Table of Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Acronyms

Introduction: Tourism and Consumer Culture

1 Boosterism and Early Tourism Promotion in British Columbia, 1890-1930

2 From the Investment to the Expenditure Imperative: Regional Cooperation and the Lessons of Modern Advertising, 1916-35

3 Entitlement, Idealism, and the Establishment of the British Columbia Government Travel Bureau, 1935-39

4 The Second World War and the Consolidation of the British Columbia Tourist Industry, 1939-50

5 Differentiation, Cultural Selection, and the Post-war Travel “Boom”

6 Tourism as a Public Good: The Provincial Government Manages the Post-war “Boom,” 1950-65

Conclusion: From Tourist Trade to Tourist Industry

Appendix: Key tourism promotion organizations in British Columbia, 1901-72

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Promotional Information

An entertaining and illustrated account of the development of BC's tourist industry between 1890 and 1970, examining how BC's history of colonialism was deftly marketed to potential tourists.

About the Author

Michael Dawson teaches in the Department of History at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Reviews

One of Dawson’s more significant contributions to the history of tourism is his analysis of BC tourism activities during and after World War II. Dawson’s study, with its eight decades of coverage, shows how consumer culture was established in BC and, in the process turned tourism into an industry.
*Enterprise & Society, June 2005*

In this interesting book, Michael Dawson studies the rise of a tourist economy in British Columbia over the course of the twentieth century. This is an important discussion, making Selling British Columbia a must-read for historians interested in either consumer history or twentieth-century Canada. Who would have thought that provincial government could be so engaging a topic?
*BC Studies, No. 146, Summer 2005*

He provides the most thorough examination yet of the shift from tourist trade to tourist industry in Canada, and raises important questions about the emergence of consumer capitalism. Selling British Columbia is obviously necessary reading for anyone interested in Canadian tourism; it also merits serious attention from those concerned with advertising, publicity, and promotion, business and industrial associations, and business in twentieth-century Canada generally. One hopes that his approach and suggestive findings will stimulate both methodological debate and further explorations of tourism and consumption by social, cultural and business historians.
*Canadian Historical Review*

These stories make for an interesting read, especially in light of the political and economic activities that surrounded major tourism events prior to the 1970s. Readers currently working in BC’s tourist industry, as well as a more general readership, will find the events captured in Dawson’s work to be informative.
*British Columbia History, Vol. 38, No. 4, 2005*

In tracing its modern origins to the depression, Dawson asks readers to see the deep political forces behind what most have described as economic or cultural ... As a result, he reveals the phenomenon as contingent in a new way, effectively historicizing tourism and asking readers to re-think analyses that treat it as monolithic or static.
*American Historical Review, February 2006*