No doubt Jean Talon is rolling in his grave. He took the better part of a year going door-to-door to survey the inhabitants of New France in 1666 becoming the first census-taker in North America. I’m pretty sure he didn't take "no” for an answer.  As a result, he set the baseline for measuring our country’s social and economic development which continues to this day. Maintaining those high standards of accuracy, thoroughness and continuity of data are at the forefront in the growing battle against the government’s proposed changes to the 2011 census-taking process.

The Canadian Historical Association is one of a growing number of groups speaking out against the federal’s government’s plan to do away with mandatory participation in the long-form census. They argue that the shift will render it virtually impossible to compare data and analyze historic trends. They’ve outlined their case on their website and are appealing to Canadians to add their voice to the debate by signing a petition to Minister Tony Clement advocating for restoration of the long-form to the mandatory census program.  

Gordon Watts, writer for The Global Gazette has also encouraged genealogists to make their views know, observing that throughout their long fight to open the 1901 census records there was not a single complaint about that information becoming public. Over 75,000 Canadians supported the cause inferring that most Canadians appreciate and understand the value of the information gathered in the census, not just for informing public policy today, but understanding changes in patterns, trends and developments that happened over time.

Eric Waddell, speaking on behalf of Minister Tony Clement, confirmed that the decision was made by the federal government and not the ministry, Statistics Canada. "This change was made to reasonably limit what many Canadians felt was an intrusion of their personal privacy." The Frazer Institute supports the government’s position.   Niels Veldhuis, senior economist stated that ``…Canadians ought to have a very sober second look at the mandatory long-form census and really ask themselves whether or not we should be forcing Canadians to answer what I consider to be very private questions.''

An Ipsos Reid study released today confirms that 50% of Canadians do agree that the long-form census is an invasion of privacy. On the other hand, two-thirds of Canadians said they believed it was a reasonable intrusion. 

I’ve looked at the long form census questions and there is a lot of similarity in the information asked about income, property, household dependents, and disability needs on our annual income tax returns. But I don’t expect the government to make that civic responsibility voluntary any time soon. 

Participating in the national census once in a decade is one of the few responsibilities we demand of our citizenry. Electoral voting is another responsibility – and sadly recent voter turnout patterns only fuel the case for continuing with mandatory service. I can’t imagine how many Canadians who routinely refuse to volunteer to answer one simple question would willingly answer fifty-three more.

By most accounts, the national census is one of the few civic duties that Canadians widely respect and accept as worthwhile. Over 97% of Canadians participated in the 2006 study and a total of three people registered complaints or objections.  According to Ipsos-Reid, among those who actually completed the long-form census, the majority do not believe mandatory completion should be scrapped. 

Given the profoundly negative consequences this decision would have on current public policy decision-making it seems to me this is a clear case of “it’s not broken, so don’t try to “fix” it.” For historians, the impact is even more grave – as John Lutz, award-winning author of Makuk: A New History of Aboriginal White Relations puts it, downgrading the long-form census “… is a huge loss because [it] is the one source that has done the best job of capturing the history of groups who do not leave a lot of historical records of their own.” 

This is one political issue Canadians should not be ambivalent about. 

Every year, during the first week of June, I head to Toronto for the annual gathering of MagNet, to hear about the latest trends in the Canadian magazine publishing industry, and to see first hand what other magazines are doing to reach more readers, extend their brand, and attract advertisers.  

The hot topic for this year’s conference? You guessed it …the iPad. So far I’ve only seen three people using them at the conference, but nonetheless, every session is sprinkled with speculation about how this new platform is going to change everything.  I believe it will… but most people haven’t had enough time to explore the technology to really understand what it will mean for readers, brand, or advertisers.  It was also not very helpful to learn that Steve Jobs thinks that we’re charging too much for digital content. (How much less expensive can you get than free?)

Most magazines, ours included, are optimistic about the digital future. Magazines thrive on innovation and creativity in shaping the reader experience. All this new media technology gives us plenty of occasions to try new things.  For example, Esquire magazine’s “augmented reality” issue uses barcode reader technology to make the physical page of the magazine come to life on your computer.   I’ve heard and seen some truly intriguing approaches to enriching the stories we tell on our pages through webisodes, podcasts, surveys, online communities, and user contributed content.

Heavy magazine readers, are most often heavy Internet users, some speculate it’s because magazines and the Internet, provide more “information-driven,” (as opposed to entertainment-driven?) experiences and a deeper level of reader-engagement. So the divide between these mediums is probably much smaller than most would have thought.   I suspect history people are interested in exploring new worlds for themselves, even if they are virtual ones and imagine there are a lot of potential readers on Facebook and Twitter just waiting to connect to us.  Digital media’s greatest promise is its potential to transform the relationship between an engaged reader and their magazine into a true dialogue.  So there are a lot of reasons to invest here.

And yet, for all the ideas and innovations out there, no one is seeing huge take-up in terms of building a truly engaged community. Fewer than no one (just adapting to Steve Jobs thinking here) have had significant success in convincing anyone to pay for these enriched experiences.  Do people really believe there is no added cost to producing content online?  Or is it they just don’t see it as having any value?

Personally I’m starting to believe these digital platforms are like the traditional newsstand.  You have to have a healthy volume out there, well placed so people notice it.  If you’re successful, lots of people will come by and browse, but less than half will actually buy something.   It’s an investment, sometimes an expensive one, but you can’t afford not to be there.  

But I’m more interested in hearing what you think.  Why are you reading this? What is it you are hoping to find in our online community? 

…Free subscription (or renewal of an existing one) for the first 5 people that show me there are signs of life out there in this new universe!…

Globe and Mail public affairs columnist Jeffrey Simpson delivered a powerful call to action to Canada’s museums. They have an important role to play in helping Canadians to understand their place in an increasingly global world. According to him, “Canada will succeed better if it knows itself more. But it will also succeed if it is connected more integrally with the rest of the world.”

Simpson identified three specific reasons he thought Canadians had a greater sense of identity now than they did 30 years ago. First, the military and its history have greater prominence today. Secondly, provincial museums like The Rooms are brining relevance and prominence to Canadian culture internationally as well as within our communities.  Finally, our tendency to compare ourselves to the U.S. is waning. (Although he couldn’t resist puzzling over why most Canadian national conferences still look for prominent American speakers to headline them.)

Leadership today he contends, rests on the ability to explain the future in the present; helping Canadians to understand how this global shift will affect them, and to heighten awareness for “how much of what we do and struggle with is now intrinsically linked by influences beyond our own borders. “

Although he lamented the lack of shelf space for Canadian non-fiction title in stores, and the diminishing opportunities to discuss them across all media, he said the Chapters Indigo slogan had it wrong – “The world does not need more Canada; Canada needs more of the world. Better understanding, deeper contacts, to learn more of their languages, and to better appreciate more about different cultures and morays.”

He also took a shot at Library and Archives Canada for their “glacial speed” at executing the mandate they originally had to install a National Portrait Gallery in Ottawa and laid blame squarely on their shoulders for the current situation where there was no Portrait Gallery, never mind one located in the national capital where he says it belongs.

He reaffirmed a few themes underlying this conference. Public sources of funding are going to be tighter for years to come.  The best cultural institutions can hope for is for budgets to be maintained.  International tourism, which accounts for a significant portion of admission revenues at Canada’s largest museums, will weaken in the short term because of the strength of the Canadian dollar.  And private investments, from gift of stock and bequests were being encouraged by government as a means to encouraging more cultural investment from private sources.

Seizing the opportunities we have seemed to be his agenda, reminding us that our relative ease in integrating newcomers to Canada provides us with a wealth of resources to meet the challenges we face --as a country, and as cultural institutions.

By bringing the world to our cultural institutions, in management,, and program development, we can in turn remind Canadians of the relevance of cultural investments and that we ought not to “run down the assets we need to be in the world.”

Well, maybe not the whole world, but the new world of museum exhibits strives for a democratization of content.  Let me explain...

Building on the opening plenary discussion I sat in on a session about change, community, and collaborations.  The panel presenters focused on strategy and planning for museums and exhibits, and I confess most of the key messages were predictable ones we focus on regularly here at Canada’s History. The general trend is toward broadening content, encouraging greater user-engagement in the selection and presentation of that content, and generally providing a level playing field for all sources of content.

As a publisher and as a content provider of history, we know that our content needs to reflect the interest of the audience it serves. We know that younger audiences interact with content differently and that the type of content they are looking for is rapidly changing. It’s evident that all cultural institutions need to find ways of adapting to those changes, and rethinking our approach to programming that actively engages our audience makes infinite sense. Striking the right balance between entertaining and informing the audience is nothing new, but the complexity of that challenge is increasing particularly within our museums.

The session spanned both the theory and process of planning for greater community involvement and collaboration and highlighted the Haida Gwaii Cultural Centre as a good case study. Nika Collison and David Jensen shared their perspectives as the curator and designer for the museum (or Storing Space as it is referred to on the website) respectively. The eight-year long process of community consultations and engagement has resulted in a very different kind of museum space. One that the community feels more invested in because they know individual members who appear on a display board, or who crafted parts of the exhibit, or perhaps most importantly, because the way the space has been developed, and the way the information is communicated is much more resonant with the way things are in every other aspect of their life. Collison admits that initially she had a perception of museums as being foreign and inaccessible, but being part of this project has opened her mind to what museums are all about.

The message from Claudette LeClerc, Executive Director of the Manitoba Museum was the same. Although premature to talk about the projects in detail, she referenced two community-led exhibits currently in development in which the biggest challenge for the museum staff has been releasing control to the communities empowering them to set and shape the content and messaging for the exhibit.

Marc Mayer provided another reference to the Musée d’Art Contemporain extremely popular program to showcase some of Montreal’s best new musical groups and performers in their space, drawing and building an audience that may otherwise never have darkened the doorstep of the gallery.

While each initiative presented was dynamic, engaging and worthwhile, I began to wonder if anyone was thinking about strategies for providing a broader context for these various collections and exhibits. It seems to me that diversification without any framework to connect them risks the unintended consequence of further fragmenting and potentially marginalizing the value of these investments, both new and old. This is particularly true for historical and heritage presentations.

Context, in my view, isn’t to be viewed as a bull whip but rather a compass. It’s an essential component to helping the whole of your audience answer the timeless questions that we all need to answer “why is this here? “why do I need to know this?” and “why should I care?”

This morning’s plenary session at the Canadian Museum’s Association annual conference was cryptically titled “The Future of Museums” and featured lively presentations touching on the key challenges of funding, and being relevant to visitors in a dramatically changing audience landscape.  (Not much different than running an historical society.)

Dean Brinton, CEO of The Rooms, Newfoundland and Labrador’s premiere cultural space, challenged museums to revisit how they approach programming advocating a return to the concept of the original Athenian Agora where Socrates presided over objective discussions about contemporary issues of the day.

The Afghanistan: A Glimpse of War exhibit created by the Canadian War Museum was an example of the fact-based approach to encouraging more public thinking about complex issues that museums should be working toward. The audience it engages, and not the collection it holds, should be driving the programming decisions of our institutions.

American-based audience researcher James Chung then presented findings on a study for US museums about three paradigm shifts that will transform the museum community over the next 25 years:

Ageing Population- In Canada, the total population over 65 years of age will rise from 1:8 to 1:4.  Although these are traditionally the peak years of museum engagement, baby boomers as consumers have behaved dramatically different at every other stage in their life and this one is expected to be no different.  Moreover, public funding priorities will likely shift toward presently underfunded obligations for retirement and health care creating pressures to reduce funding in other areas, like Museums and Art Galleries.

Reverse Gender Gap-Among Canadians in their 20’s and 30’s women are 50% more likely to have a university degree.  Women currently earn on average 79% of what men earn, but among those single and in their 20’s women are earning 100-120% compared to men, largely because of this growing education gap. Other likely implications are that women will delay marriage and having children, more Dads may stay-at-home if Mom’s earning power is greater, and there is likely to be more grandparent involvement with the kids when they do have them.

Changing Ethnic Demography-Canada’s visible minority and Aboriginal populations account for 20% of the total population today, but that number is expected to rise to 33% within the next 25 years.  The core visitorship of museums is 88% white which may not seem that bad today, but unless Museums can find ways of drawing those audiences to their spaces the gap will only grow wider.

Marc Mayer, the newly appointed CEO of the National art Gallery closed out the presentations with a fun, self-deprecating vision for the future beginning with the declaration that “the future is sculpture,” a reference to the controversial acquisition of the One Hundred Foot Line sculpture by American artist Roxy Paine planned for Nepean Point. But his message was very serious.

Museums have the tools they need to complete in a multi-dimensional world. Most of their collections are already three dimensional when television and the Internet are still operating in two dimensions.  He’s more optimistic about future funding believing that privately-funded Museums and philanthropist-driven exhibits will emerge with greater regularity, due in some part to the large generational transfer of wealth about to take place.

In his view, that will provide greater flexibility for the network of museums to respond to the growing diversity of exhibition demands and ultimately can only help to broaden our market, and in turn, fuel broader interest in other collections and museums.

All this rapid change is a bit unsettling if you consider that the bread and butter of museums is still driven by that 88% of white people over the age of 65.  Responding to the changing needs and interests of your future audience is one thing, but as we know only too well ourselves around here, making sure that your existing audience supports you is going to be a critical component of any success story.  What do you think? What should Canadian museums be doing to better serve the needs of their audience?

What do you see as the future for our museums?

Jean-Pierre and Christian Lagueux have been living in the 17th century for most of their careers. In most professions being stuck in the past might be seen as a career inhibitor, but for the high school students of Polyvalente Belanger and Polyvalente St–Georges (near Quebec City), their passion for the period of New France has transformed they way they see and understand history. 

Photo, above: Christian Lagueux, Lily Cole, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers' Federation representing the Canadian Teacher's Federation, and Jean-Pierre Lagueux.

In 2005, they were recognized with the Governor General's Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History for a series of classroom activities which engaged students in the crafting and presentation of replicas of tools and objects common to the era.  The project has not only continued, but grown since then involving touching close to 1000 students in the region over the life of the program. Every summer student works form part of cultural displays at area museums and cultural events. 

Last night, the Canadian Museums Association, along with the Canadian Teacher's Federation bestowed another honour - the CMC's Museums and Schools Partnership Award to Student Masterworks, a very special summer-long exhibition of over 140 of the student-created artefacts hosted by the National Battlefields Commission (Brown's Basin) as part of their 250th commemorations of the historic battles for Quebec last year.

In his 1997 book 1967: The Last Good Year, Pierre Berton lamented that the country had lost its energy to take on important national projects that had the power to bind the country together.

He argued that our centennial year gave us reason to dream lucidly about the future we wanted for ourselves. And we did: we created new social programs; adopted a new flag; built community centres, libraries, museums and art galleries; and hosted the greatest international celebration in our history, Expo 67. But in subsequent years, Canadians became so enveloped in concerns over political unity and economic stability that any new national enterprise was next to impossible, Berton concluded.

But that was almost a generation ago, when building bridges across the country and bringing Canadians together meant precisely that — constructing better roads and organizing student exchanges to bridge the geographic distance between Canadians.

Today, these phrases are more likely to be used metaphorically to address demographic divides: urban versus rural, north versus south, and opportunity gaps among First Nations and immigrant populations relative to the Canadian average. But our confidence in ourselves, shaken so deeply in the 1980s and 1990s, is returning.

The threat of Quebec separation has waned, while our economy has grown stronger. And the Vancouver Olympic Games have positioned Canada for another international success story.

The call to celebrate has never been louder. The time to think about the future we want has never been more urgent. A natural rallying point — Canada’s sesqui-centennial — is just seven short years away. In between, Canada also marks the one hundredth anniversary of the First World War, the two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812, and the one hundredth anniversaries of the Canadian Parks Service and Historic Sites and Monuments Board. The combination of events provides fertile ground to engage in a grand celebration that embraces our past, our present, and our future.

Just as it was in 1967, the federal government is looking to Canadians to define the scope of the celebrations. Fortunately, many individuals remember the scramble to get ready for 1967 and are already making plans. The City of Edmonton is representing Canada in a bid to host Expo 17. And in March, 300 people were expected for a special meeting in Ottawa to discuss ways to commemorate 2017.

Canada’s History Society is involved with one such extraordinary initiative, Canada 150. Over the next seven years, the group, consisting of more than a dozen national organizations, aims to collect and digitize over one million “memories” of life, family and community histories, to create an unprecedented repository of historical information about Canada and its peoples. The beauty of this project is that it embraces the very tools that many feel have threatened our historical record and it aims to put them to work capturing all that information we feared would be lost.

Harry van Bommel, founder and executive director of Canada 150, explains that “the principal goal is to spark the largest story-gathering project in Canadian history that can support every level of technical and writing expertise Canadians may bring to the project.”

The scope of the project is ambitious. Canadians will be able to post photos or home videos in shared online albums. Family historians will be able to use the project to help them connect with distant relatives. Children will learn more about their communities by helping to digitize materials for local muse-ums, archives, and historical societies. And finally, Canada 150 will offer how-to guides for every step of the process, from researching to publishing stories.

The centennial celebrations caught on with Canadians because they allowed all Canadians to see themselves as having a part in it. Canada 150 will take the same approach. Pierre Berton was right — let’s stop the hand-wringing and rediscover how amazing we are.

Let’s encourage our leaders to look beyond the next election long enough to let the planning begin.

The story of how our publication evolved from a company newsletter to a national history magazine.

Our magazine turns ninety this year. Like any ninety-year-old, it has seen a lot of changes. Here's a look back on the evolution of what has become Canada's most popular history magazine:

The Hudson's Bay Company launched The Beaver: A Journal of Progess in 1920 as a 250th anniversary project. The journal's mission was to promote pride, loyalty, and camaraderie, especially among city-based retail employees. Although its name reflected the company's northern fur-trading ventures, the first issues were more likely to carry flattering profiles of HBC store managers than to describe life on the trapline.

Our first editor was Clifton Thomas, an American advertising agent. According to historian Peter Geller, “Thomas envisioned the new company journal … as an expression of the burgeoning North American culture of consumption.” Five thousand copies of the first issue were printed and distributed at a total cost of $570.

For the first three years, employees and their families were just about the only readers. Then it went through its first redesign, which was precipitated by a decision to sell the magazine to “those not in the service.” The subscription rate was one dollar a year, a rate still in effect well into the 1930s.

Company employee Robert Watson took over as editor. Watson was a novelist and short-story writer who steered the publication away from its emphasis on corporate publicity in favour of a more literary approach. He asked employees in the North to write about their experiences working in company stores and trading posts. The public, not just employees, began reading about the company's role in opening up the North.

But the journal struggled financially. In 1924, the magazine ceased monthly publication and became a quarterly. It almost ceased publication altogether in 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression. That year, the company's Canadian committee recommended its suspension, citing the $9,000-a-year cost to run it.

However, newly installed HBC governor Patrick Ashley Cooper still believed in the potential of the magazine and gave it another chance. He hired professional journalist Douglas MacKay as editor.

In September 1933, MacKay replaced the original digest format with a standard magazine design. He also changed the masthead to say “A Magazine of the North.” Inspired by photo-driven periodicals like Life magazine, MacKay made The Beaver more visually appealing. Fur Trade Department employees received training on how to take professionallooking photographs. They travelled on company planes and vessels, capturing compelling images of life in northern Canada.

By 1938, the magazine's annual costs had grown to $20,000 (roughly $292,000 in today's terms) — but it was now seen by the company as a valuable public relations investment.

For the next fifty years, the magazine focused on northern life and history. Under three of its longest-serving editors — Clifford Wilson (1939-1957), Malvina Bolus (1958-1972), and Helen Burgess (1972-1985) — the magazine's cover and visual presentation remained basically the same. But the editorial content shifted. While HBC staff continued to write about their Arctic experiences, First Nations people also started writing about their lives. Distinguished anthropologist Margaret Mead graced the magazine's pages, as did a host of professional historians and writers.

The Beaver earned a reputation for bold opinions and insightful research. It was providing an increasingly broad perspective about the history of Canada and the HBC.

By 1987, the company had formally ended its involvement in the fur trade and had shifted its business focus to retail expansion. So, too, the magazine went through another evolution. Editor Christopher Dafoe (1985-1998) oversaw the change from quarterly to bimonthly. He also broadened the magazine's focus. Its masthead announced that it was “Exploring Canada's History.”

More changes followed. In 1994, the HBC donated its archive and artifact collections to the province of Manitoba. It used the tax savings it received to establish the HBC History Foundation, which, among other things, established Canada's National History Society. The society took over publication of the magazine and furthered the mission to promote greater popular interest in history.

Annalee Greenberg joined the magazine as editor in 1998 ,and subsequent editorial staff members have worked hard to keep pace with a changing view of publishing, as well as a changing view of Canada and its place in the world.

Almost a century of new history has been made since the magazine was first launched. Who gets to tell the story, and the tools they have to tell it with, have all changed as well.

It's not easy making history relevant in a future-focused world, and it's still far from profitable. But like HBC governor Cooper back in the 1930s, the History Society believes in the power and potential of this magazine.

Mark Reid, our editor as we enter the twenty-first century, is blazing a bold new trail that will bring our stories to new media and new markets. With this expansion, the time has come again to redefine our publication and claim our place as Canada's History magazine.

This change, like all the others before it, comes with a renewed commitment to providing quality, carefully researched content that reflects the breadth and range of uniquely Canadian stories. And it also comes with a careful consideration and respect for the legacy that has brought us to this place — because, after all, some things simply endure.

When it comes to Olympic boycotts, it's the athletes who suffer.

When Russia's invasion of Afghanistan prompted Canada to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, a generation of our country's athletes were deprived of their once-in-a-lifetime chance to make history.

It was the first time Canada had refused to compete at an Olympics since it started fielding a national team in 1908. Even the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany went ahead with Canada's participation.

“I was so focused on training and school, it was a complete shock to me,” says gymnast Monica Goermann, who was sixteen years old when Canada pulled out of the Moscow Games. Reporters hounded her for weeks looking for a comment and she struggled to understand what they expected her to say.

“I kept trying to be a good girl, saying I was sorry not to be going but I supported the government's decision.”

Despite the boycott, the Canadian Olympic trials went ahead and she, along with her mother, coach Elfriede Goermann, were named to the now hypothetical 1980 Olympic team. Many believe that Monica and her teammates — Elfie Schleigel, Karen Kelsall, and Sherry Hawco — remain the strongest women's gymnastics team Canada has ever fielded. Alternate events were organized, but Goermann quietly admits that nothing really could have served as a satisfying substitute.

Sixty-one other nations joined Canada in the U.S.-led boycott. It was the Cold War era and shunning Moscow was the popular thing to do.

Yet there were a few former Olympians — such as pentathlete Diane-Jones Konihowski and swimmer Dick Pound (who was then president of the Canadian Olympic Committee) — who publicly argued against mixing politics and sport. Their opinions brought them hate mail and death threats for months afterward.

The 1980 boycott was not the first — twenty-eight African nations boycotted Montreal's 1976 Olympics over racism issues. Nor was it the last. At the next Olympics in 1984 in Los Angeles, most Eastern Bloc countries refused to participate. The politicization of the Olympics was getting out of hand.

Olympic committees recognized that to be independent of politics, they had to become independent of political funding. And so began the Olympics commercial era we know today, where athletes can be professionals and the Games are heavily sponsored by the private sector.

The waning influence of politics could be seen when pressure began building to boycott the 2008 Beijing Games.

Chris Rudge, head of the Canadian Olympic Committee, told the Toronto Star, “I could see the government wanting to do that again…. But we don't need (government support) to go to the Games.”

Indeed, providing an Olympic opportunity for financial partners to promote their products and reach into new markets like China and South America has created a whole other set of pressures on athletes; athletes who are also professionals must focus on sponsorship and advertising deals in addition to training for competition.

Twenty-nine years later, the difference between the Olympics of today and yesterday are not lost on Goermann, who now runs Monica's Danz Gym in Winnipeg. She trains students for international gymnestrada competitions and has created and choreographed several Cirque du Soleil-style aerial dance shows.

“The Olympics have changed so much,” she says.

“It's now all about sponsorship and entertainment. It's like a business in and of itself.”

Still, she doesn't believe that's a bad thing. Nor has her experience caused her to discourage her daughter Maia's own dreams of possibly going to the Olympics.

“You have to know there will be sacrifices, and that it takes a lot of hard work. But the returns are a thousandfold. Things may block your way, but the journey alone is worth it.”

The Olympics will always be about the athletes. For the rest of us, the Games are a chance to celebrate the athletes' journeys and to marvel at the extraordinary skills they've developed along the way.

 

This summer, CBC Radio's TheCurrent asked me about a controversy at Upper Canada Village - a heritage park in Eastern Ontario under new management by a former director of Canada's Wonderland.

Local groups were nervous that efforts to revitalize the park might undermine its "authenticity." So I drove there on Canada Day to see for myself. Sadly, the parking lot was only one-third full - on a brilliantly sunny holiday! Tourists wandered, and periodcostumed interpreters provided commentary as they strolled - but it seemedit could be so much more.

Morrisburg, the town nearest Upper Canada Village, is beautiful, and there are many other interesting destinations nearby. Yet the park seems disconnected from the region. It reminded me of an unfortunate comment someone else made on The Current - that "people didn't come to Upper Canada Village to have fun, they come to be educated."

As one of the twelve percent of Canadians who visit historic sites annually, I'd never before considered how these spaces present themselves to those who just want a vacation experience.

Tourism and conservation will always be a delicate balance, but investment in conservation is likely to increase only if Canadians value and visit historic sites. Consider Prince of Wales Fort, located some 1,450 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. With no roads into the nearby town of Churchill, Manitoba, it is a challenge to get there. Yet, the fort itself is fantastic, bringing the story of Canada's fur trade to life in ways even I hadn't imagined.

Unfortunately, few Canadians have ever seen it. Even from Churchill, an ecotourism destination that attracts visitors from around the world, it's hard to get to. The fort is accessible only by boat - and Parks Canada doesn't own a vessel to ferry passengers across.

Churchill's local tour guides - knowledgeable and fiercely proud of the region's historic sites - operate a fleet of boats.

These could be used to take visitors to the fort, but discussions that would see this happen came to an impasse. The parties couldn't agree on who will pay, who will profit, and how to protect the site while improving the visitor experience.

And so it sits, lacking visitors and virtually inaccessible. It seems to me that with better collaboration between Parks Canada and local guides, the fort could become as popular as the region's polar bears, belugas, and birds. Even "the crown jewel of the Canadian Parks Service" - Nova Scotia's Fortress of Louisbourg - could use a little help from commercial tourism.

Located on Cape Breton Island, the fortress is a reconstruction of the original seventeenth-century French fortified settlement. Canadian historian Margaret Conrad, who helped research Louisbourg during the 1960s, calls it one of the best-interpreted historic sites in the world.

"The site itself is full of activities for kids and adults," she said. "[There are] welltrained staff who stay in character, a couple of period restaurants, gardens, shops, ...films, and workshops that focus on such skills as eighteenth-century cooking."

Visitors can also enjoy a host of other tourist attractions in the region, ranging from hiking and whale-watching to spa treatments at world-class resorts. Trouble is, you'd never know that by looking at the Fortress of Louisbourg's website.

Compared to the official website for Virginia's Colonial Williamsburg - a dynamic, engaging site that links to many private tourist attractions nearby - Louisbourg's looks like, well, the government website that it is. What a difference an integrated tourism strategy makes!

Canadian historic sites are renowned for being "more genuine" than some comparable American sites, and I would never suggest anything that might take away from this reputation. However, there's a real benefit to marketing history and making it a part of a fun family vacation!

This year, Parks Canada launched its "Real. Inspiring." marketing campaign. It's a compelling first step toward better domestic marketing. But the real challenge is to deliver on the campaign'spromise. One way to do that is to reach out to the private sector. As I see it, it's the best way of getting citizens and communities more invested in the future value of the historic spaces that surround them.