So What Happens Now?

As we've all now safely arrived home, more things have been coming together for what the purpose of this trip and research was for. The abstract for the research has now been put together for further work, and accepted for a conference presentation by the academic powers that be. This is the shape of things so far that our experience has helped contribute to:

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial: The Role of Memory in Remembrance, Dissonance and Resonance
Lemelin, R.H. and the Lakehead University OUTD 4370 class of 2014
Type: Oral presentation in English – However, Dr. Lemelin is fluently bilingual in French and English
The management of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial with “scars and all” in the early 20th century was a novel management approach to battlefield tourism.  Since then, the popularity of Vimy has waxed and waned, yet throughout the last two centuries no national historic sites or national parks can lay claim to having been championed by a prime minister (Mackenzie King), designed by an architectural genius (Walter Seymour Allward), inaugurated by a King (Edward VIII), visited and preserved by a dictator (Adolf Hitler), and re-dedicated by a Queen (Elizabeth II).  Despite its historical significance and current popularity along the Western Front (approximately 700,000 visit the site annually); the contribution of Vimy in battlefield tourism literature has largely been neglected. The purpose of this presentation is to address this oversight by presenting the findings from a field study conducted with Canadian university students visiting the western front in the spring of 2014.  The goal of the study is to examine how heritage dissonance can increase remembrance and even in some cases, resonate within the collective memory of a nation and within the memory of the international community.  The findings from the study are timely since it is being conducted by young adults partaking in the celebrations and commemorations surrounding the first world centenary.

The link for the conference, "Remembering in a Globalizing World: The Play and Interplay of Tourism, Memory, and Place" is http://memorytour.u-cergy.fr/, where more information can be found on the types of research and presentations that are being done with this sort of question in mind.

Another thing born of our trip was that, in the next few months, a video and photo montage will be created for the school of Outdoor Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at Lakehead University, to add to the diversity of the program, and add to the broadness of the field. We'll be posting what bits and pieces of that as it comes along, so though our trip is done, the work is by no means over. Hopefully, we can in some way translate what our experience has been to others, and to a wider global community just what the importance of this type of experience has the potential to be for people, whether old or young, students or tourists.

Cheers, and check in for more details towards the fall!