Chapter 11 From Artifact to Living Cultures Cape Breton’s Tourism History and the Emergence of the Celtic Colours International Festival

Global Trends and Cape Breton’s Tourism History

Cape Breton Island makes up about 20 percent of Nova Scotia’s land mass but a sharply declining portion of its million or so inhabitants; approximately 135,000 persons lived in Cape Breton in 2015, down from closer to 200,000 only a few decades earlier. This demographic crisis, which is accelerating, informs virtually all discussions of contemporary issues on the island. Most Cape Bretoners (about 70 percent) still live in Cape Breton County, primarily in the former coal and steel towns surrounding Sydney Harbour, incorporated as the Cape Breton Regional Municipality at the turn of the twenty-first century.12 This fairly urbanized area surrounding Sydney serves a widely dispersed hinterland of largely subsistence farming, fishing, and lumbering communities still made up primarily of Scottish, Acadian, and Irish/Newfoundlander descendants of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century migrants to the island. The out-migration from rural areas is even more acutely felt than in urban places.

For a long time, the rural areas supplied the coal mines and steel mills surrounding Sydney Harbour with workers, thereby creating a symbiotic cultural relationship between the urban core and more dispersed rural communities. While a large number of other migrant workers came to the coal fields and steel mill from Britain, the Caribbean, and continental Europe in the period prior to World War I, most came from rural Cape Breton or Newfoundland. Their dominant culture remained Scottish, Irish, or Acadian; their predominant religion, Roman Catholic. In most towns migrants from the countryside and their descendants made up over 80 percent of all residents. The communal nature of the urban/rural interaction led to cultural transfers, particularly in music and those expressive cultures surrounding storytelling and language retention. Many of these working migrants had retained Gaelic or French as their first languages—for a generation, at least—and formed close bonds with their fellow kinsmen in the urban milieu. These urban areas remained hotbeds for “Celtic” culture and music13 throughout the first half of the century, though their culture and language seldom travelled much beyond the island, except to diasporic communities outside the region, where it constituted a bond among migrants.14

Large-scale or mass tourism on the island had been somewhat problematic until the mid-twentieth century, as little of the infrastructure necessary for expanding the number of visitors was available. The island was always admired for its natural beauty, focused on for the so-called primitive authenticity of its rural core, and dominated by isolated Scottish and Acadian communities renowned for their tenacity and handiwork. The northern Highlands remained relatively inaccessible and mythic until opened up by investment in roads and lodges in the 1930s.15 With its wilderness aesthetic as the core product, the Cabot Trail and the Cape Breton Highlands National Park would form part of a regional response to imitate development of similar destinations elsewhere.16

Cape Breton’s perceived identity prior to the 1950s tended to be sketched out and defined by either outsiders/visitors or off-island natives with nostalgic recollections of a mostly rural island life.17 Rural Cape Bretoners were invariably characterized as quaint and/or backward; urban dwellers were seen as fiercely class conscious.18 Island identity was somewhat confused by the fact that so many Cape Bretoners, as the twentieth century wore on, would find themselves away from the island, forced to migrate mostly for economic opportunity. Their nostalgia for their island communities prompted a certain amount of expatriate return tourism, though to some extent, the trend prior to the 1950s was for cultural products to be distributed among off-island expatriate communities.19 In diasporic areas of greater Boston and Detroit, for example, likely there were as many occasions to hear Cape Breton musicians, who travelled to play regularly at dances and bars there, than might have been available at the same time in the Sydney area, at least in the period up to the 1950s.

Off the island after World War II, technological advances and economic growth led to a more rapid and coordinated expansion of the tourism industry around the world.20 Zuelow has suggested that this was driven by both economic and political objectives and that it was all the more pervasive due to travel by the masses as well as the ability to access almost any location around the globe.21 While it became easier to visit distant and obscure places, factors such as tourist motivations, market competition, security considerations, and the impact of global events created greater complexity.22

In the case of Cape Breton, tourism to supplement failing industries in the Sydney area and as an ultimate replacement for them became a dominant discourse following World War II.23 Although initiated prior to the war, the strategy that came to symbolize Nova Scotian tourism and especially depictions of Cape Breton was centred on an exaggerated Scottish identity.24 Angus L. MacDonald, the premier from 1933 to 1954, interrupted by a stint as a cabinet minister in Ottawa during the war, was driven by his own nostalgic beliefs as a native Cape Bretoner, though mostly a Halifax-based lawyer following World War I. In a speech to the Antigonish Highland Society in 1937, MacDonald claimed Nova Scotia and Cape Breton were the “last great stronghold of the Gael in America.”25 Reflected in mass media campaigns by a newly propelled “promotional state,” the “tartanism” of this period created tourism images that, while failing to capture the cultural and ethnic diversity of Nova Scotia, established a trope that was hard to dislodge.26 Tourist images of Cape Breton had inevitably focused on the scenic splendour of Cape Breton Highlands National Park, which MacDonald had championed,27 and paid little attention to the bustling steel and coal towns of the Sydney area.28

Automobile tourism provoked dramatic changes throughout the 1950s and 1960s, spurred on by the completion of the Canso Causeway in 1955, the paving of the Cabot Trail, and the development of the Trans-Canada Highway—all of which opened the island to visitors in ways that had been problematic earlier.29 Despite this, the tourist season was short and the clientele limited mostly to wealthy outsiders pursuing sea air, salmon, or moose. Then the Canadian Centennial in 1967 coincided with an extreme crisis in the coal and steel businesses of the industrial heartland. Studies commissioned to examine the future of those two industries were pessimistic about their futures, most arguing for a repositioning of the island’s economy to feature more tourist development. While some hope was held out, after a brief recovery in the 1970s, most projections trended toward abandonment of the early twentieth-century reliance on coal- or steel-centred industries in favour of a more diversified economy.

Industry-based alternatives to coal and steel proved illusory, and the island descended into a quasi-welfare deindustrializing state while the national economy moved away from the production of goods to the provision of services. Economic planning for reindustrialization, such as it was, was to be taken over by a succession of federal agencies that pursued development with various degrees of success. This included the establishment of the Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO) in 1967, under which an Industrial Development Division (IDD) was charged with developing service industries such as tourism.30 The final abandonment of the coal and steel industries would only be completed in the 1990s, and this led to a renewed concentration on mass tourism as an alternative to heavier industries.31 A successful and sustainable tourist industry demands more than nature and history, however—what was needed was a complex of offerings that could draw large numbers of tourists more than once and keep them on the island for as long as possible.

One response to the economic collapse and subsequent demographic effects on Cape Breton was a new and animated cultural sense of self—one that would entail the exploration of relationships between the declining industrial core and still culturally vibrant rural hinterlands. The cultural performance side of this awakening sense of identity could be somewhat nostalgic in its first iterations, but the timing was opportune, as provincial and federal governments would soon increase their investment in culture significantly.32 Parallel to this, the notion that modernity—experienced in rural areas most directly with the arrival of electricity, telephones, and televisions after midcentury—had somehow compromised the future of Celtic music and language traditions was countered in the 1970s with a pushback that emphasized the rural origins of the island’s musical traditions.33 Their revival through community concerts and performances by amateurs, especially the inaugural Glendale Concert (1973), which also saw the founding of the Cape Breton Fiddlers Association, would prove central to that rebirth.

It was also in this era that the Nova Scotian government formed a new Department of Tourism (1970)—the mandate of which was to “develop, assist, and promote the industry,” especially for economic and general well-being purposes.34 Although the emergence of summer concerts dedicated to the fiddling traditions of the island came to the fore independent of this new provincial entity, they would quickly prove valuable to its agenda. The triumvirate of Broad Cove, Big Pond, and Glendale outdoor weekend concerts was eventually supplemented with a wide variety of more local imitators, all providing up-and-coming musicians a chance to perform before live audiences. There would hardly be a summer weekend free of the sounds of fiddlers somewhere on the island by the 1980s. Complementing this was the tradition of community-based square dances sponsored by local organizations throughout the island, particularly in the Celtic-dominated western fringes of Inverness County.35 This increasingly public display of “Cape Breton culture” built the foundations necessary for it to later feature as an integral component of the island’s tourism strategy.

With this in mind, evidence indicates that “cultural tourism” featured heavily around the world from the 1980s onward—not just in tourist motivations and planning strategies but also in scholarly examinations of the effects of tourism on culture.36 Early iterations of this cultural turn involved the conspicuous consumption of heritage by visitors and its increasingly professional management by decision-makers.37 As showcasing of heritage artifacts and sites became more prevalent, a growing awareness among scholars and tourism managers emerged around the notion that individuals experience heritage in distinct ways and seek it out for different reasons.38 Additionally, it appears that tourists were progressively motivated to “experience” heritage as a means of exploring, clarifying, and at times reconciling elements of their identity.39

This desire for “experience” would come to dominate tourist aspirations and the imagination of those responsible for tourism strategies—something that persists today. At the core of this is the idea that through first-hand experience, memory and meaning are enhanced significantly. Using museums and heritage sites as an example, this trend has led to an emphasis on experiences that are “real,” “natural,” and “authentic” and at the same time involve interactive presentation that enables individuals to have a more personal encounter.40 Market competition to attract experience seekers has led to strategies that can help tourists “explore what makes a destination distinctive, authentic, and memorable . . . the essence of the destination—its cultural terroir.”41

Against this global backdrop, three intersecting cultural trends would lay the groundwork for a further shift in Cape Breton’s tourism history and Celtic Colours as part of that. In the late 1970s, a small theatre group associated with the University College of Cape Breton,42 which found its first expression in local pubs celebrating the new work of local performers, produced the theatrical Rise and Follies of Cape Breton Island and its successor, the Cape Breton Summertime Revue. The latter lasted into the 1990s, when it was suspended, only to be revived in 2015 as the Cape Breton Summertime Revue: The Next Generation. The revues would be a proving ground for many performers and acts that subsequently achieved national and international status. Each year always featured at least one fiddler from the island, and productions were usually dominated by skits and music that celebrated the survival of the island’s culture, many riffing off an interaction between rural and urban Cape Bretoners while often poking fun at tourists.43 Members of the Rankin Family and Rita MacNeil, as well as notable fiddlers such as Jerry Holland, Howie MacDonald, and Natalie McMaster, were featured at various times. Thus, key elements of a professionalizing performance culture were present by the 1990s—the point at which the preconditions for more tourism based on Cape Breton culture started to build.44 These circumstances supported a growing number of highly skilled and in-demand performers as well as the maintenance of event facilities.

A second precondition for Cape Breton’s evolving tourism approach was somewhat more remote. New Canadian content broadcast regulations demanded more visibility for Canadian performers. This would eventually lead such Cape Breton performers as John Allan Cameron and Rita MacNeil, not to mention Anne Murray from Springhill, to prominence, hosting national TV shows that regularly featured Cape Breton talent with a celebratory flourish.45 As they gained notoriety, the promotion of Cape Breton’s distinctive performance culture would soon be featured alongside scenic splendour in tourist advertising. Indeed, Rita MacNeil’s own TV series (Rita and Friends, 1990–94, CTV) was, for a time, cosponsored by the Nova Scotia Tourist Bureau.

Further links between Cape Breton’s culture and tourism efforts appeared in the overarching tourist strategy for the island, which was commissioned by DEVCO-IDD and completed in 1985. The report suggested that Cape Breton’s “unique culture” should be valued equal to the island’s natural beauty, and it foregrounded cultural tourism as a major target for future development, provided that performance spaces, recording studios, and so on were upgraded sufficiently.46 By 1990 economic development plans for the island included the “Come Home to Cape Breton” campaign, predicated on convincing diasporic Cape Bretoners to reexperience first-hand the culture they might now only be seeing on television.47 While on tour, the iconic Men of the Deeps choir, consisting of former coal miners, distributed pamphlets encouraging tourism and even remigration advertisements to its audiences in Ontario.48 This phase of Cape Breton’s tourism history, which also saw a growth in relevant government and industry groups (e.g., Nova Scotia Tourism Partnership Council, established in 1997), inspired a desire to “experience” Cape Breton culture, whether visiting for the first time or returning home. It necessitated strong cultural elements, dramatic improvements to existing community establishments, the construction of a number of new spaces, and the upgrading of sound systems.

A third precondition behind the island’s change in tourism strategy was an international Celtic revival that swept the Western world in the 1990s and continues to evolve. The success of major touring shows like Riverdance and the Chieftains, along with Celtic consciousness expressed through political activism and new commemorative practices, led to a wide variety of festivals celebrating the music and culture of all Celtic peoples worldwide. Suddenly it was “cool to be Celtic,”49 and soon invitations for many Cape Breton performers to participate came flooding in. All across North America and throughout Britain and Europe, the Cape Breton fiddle style was recognized as an important variant of the musical traditions of Celts everywhere.

It was in this context of expanded horizons that a greater economic potential for experiential tourism focused on culture would eventually materialize. A trip to the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, Scotland, by Joella Foulds and Max MacDonald would see plans for a comparable yet distinctly Cape Breton event emerge in response.50 The natural beauties of the Cabot Trail remained a powerful draw with an extensive offering of bus tours; however, the possibilities for a fall season, when the leaf colours were changing and the summer visitation had slowed somewhat, presented a real opportunity to expand tourism’s “shoulder season.” All of these preconditions would ultimately set the stage for Cape Breton’s Celtic Colours.

Tourism, Festivals, and the Case of Celtic Colours

Worldwide, tourism has proven a valuable economic alternative for areas defined as rural and/or isolated where traditional industries such as fishing, agriculture, and mining have declined.51 In particular, it has been viewed as a sustainable way to diversify a place’s economic base in the face of fiscal and demographic crisis.52 As an extension of this and during the expansion of cultural tourism, festivals started appearing as a focal point for tourists and tourism managers alike in both urban and rural locations.53

One possible reason festivals became so prominent was that they were known to help places adapt, rebuild, and be resilient to instability caused by globalization and deindustrialization.54 They were also thought to provide rural areas with an approach to social regeneration and have been viewed as necessary for the future of communities where the decline of traditional industries had caused significant out-migration.55 The fact that festivals are influenced by geography while at the same time contributors to new geographies means that they are a dynamic tool that can evolve over time as industry, consumer choices, and place-based needs take shape.56

In contrast, the rapid development of festivals presented potential risks—especially as they can often be introduced strictly as vehicles for commodification rather than cultural celebration, retention, or enhancement.57 Tourism literature confirms such apprehensions are well founded if festivals are not developed and managed carefully.58 Indeed, genuine concerns existed in Cape Breton when the concept for Celtic Colours was first raised—namely, that priority was being placed on “tourist dollars” over cultural preservation.59 Nevertheless, the island’s socio-economic, cultural, industrial, and tourism history presented a relevant backdrop against which a festival had the potential to be established successfully.

While Celtic Colours was not the first festival on the island, its scope, scale, longevity, and eventual emphasis on living cultures as part of an island-wide tourism strategy make it pertinent to this examination. Founded by Sydney-based entertainment producers Joella Foulds and Max MacDonald of Rave Entertainment Inc. (also coproducers of the Cape Breton Summertime Revue until 1994), it evolved out of a desire to address cultural, socio-economic, and professional music needs and opportunities. Focused on culture, it carried aspirations to safeguard Cape Breton’s cultural traditions well into the future, following previous fears that they were under threat.60 Although this would be appealing to visitors and had the potential to extend the tourist season into the autumn, Celtic Colours emerged independent of formal tourism agendas and strategies. Meanwhile, the global Celtic revivalism that was occurring at the time and the associated achievements of a new generation of young Cape Breton musicians were perhaps auspicious.61 In recognition of these considerations and the concerted efforts by locals in rural locations to keep Celtic cultural traditions alive, a decentralized format was proposed whereby events would take place in communities around Cape Breton over a nine-day period, beginning with the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend in early October each year.62

While festival development, planning, and financing were underway, the Nova Scotian government launched a two-year Celebration of Music program that targeted the local music industry as a profitable way forward for tourism and business.63 This came on the back of the highly successful “floating ceilidhs,” which involved provincially funded representatives from tourism, government, and marketing companies touting Cape Breton and Nova Scotian entertainers via chartered ferry down the Eastern Seaboard. This early campaign gave credence to music-based events set among the island’s natural beauty and “friendly people,”64 while the Celebration of Music initiative gave Celtic Colours a platform for much-needed start-up funding.

Such funding was contingent, however, on an exchange between the government and a not-for-profit society rather than a private enterprise that was the registered status of Rave Entertainment Inc. To enable access to important resources65 and make the festival possible in the end, a nonprofit, Celtic Colours Festival Society, was formed.66 Made up of community leaders from across the island, the society was responsible for various policy and finance decisions as well as for maintaining a dialogue between the festival and local communities in which events were being held.67 Developments such as these were part of the festival, gradually being embraced as a key component of both local and provincial tourism plans and strategies. It is important to acknowledge that this convergence inevitably came with new expectations, requirements, tensions, opportunities, benefits, and complexity in general.

The initial year of the festival far exceeded expectations: more than three hundred artists performed in twenty-six venues spread across eighteen different locations, and nearly twelve thousand tickets were sold—four thousand from off-island. The majority of the smaller community events sold out. The overall economic impact was calculated to be $3.5 million.68 The province was quick to acknowledge Celtic Colours as a good example of the Year of Music program at work,69 the results of which were hailed as a success for the provincial government in the Nova Scotia Legislature at the end of Celtic Colours’ first year.70 In further complement to this, the Nova Scotia Tourism Partnership Council was founded in 1997 with a view to strategically align the province’s tourism agenda with the global marketplace—one that, as noted earlier, was turning toward forms of experiential tourism.

The notion that the festival celebrated “living cultures”71 first appeared in select media reports in 1997 and was then formally showcased by its society in the 1998 festival program. The essence of Celtic Colours had always been to bring people together to “experience” culture through concerts, workshops, community events, and other learning opportunities; however, this soon became more explicit in terminology and promotion. As can be confirmed by cobranded advertising between Celtic Colours and Tourism Cape Breton,72 the increased emphasis on experiencing living cultures flagged a wider strategic and collaborative transition in the island’s overall approach to tourism. This was consistent with global shifts away from artifact-based historical tourism to more personal interaction with places and their cultures. Central to the festival’s ability to enable this was the scheduling of events in places thought to allow attendees to experience the “living culture as it exists in rural Cape Breton where the music, dance and Gaelic language have been preserved for over 200 years.”73

Despite this transition, the original mission statement of the Celtic Colours Festival Society further perpetuated tourism images of the natural beauty of the island while making a commitment to the promotion and maintenance of the Celtic cultures of Cape Breton.74 Meanwhile, those reporting on the festival wrote of experiencing a thriving, living Cape Breton identity and culture that were being generously shared across generations through official festival venues and informally in the homes of locals.75 Soon after Celtic Colours’ inception, these sentiments would feature in revisions to its mission statement and further cement the intention to inspire experiences for tourists and local residents alike—that is to say, the current goal of the Celtic Colours Festival Society is to “promote, celebrate and develop Cape Breton’s living Celtic culture and hospitality by producing an international festival during the fall colours that builds relationships across Cape Breton Island and beyond.”76

Just five years after Celtic Colours began, Premier John Hamm declared it had “quickly become one of Nova Scotia’s biggest attractions.”77 It was felt that this represented an effective tourism strategy whereby the spectacle of the leaves changing colour in the fall was blended with experiencing “Nova Scotia’s Masterpiece” first-hand.78 Rodney MacDonald, a well-regarded and highly connected Cape Breton fiddler who was Nova Scotia’s minister of tourism, culture, and heritage in 1999 and subsequently premier in 2006, cited the festival as having a “multiplier effect” for the economy.79 Continued funding for events such as Celtic Colours was therefore seen as important to the economies, communities, and tourism industries of both Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.80

Within a decade, Celtic Colours would be recognized as one of the world’s pre-eminent Celtic festivals, attracting performers and audiences from around the world and generating profits for Cape Breton communities when tourism would otherwise have come to a halt. These were noteworthy achievements in the face of the near economic crisis felt across the island in the lead-up to its introduction. Perhaps unexpectedly, evidence suggests that the explicit adoption of an experience-based form of tourism by Celtic Colours, Tourism Cape Breton, and the province of Nova Scotia has done more than enhance the experiences of visitors; it has also strengthened the cultural identity of Cape Bretoners: “Locally, [the Festival] has contributed to Island pride and self-confidence, in addition to more tangible benefits, and those contributions have been seen to be widely-distributed in a way that is very consistent with Island values about music and dance, hard work, wealth creation and distribution.”81

This brief glimpse of Celtic Colours’ history hints that its communication, depiction, promotion, and showcasing of living cultures have led to a series of positive outcomes for Cape Breton—its communities, businesses, residents, economy, tourism industry, and government. By 2019, a myriad of community experiences—breakfasts, suppers, art exhibitions, dance and fiddle lessons, and so on—had evolved to form an integral part of the festival. The 2014 program, for instance, took up most of fifty pages just to list these, including in recent years a series of collaborative scholarly conferences hosted by Cape Breton University in Sydney, usually around a theme on offer that given year. The performances and performers have almost doubled since the early days, and the number of ancillary events increases each year. Its overall economic impact has been profound for Nova Scotia’s tourism industry in general and Cape Breton’s in particular.82 While the festival has not been solely responsible for the maturing of the tourism industry of the island or province,83 there can be no question that it has been celebrated as a benchmark in experiential tourism and acknowledged as a local flagship in a highly competitive and ever-evolving global tourism industry.

Conclusion

Since early in the twentieth-century tourism trends and strategies in Cape Breton have mirrored those encountered globally—growing from leisure activities for the few to an economically significant industry for the masses. As was the case for Nova Scotia as a whole, strategic approaches to tourism during this period have by and large been driven by government and government-funded bodies. Alongside this has been the evolution of a Cape Breton identity, sometimes misrepresented by outsiders but increasingly valued and expressed from within. The effects of both of these characterizations are evidenced in today’s Cape Breton tourist landscape: heritage sites and restored properties commemorate the island’s past; transport infrastructure beckons visitors to tour a series of “trails,” each with its own historical or nature-based connotation; and carefully branded marketing materials contain a variety of images that are both real and perceived symbols of the island’s past and present.

When Celtic Colours was founded, it signalled a different sort of response to the island’s socio-economic and cultural circumstances, and over time, it would become a significant component of the island’s postindustrial tourism strategy. As was occurring elsewhere, it represented a cultural turn in tourism—specifically, one that saw festivals as substantial opportunities for rural regeneration and resilience while responding to a growing demand for direct participation in experiences that enable lasting memories. It is important to acknowledge that amid this shift, the image of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton had long been institutionalized for the tourist gaze as a place of natural beauty. It was difficult to evade being caught in this tension for the festival, but linking it to the celebration of the vibrant fall colours gave it a new dimension that appealed to the objectives of tourism managers to extend the short summer season. While this reimagining was not entirely disassociated from past tropes, it focused on enabling the experience of living cultures rather than the presentation of a series of artifacts. Further, although genuine concerns and risks associated with cultural commodification existed, those involved in the festival’s establishment (e.g., Foulds and MacDonald, the Celtic Colours Festival Society, participating communities, etc.) made a commitment to nurturing culture and human interaction.84 Celtic Colours therefore represented a turning point in Cape Breton’s tourism history.

The effects of its approach (an experiential style of tourism with the festival as a centrepiece) have been witnessed in a variety of ways—not all of which might be obvious. For example, although there had been a strong response to counter potential cultural loss in the 1970s (i.e., the prospect that Cape Breton fiddlers were quickly vanishing) and there were a number of highly talented and skilled Cape Breton musicians (e.g., John Allan Cameron, Jerry Holland, John Morris Rankin, and Kinnon Beaton), the island’s musical industry remained relatively fragile and dispersed. Part of the motivation behind Celtic Colours was to assist in professionalizing the music industry—something it has contributed to in ways that continue to have significant impact. This has included the birth of a new generation of fiddlers, the upsurge of a local and national music industry, the ability for Cape Breton musicians to make a living from their music on the island and globally, and improved facilities across the island where professional-calibre performances and recordings can now take place throughout the year.

While acknowledging the substantial contributions made by Celtic Colours to the professionalization of the island’s music industry, it would be remiss not to mention a few other notable developments since the festival’s establishment that have also been influential in this regard. Particularly, the institutions behind these interact with the festival in various ways, and together with Celtic Colours, they symbolize the collaborative and concerted efforts of Cape Breton institutions, individuals, communities, government, and government-funded entities toward more of a destination tourism approach. For example, two institutions that had been languishing somewhat before the inauguration of the festival have been totally transformed and revitalized in the past two decades. This is not to suggest that Celtic Colours is entirely responsible for this, but rather through collaboration, adapting to opportunities and change, and strong leadership, the institutions have become equally important components of Cape Breton’s present-day tourism strategy. Additionally, their resurgence is emblematic of broader signs of hope, prosperity, resilience, and cultural identity in Cape Breton.

Firstly, the Gaelic College at Saint Anne (Colaisde na Gaidhlig) has evolved into a dynamic and expanding institution fully integrated with the festival but also offering a widening variety of other experiences, including its own festival held in the spring (Kitchenfest). Meanwhile, Iona’s Baile nan Gàidheal / Highland Village, established over fifty years ago, has flourished as the newest branch of the Nova Scotia Museum complex to foster a Living History Museum dedicated to celebrating and exploring all aspects of the Celtic experience in Cape Breton. It has emerged as one of the most successful museum attractions in all of Nova Scotia and similarly works closely with Celtic Colours as part of providing visitors a chance to experience living cultures.

A new institution that offers “hands-on” learning and participation and further indicates the changed tourism landscape is the Celtic Music Interpretation Centre. Located in Judique, it was opened in 2006 through funding from the local community as well as provincial and federal governments. It has a mandate to preserve and protect Celtic music, and it does so through a series of public performances and a lot of back-scene recording and archiving. It serves a broad community of performers in southern Inverness County and operates year round, including during Celtic Colours, when numerous community-based events are hosted by the centre.85 Finally, the role played by Cape Breton University in sharing, highlighting, sustaining, and teaching the living cultures of Cape Breton must not be underestimated. Its Beaton Institute has always had a mandate to preserve the Celtic traditions of Cape Breton. Since the 1990s, this mission has become more prominent through relocation to dramatically improved accommodations and the provision of a focal point for a cultural stream in Cape Breton studies. Additionally, the Centre for Cape Breton Studies has morphed into a multidisciplinary series of integrated offerings at various levels within the university. New faculty and staff offer a range of programs in aspects of the cultural heritage of the island, enhancing the understanding and recognition of Cape Breton’s living cultures. Certain events are showcased during Celtic Colours that, once more, complement the suite of experiences that are on offer.

Returning to Celtic Colours, the economic impact of the festival has been well documented over the years; however, perhaps less addressed in reports is the way in which this story is indicative of a highly developed “branding” of Cape Breton, with the Celtic Colours imprint at the forefront. According to Brown, the brand of Cape Breton is a formidable component of the national tourism industry and has enabled Cape Breton to be globally competitive.86 This success has led to highly specialized expertise within Celtic Colours and on the island more broadly, around what constitutes effective experiential tourism. The fiscal value of such knowledge can be determined through tourism statistics and indicators. In 2018 alone, Nova Scotia had the highest tourism revenue ($2.61 billion) on record, despite encountering a modest decline in visitation. The majority of this was generated by nonresidents of the province—a solid percentage of whom fell under the global trend of travellers seeking “local” experiences that could lead to personal change. Cape Breton was a major destination contributing to this; recently celebrated as one of the best islands in the world to visit by Condé Nast,87 between 2015 and 2018, it had the second highest number of hotel room nights sold in the province.88

This is not to suggest that a festival like Celtic Colours and an experiential tourism approach offer an economic and/or social panacea, or that the benefits of such a strategy always outweigh the risks, or that success represents the absence of challenges or issues.89 As has been observed in various industries and sectors around the world, including those that were originally the economic backbone of Cape Breton, one small change can result in vulnerability and ultimate decline. Celtic Colours was developed at a time when the global tourism industry was undergoing a cultural turn that focused on festivals and mechanisms that made more personal and memorable experiences possible. The global popularization of Celtic culture also played into this. There can be no question of the festival’s various achievements; however, it is likely that trends within the industry and place-based conditions (e.g., aging population) will modify further over time—in both positive and negative ways—and adaptation in response to those would be essential to continued success.

For instance, a developing component of both the provincial and Cape Breton tourism strategy is to increase engagement with the cruise ship market considerably. As a result, the cruise tourism destinations and patterns have erupted to produce upward of 153,000 visitors to the port of Sydney in 2019,90 and the trend is expanding. Similarly, golf tourism, sparked by the development of two new “world-class” courses in Inverness, has projected Cape Breton into a travellers’ world consciousnesses, which repeatedly raises it to a central place in world rankings.91 Such developments are important to Cape Breton’s evolving tourism future and involve ongoing consideration as to how they fit into a holistic, destination-based agenda as well as the degree to which they necessitate the availability of different types of tourism experiences.

As indicated earlier, some of the risk involved with festival- and experiential-based tourism is centred on the commodification of culture. As has been seen in the pre-1990s-era tourism in Cape Breton, it can also lead to questions around how to “reconcile the private reality with the public image . . . whereby images eventually usurp the reality.”92 Celtic Colours is not responsible for the creation or persistence of such an issue; rather, in keeping with MacKinnon, it is vital for tourists and tourism decision-makers alike to see the real complexity associated with cultures that are presented through festivals and to think both critically and sensitively in their engagement with those. Similarly, it will be important for those involved in tourism in Cape Breton to continue finding ways of engaging visitors so that such reflection can be fostered.

Related to this and in light of Celtic Colours’ emphasis on experiencing the island’s living cultures, it is also worth reflecting on the fact that culture regularly changes over time and space through diffusion—it is not static and can be hybrid in nature.93 Indeed, in a move away from the “tartanism” of the past, Nova Scotia’s Culture Action Plan recognizes the evolution of culture that occurs through human interaction and new forms of expression, acknowledging diversity as a fundamental aspect of Nova Scotian identity. To complicate matters further, it is necessary to understand that “there is no single Celtic language or culture.”94 When these traits are cross-referenced with the definition of “living culture,” the difficulty in delineating between “living” and some alternative state becomes clear. It would be equally challenging to distinguish places on the basis of having a living culture or not, since all culture is arguably living and transmitted between generations over time in one form or another. These practicalities present Celtic Colours with the opportunity to continue exploring Cape Breton’s living cultures as a means of reimagining these to their full effect in the future.

As Celtic Colours approaches its twenty-fifth year, it is a powerful symbol of Cape Breton’s present-day experiential approach to tourism—particularly one that emphasizes living cultures. It aligns well with Nova Scotia’s tourism strategy, which includes “world-class experiences” and aspirations to achieve $4 billion in annual tourism revenue by 2024.95 With the relatively recent establishment of the Destination Cape Breton Association (DCBA) in 2011, the island and stakeholders such as the festival are increasingly turning their attention to destination tourism. A distinct aspect of this strategy is the imperative to provide consistently excellent experiences, and as was the case for the music industry when Celtic Colours began, this will require an exercise of professional development across the island’s tourism sector.96 Technology and social media are also key features—ones that expand a visitor’s ability to “experience” Cape Breton over time and space. In this regard, and while acknowledging that there is always room for improvement, perhaps much can be learned from Cape Breton’s tourism history and, within that, the emergence of Celtic Colours as a hallmark brand.

Notes

1. 1. Zuelow, A History of Modern Tourism, 12. Where an entire source such as a book or article has informed a viewpoint or argument, no page number will be listed in the footnotes. This acknowledges that the work as a whole has contributed to our understanding rather than text found on a specific page or in a particular segment within that source. Similarly, notes will not include page numbers where such detail does not exist (e.g., web pages, etc.).

2. 2. Sharpley and Telfer, Tourism and Development, 11–12.

3. 3. United Nations World Tourism Organization, “International Tourism Highlights,” https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284421152.

4. 4. Genç and Genç, “Market-Oriented Innovations in Tourism,” 51; Dolnicar, “Market Segmentation in Tourism,” 18.

5. 5. Romão, Tourism, Territory and Sustainable Development, 63–64; Smith, “Sense of Place,” 220; Salazar, “Opportunities and Threats.”

6. 6. Smith, Macleod, and Robertson, Key Concepts in Tourist Studies, 94; Poria, Butler, and Airey, “Core of Heritage Tourism,” 238–54.

7. 7. Salazar, “Community-Based Cultural Tourism,” 10; Johnson, “Realizing Rural Community-Based Tourism Development,” 151–52; Okazaki, “Community-Based Tourism Model,” 511–12, Murphy, Tourism, 153.

8. 8. Wood, Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet; Graci and Dodds, Sustainable Tourism in Island Destinations, Clarke, “Framework of Approaches to Sustainable Tourism,” 224–30.

9. 9. Wang and Pizam, Destination Marketing and Management; Smith, “Experiential Tourism around the World and at Home,” 1–14; Framke, “Destination as a Concept,” 92–108; Pine and Gilmore, Experience Economy. Experiential tourism involves a move away from “mass tourism” whereby individuals seek and directly participate in experiences that can facilitate lasting memories. Other forms of tourism such as cultural, heritage, nature, and so on are subsets of this; Smith, “Experiential Tourism around the World and at Home,” 8. Destination tourism refers to a coordinated effort across all relevant service providers in a particular location to offer tourists high-quality experiences while enhancing competitiveness in the tourism industry for that destination as well as managing the effects of tourism on that place. See United Nations World Tourism Organization, Practical Guide to Tourism Destination Management, 2.

10. 10. Celtic Colours International Festival, “About Celtic Colours,” https://celtic-colours.com/about/.

11. 11. Tourism Nova Scotia, “Celtic Colours International Festival,” https://celtic-colours.com/page/4/.

12. 12. Shannon, “Island on the Brink?”; Tomblin and Locke, Good Governance.

13. 13. What composes “Celtic” culture, music, and identity is a source of ongoing debate across various disciplines, including arguments that contemporary romanticization of Celtic culture is based on images constructed for tourism and Pan-Celtic festivals. See Kneafsey, “Tourism Images and the Construction,” 123–38; Porter, “Introduction,” 205–24. The Oxford Dictionary (2019) defines “Celtic” as “relating to the Celts or their languages”; however, in light of known complexities in defining “Celtic” and the subject matter of this paper, we extend this understanding to encompass the ancestral sense of identity or affinity with Celtic culture regardless of geographic location and the creation of cultural outputs—real or invented—that have been informed by Celtic traditions and/or images of the past and present; Tacla and Johnston, “New Perspectives in Celtic Studies,” 613–20; Harvey, Jones, McInroy, and Milligan, “Timing and Spacing Celtic Geographies,” 1–18; Hale and Payton, New Directions in Celtic Studies.

14. 14. Burrill, Away.

15. 15. Prior to this investment, the roads were thought to be impassable during certain seasons and conditions. One of the first Roman Catholic missionaries to Cape Breton, Father Francois Lejamtel (from 1792 to 1819) was recorded to have said he would “never embark [on the passage] in the autumn unless it were to save [his] life from some other menace”; Chiasson, Cheticamp History and Acadian Tradition. Writing on the early transport history of northern Cape Breton, McDonald described the roads as “narrow, bumpy, and hollow. After a rain storm you could start a fish farm in some of the holes in the road.” McDonald, Transportation in Northern Cape Breton.

16. 16. MacEachern, Natural Selections.

17. 17. McKay, “Tartanism Triumphant,” 5–47; MacLennan, Scotchman’s Return and Other Essays; MacNeil, Highland Heart in Nova Scotia.

18. 18. Bird, This Is Nova Scotia; Dennis, Cape Breton Over.

19. 19. Burrill, Away.

20. 20. This is to suggest not that tourism did not exist on a global scale prior to World War II but that the pace of its expansion, the increased diversity of tourists, and the presence of a readily identifiable industry can be traced to this period. As a result, this phase is sometimes referred to as “mass tourism” or “modern tourism.” Lickorish and Jenkins, Introduction to Tourism; Zuelow, History of Modern Tourism; Sezgin and Yolal, “Golden Age of Mass Tourism.”

21. 21. Zuelow, History of Modern Tourism.

22. 22. Darbelly and Stock, “Tourism as Complex Interdisciplinary Research Object,” 441–58; Gibson, “Learning Destinations”; Faulkner and Russell, “Chaos and Complexity in Tourism,” 93–102.

23. 23. Events in the lead-up to this, such as the classification of the Louisbourg site as a National Historic Park in 1940, laid important groundwork for discussion. Judith V. Campbell, Report of the Human History of Cape Breton Highlands National Park, manuscript on file, National Historic Parks and Sites Branch, Parks Canada, Halifax, 1973.

24. 24. McKay, “Tartanism Triumphant.”

25. 25. Macdonald, Speeches of Angus L. Macdonald.

26. 26. Sparling, “Cape Breton Island,” 49–64.

27. 27. Henderson, Angus L. Macdonald; McKay and Bates, In the Province of History.

28. 28. Province of Nova Scotia, “‘Canada’s Ocean Playground,’” https://archives.novascotia.ca/tourism/, is a vast digital archive of tourist advertising for Nova Scotia up to the 1970s. It is remarkable for its completeness, yet it does not reflect much attention to Cape Breton by early tourist promoters, save for the requisite images of the Cabot Trail’s vistas of solitary splendour. It was as if there were no people in Cape Breton at all, except for the occasional fishers chasing salmon or tourists gazing at the splendour from their automobiles.

29. 29. Beaton and Muise, “Canso Causeway,” 39–69; Hunter and Corbin, “Built for Going Away.”

30. 30. Morgan, Rise Again!

31. 31. Bickerton, Nova Scotia, Ottawa, and the Politics.

32. 32. Dewing, “Federal Government Policy on Arts and Culture.”

33. 33. Thompson, “Myth of the Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler,” 5–26.

34. 34. Province of Nova Scotia, “‘Canada’s Ocean Playground,’” https://archives.novascotia.ca/tourism/.

35. 35. Graham, Cape Breton Fiddle; MacInnes, Journey in Celtic Music.

36. 36. Bonet, “Cultural Tourism,” 166–71; Craik, “Culture of Tourism,” 113–36.

37. 37. Light, “Heritage and Tourism,” 144–58.

38. 38. Stewart, Hayward, Devlin, and Kirby, “‘Place’ of Interpretation,” 257–66; Beeho and Prentice, “Conceptualizing the Experiences of Heritage Tourists,” 75–87; Crang, “On the Heritage Trail,” 341–55.

39. 39. Ashworth and Larkham, Building a New Heritage; Bond and Falk, “Tourism and Identity-Related Motivations,” 430–42.

40. 40. Nath and Saha, “Theoretical Positioning of Self and Social Identities,” 115–28; Prentice, “Experiential Cultural Tourism,” 5–26.

41. 41. Thorne, “Place-Based Cultural Tourism,” https://conscioustourism.wordpress.com/tag/steven-thorne/.

42. 42. Renamed Cape Breton University in 2005 through the Cape Breton University Act.

43. 43. MacNeil, “Spirit in the Face of Decline.”

44. 44. This professionalization was about not just performing but also the technology to support the delivery and documentation of that performance. Joe Bushell opened the island’s first professional recording studio in 1989 at Frenchvale. Morgan, Rise Again!

45. 45. Edwardson, Canadian Content.

46. 46. Laventhol and Horwath, “Cape Breton Tourism Strategy: Draft Final Report” (unpublished manuscript, Beaton Institute, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS, 1986).

47. 47. The origins of this date all the way back to the early 1920s when Nova Scotia’s “Tourist Investigation Committee” recommended an “Old Home Summer” project to “encourage Nova Scotians by birth or descent, living in New England, to embark on a sentimental journey” home. Province of Nova Scotia, “Nova Scotia Archives.”

48. 48. Brown, “Come on Home,” 309–18; Feintuch, In the Blood, 227–33.

49. 49. Fletcher, “John Allan Cameron,” 3.

50. 50. “Joella Foulds,” in Feintuch, In the Blood, 244–57.

51. 51. Gibson and Connell, Music Festivals and Regional Development in Australia; Lemky and Joliffe, “Mining Heritage and Tourism,” 144–57; MacDonald and Joliffe, “Cultural Rural Tourism,” 307–22.

52. 52. Mair, “Global Restructuring and Local Responses,” 1–45; Briedenhann and Wickens, “Tourism Routes,” 71–79.

53. 53. Though festivals are a long-standing feature of places, with events dating back to the early 1800s, Gibson and Connell suggest that they grew “exponentially” after the 1980s “as people celebrate[d] local and regional cultures, as music styles diversif[ied], and as councils, business coalitions and non-profit groups use[d] festivals to promote tourism and stimulate regional development.” Gibson and Connell, Music Festivals, 3.

54. 54. Picard and Robinson, “Remaking Worlds,” 1–31; Hughes, “Urban Revitalisation,” 119–35.

55. 55. Briedenhann and Wickens, “Tourism Routes”; Williams and Shaw, Tourism and Economic Development.

56. 56. Ma and Lew, “Historical and Geographical Context,” 1–19; Gibson and Connell, Music Festivals.

57. 57. Jeong and Santos, “Cultural Politics and Contested Place Identity,” 640–56.

58. 58. Waitt, “Urban Festivals,” 513–37; Bankston and Henry, “Spectacles of Ethnicity,” 377–407.

59. 59. Seed, “Outdoor Resources Directory,” 10.

60. 60. Feintuch, In the Blood; Joella Foulds, interviewed in Sydney, NS, 14 October 2010; Foulds in Feintuch, In the Blood.

61. 61. Readily identifiable artists included the Rankin Family, Natalie MacMaster, Ashley MacIsaac, and Rita MacNeil.

62. 62. Mahalik, 10 Nights without Sleep; Foulds, interviewed in Sydney, 2010; MacDonald, “Vibrant Array of Celtic Colours Set for C.B.,” B19.

63. 63. Province of Nova Scotia, “Nova Scotia Archives.”

64. 64. Brown, “Come on Home.”

65. 65. Important support would also come through the Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation (ECBC). ECBC was founded in 1985 to manage federal monies aimed at facilitating economic development outside of the mining industry in Cape Breton. While it initially collaborated with the IDD arm of DEVCO, ECBC was eventually asked to assume full responsibility while DEVCO focused on the mining industry only. DEVCO was eventually dissolved in 2010, which led to a full transition to ECBC. In 2014, ECBC was folded into the Atlantic Canadian Opportunities Agency (ACOA); CTV News, “ACOA Takes over Cape Breton Enterprise Corp,” https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/acoa-takes-over-cape-breton-enterprise-corp-1.1737935; Ayers, “DEVCO Ready to Dissolve”; Goodale, “Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization and Dissolution Act,” https://openparliament.ca/debates/1999/11/15/ralph-goodale-1/only/.

66. 66. The Celtic Colours Festival Society secured a valuable $277,000 grant from the Year of Music initiative—a significant contribution toward the festival’s overall operating costs of $600,000 in 1997. Macdonald, “Am Braighe Editor Critical,” 18.

67. 67. Mahalik, 10 Nights without Sleep; Celtic Colours International Festival, Celtic Colours International Festival Booklet (9–17 October 1998).

68. 68. Celtic Colours International Festival, Festival Booklet.

69. 69. The basis for the program overall was that cultural tourists tend to stay longer and spend more money than other types of tourists. As a nine-day festival dispersed across the island of Cape Breton, Celtic Colours stood a good chance of fostering such trends.

70. 70. The Honourable John James Kinley, Nova Scotia’s twenty-ninth lieutenant governor, remarked in 1997, “The world has already discovered what Nova Scotians have always known. Musicians like the Barra MacNeils from Sydney Mines, the Rankin family from Mabou, and Natalie MacMaster from Inverness County prove we make the best music anywhere. The celebration of uniquely Nova Scotian music, with its roots in Celtic, Acadian, and Mi’kmaq cultures, helped build a record year for tourism. This year Nova Scotia’s tourism industry grew by 6 percent, the fastest growth rate in 25 years.” Hon. John James Kinley, Nova Scotia Legislature, Fifty-Sixth General Assembly, Sixth Session, Thursday, 20 November 1997, Halifax, NS.

71. 71. For the purposes of this chapter, living culture, also recognized as intangible cultural heritage or living cultural heritage, can be understood as the daily “practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills handed down from generation to generation”—be that through lived experience or reproduction. See UNESCO, “Safeguarding Communities’ Living Heritage,” https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000261971. As per Richard MacKinnon’s research, this can include “storytelling . . . ways of working and making a living . . . music, [and] festivals.” MacKinnon, Discovering Cape Breton Folklore, 19.

72. 72. The ad welcomed “everyone to gather and celebrate our living Celtic culture”; see Celtic Colours International Festival, Festival Booklet.

73. 73. Celtic Colours International Festival.

74. 74. The original mission statement was “the Celtic Colours Festival Society is a non-profit volunteer society formed to promote and maintain the Celtic cultures of Cape Breton, the Gaelic language, music, arts and crafts; and to heighten national and international awareness of the natural beauty of Cape Breton Island by the creation and presentation of an annual international festival celebrating our Celtic heritage and music, to be held during the beauty of autumn colours at various venues around the Island.” See Celtic Colours International Festival, “Mission Statement,” quoted in Ferrel, Fiddler’s Heaven.

75. 75. Newbern and Fletcher, “Fall Getaways,” 12; Reporter (Port Hawkesbury, NS), 21 September 1999, 13.

76. 76. Celtic Colours International Festival, “Mission Statement.”

77. 77. Province of Nova Scotia, “Province Makes Major Investment in Celtic Colours,” media release, 28 June 2002, accessed 4 November 2014, http://novascotia.ca/news/release/?id=20020628003.

78. 78. Province of Nova Scotia, “Cape Breton Named One of the Best Islands in the World to Visit,” media release, 17 July 2009, accessed 13 February 2015, http://novascotia.ca/news/release/?id=20090717007.

79. 79. “Rodney MacDonald” in Feintuch, In the Blood, 234–43.

80. 80. There was great anticipation surrounding the potential economic benefits of Celtic Colours following a 1994 strategic plan by the Cape Breton Cultural Economic Development Authority (CBCEDA) that predicted that it could become “an international cultural tourist attraction.” Brown, “Island Tourism Marketing,” 27. By the 1990s, Nova Scotia was supporting a variety of music festivals across the province to some extent, primarily concentrated in Halifax; however, none were Cape Breton based and none had a “Celtic” flavour.

81. 81. Scott and Pelley, “Cape Breton’s Celtic Colours International Festival,” 16.

82. 82. Colley, “Local Businesses Reap Benefits”; MacDonald, “No Surprise Here.”

83. 83. In recent years, this has included the establishment of Destination Cape Breton (2011) and the formal adoption of a Nova Scotia experiential tourism toolkit (2011).

84. 84. Thayer Scott and Pelley, “Cape Breton’s Celtic Colours International Festival”; Foulds in Feintuch, In the Blood.

85. 85. Certain features do not exist outside of the main tourist season or occur on a very limited basis.

86. 86. Brown, “Island Tourism Marketing.”

87. 87. Condé Nast, “The Best Islands in the World,” https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-10-20/top-30-islands-in-the-world-readers-choice-awards-2014.

88. 88. Tourism Nova Scotia, “2018 Tourism Performance,” https://tourismns.ca/sites/default/files/2019-04/Media%20Kit%20-%202018%20Nova%20Scotia%20Tourism%20Performance.pdf. There is a high degree of seasonality in the tourism industry in Cape Breton, which has implications for indicators.

89. 89. Whether economic, cultural, or a combination of both, “development” on Cape Breton Island has produced a mixed legacy of costs, benefits, challenges, and tensions; for a further illustration of this mixed legacy, see chapter 10 in this collection.

90. 90. McNeil, “Record Season for Sydney Port.”

91. 91. “Three Cape Breton Courses Crack Golf Digest Top 100,” Cape Breton Post, 12 January 2018.

92. 92. MacKinnon, Discovering Cape Breton Folklore, 182.

93. 93. McEwan, “Geography, Culture and Global Change,” 273–89.

94. 94. Tacla and Johnston, “New Perspectives in Celtic Studies”; Hale and Payton, New Directions in Celtic Studies; “More Celtic Areas Represented,” Reporter, 21 September 1999, 12.

95. 95. Tourism Nova Scotia, “Tourism Nova Scotia’s Strategy,” https://tourismns.ca/plans-and-reports/tourism-nova-scotias-strategy.

96. 96. Two contemporary websites make the point. The Destination Cape Breton website highlights experiential elements of the tourist on the island, while the recently created World Tourism Institute at Cape Breton University stresses the importance of sector-wide professional development. See https://www.cbisland.com/ and https://www.cbu.ca/wti/the-cape-breton-island-tourism-training-network/.

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