(Re)producing wilderness tourism discourses in Algonquin Provincial Park

Abstract

Particular types of nature-based tourism programs, including multi-day children’s overnight/residential summer camp canoe tripping programs in North America, often (re)produce (neo)colonial constructions of nature and the “wilderness.” The purpose of this paper is to expose how wilderness is constructed and circulated in the context of a particular summer camp’s canoe trips in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. Within this paper, we identify how specific legacies of colonialism are maintained and redeployed through the practices and representations of summer camp canoe trippers. Specifically, analyses show how canoe trippers (re)produce and (re)enact the wilderness as seemingly empty, untouched, and pristine spaces. Drawing on a Foucauldian-styled discourse analysis, this research exposes recurrent power relations that normalize, re-inscribe, and enable unjust wilderness discourses on Canadian summer camp canoe trips.