From Old Quebec to la Belle Province by Neatby Nicole;

Author:Neatby, Nicole;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2018-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

6

FROM OLD TO BELLE

During the early 1960s, tourism promoters markedly changed the way they represented the province. Instead of foregrounding what was old about Quebec, they changed course, highlighting, instead, distinctly contemporary and modern pleasures. “Old Quebec” and “La province de Québec” were replaced with “La Belle Province.” More significantly, Quebec tourism itself was divested of the role many traditional nationalists ascribed to it in order to revitalize a French Canada, where “naught shall suffer change.” This rebranding can only be understood by taking into account the context in which it occurred – a time of remarkable political and social transformation, otherwise known as the Quiet Revolution.

For the tourism industry, the 1960s was the decade during which trends identified in earlier decades accelerated at an unprecedented pace. Those who, in the 1930s, predicted tourism would stimulate economic development were proven right, as tourism continued to be a growing source of revenue beyond the Second World War. In fact, by the 1950s, “mass tourism truly took flight in North America [as] vacations … came to represent almost everything good about North American culture.”1 During the immediate postwar period in Quebec, the number of visitors tripled, and by the 1960s tourism “stood in third place … after pulp and mines.”2 Such economic indicators led Department of Industry and Commerce officials to be optimistic, arguing, “the tourism industry deserves to retain our attention all the more as it can … increase or decrease of our commercial trade deficit.”3

However, all was not well. Government promoters never ceased to caution that this lucrative industry remained vulnerable, as competition for the tourist dollar was intensifying. While alarm bells had sounded before, by the 1960s new and potentially more threatening developments were emerging. The rapidly growing affordability of international air travel featured high on the list, as it meant that popular European countries, as well as other more exotic destinations, notably Mexico, were suddenly more accessible.4 Although, by the early 1960s, Canada had succeeded in reversing its travel deficit, those working in the industry were only too aware of how fragile such reversals were, which made such warnings more convincing. More worrisome still was the mounting evidence that Americans from the northeastern states were increasingly heading for closer Canadian destinations, especially Ontario.5 And US tourist promoters, more than ever, were pulling out all the stops to encourage their citizens to travel at home.6 In short, Quebec tourist promoters could no longer assume that Quebec’s “natural advantages,” such as its geographical proximity and its distinct French character, would be sufficient drawing cards for its principal American tourist market.

Tourist-conscious as never before, the Quebec government undertook major changes to meet these challenges. For one, tourism was given a much greater visibility in state bureaucracy, and politicians took on a more proactive role. During the 1960 election, Jean Lesage, Quebec Liberal Party leader, running under the slogans Maîtres chez nous (Masters in our own house) and Il faut que ça change (It’s time for a change), promised to create a Department of Tourism.

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