Linking Culture and the Environment

5 Tourism, Sustainability and
the Social Milieux in Lake
Superior’s North Shore
and Islands
R.J. PAYNE, 1 MARGARET E. JOHNSTON 1 AND G. DAVID
TWYNAM 2
1
School of Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism, Lakehead University,
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada; 2 School of Tourism, Thompson Rivers
University, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
Introduction
Tourism is a traditional economic activity in the northern parts of the province
of Ontario where fish, wildlife and wilderness have afforded opportunities
for economic gain and personal recreation for over 100 years (Benidickson,
1982). This chapter addresses issues of tourism and sustainability from the
perspective of the residents on Lake Superior’s north shore and islands. The
relationship between natural resource-based tourism and sustainability in
this context should be easy to document. However, sustainable development,
and the more recent term ‘sustainability’, has proven to be difficult to understand
as it appears to mean all things to all people. Moreover, tourism, even
that supported by the northern Ontario environment, is not immune to
changes in economic, social and political conditions. These kinds of changes
can alter the numbers and expectations of the clientele of tourism establishments
or can modify the rules governing other land-use activities that ultimately
affect tourism. Such changes influence the sustainability of tourism as
much as depleted fish or game stocks or the deterioration of the forest
recreation environment. We seek to determine how residents of the north
shore of Lake Superior view the possibility that tourism will become a more
significant activity in their region. Furthermore, we are interested in
examining how their views on tourism compare with accepted criteria for
social sustainability in the use of natural resources.
©CAB International 2008. Tourism, Recreation and Sustainability:
76 Linking Culture and the Environment, 2nd edn (eds S.F. McCool and R.N. Moisey)