A sundown, close to Rimouski.
(Shutterstock)
Diverging representations of the identical areas
However, these conceptions are at odds with different types of illustration and institutionalization of the place. The Québec authorities’s Strategy for Climate Change Adaptation 2013-2020 reveals a really completely different view of the identical place, one that’s now formed by dangers and constraints and the necessity to adapt to local weather change.
We have been in a position to observe this in two completely different case research. On the one hand, the excessive vacationer worth of the coastal house of Notre-Dame-du-Portage (on the south shore of the river) and Tadoussac (on the north shore of the river) pushes folks to need to protect the established order within the face of dangers of abrasion and submersion. They need to keep away from a lower in its worth in case local weather danger clashes with vacationers’ beliefs.
A humpback whale subsequent to a vacationer boat, throughout a whale-watching tour in Tadoussac.
(Shutterstock)
In this view, short-term land worth will stay the precedence reasonably than questioning how the riverside must be used. Concrete protecting constructions will proceed to be favoured to the detriment of approaches geared toward preserving the ecosystem. Walls will stay and develop whereas coastal ecosystems decline.
Meanwhile, within the Magdalen Islands, growing visits to the historic web site La Grave and vacationer income are getting used to justify a significant funding by the Québec authorities to refill the seaside and restrict erosion.
Tourist perceptions
Tourists’ perceptions of a spot might seem comparatively steady in house and time, with the sunsets of the decrease St. Lawrence, the whales of Tadoussac and the monoliths of Mingan remaining icons. However, as noticed through the pandemic summer time of 2020, these notions may collide like tectonic plates.
A girl stands in entrance of the limestone outcrops on Île de Nue, within the Mingan Archipelago National Park, on the North Shore, in August 2020. Many Quebecers found or rediscovered the river through the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Shutterstock)
Eastern Québec has seen a robust inflow of tourists to its seashores and pure areas. Certain behaviours like unauthorized tenting on seashores made headlines. Yet a finer evaluation allowed us to indicate that vacationer mobility, truncated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has created completely different, even divergent, concepts and practices amongst vacationers in the identical locations.
Campers at Rocher Percé, within the Gaspé Penninsula. The inflow of vacationers within the Gaspé Penninsula, in the summertime of 2020, created tensions between summer time guests accustomed to southern resorts and those that desire wild, undeveloped seashores.
(Shutterstock)
Vacationers used to the resorts of New England and the Maritimes, in addition to those that frequent the solar locations in summer time, have fallen again on the seashores of jap Québec, primarily these of the Gaspé Penninsula, as a substitute. These seashores have little or no beach-type actions. The Gaspé seashores are wild and never very developed, a spot the place residents and guests meet at random, whereas strolling. The chilly temperature of the ocean doesn’t encourage swimming, besides among the many bravest.
So, vacationer expectations clashed, a battle that prolonged to the bodily areas as a result of the infrastructure couldn’t meet the expectations of all travellers.
What form of tourism?
Including a group within the improvement of riverside tourism, which is extremely seasonal and related to a mobility of the workforce and companies, can result in success. But improvement is just not all the time viable for the resident inhabitants.
This is as a result of tourism creates locations which might be separated from the social, political or cultural practices of their host setting to fulfill the wants and fantasies of tourists who put money into these locations.
This pattern in direction of disconnected vacationer areas has lengthy been documented, most notably within the manufacturing of shopper house for the aim of capital accumulation. Tourism turns into a supply of enrichment for a minority, generally on the expense of the standard of life for almost all of residents.
The mayor of Percé, Cathy Poirier, has denounced this pattern: “We need to see lights on in winter.” In 2021, Percé adopted a legislation prohibiting the transformation of household properties into seasonal vacationer lodging.
The small city of Percé and its rock, in winter. The metropolis has banned the conversion of household properties into seasonal vacationer lodging in order that residents can stay there year-round.
(Shutterstock)
As residents watch guests move by way of, taking their tourism {dollars} with them, they’re left with the distinct feeling of expropriation. Visitors purchase postcards however don’t develop into a part of the territory, whereas seasonal peaks take up house and trigger different essential providers to vanish through the winter slumps.
Despite its permanence as a useful resource and vacationer attraction, the St. Lawrence River stays in a dynamic relationship that features social and environmental tensions. These tensions transcend tourism and name for the dynamics of the vacationer business to be positioned on the coronary heart of reflections in regards to the improvement and aspirations of riverside communities.
Over the years, Dominic Lapointe has acquired funding from SSHRC, FRQ-SC, CRDT and UQAM.
