Photo: RCMP Heritage Centre(Originally published in
TOURISM)
It is hard to think of a more truly Canadian story than that of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It is a story still being written today, and about to be shared with visitors from around the world at Regina’s RCMP Heritage Centre, which is slated to open in late May, 2007.
The 6500 square meter two‑storey facility is designed by world‑renowned Canadian architect Arthur Erickson and situated on 6.7 hectares of land adjacent to the RCMP Academy. It will offer guests immersive environments, interactive exhibits and multi‑sensory simulations featuring artifacts from the RCMP collection and rich archival materials. According to president and CEO Vic Huard, at $40 million it is one of the most ambitious heritage interpretation projects in recent Canadian history.
“The initiative goes back to 1995, when a number of community leaders , including representatives from the Friends of the RCMP Centennial Museum, began discussing ways to enhance the profile of the RCMP Centennial Museum," says Huard. "The Centennial Museum (which opened in 1973) had served its purpose, and more space and newer approaches were needed to allow the public to get a better sense of the RCMP story." Huard explains how discussions shaped a vision that would eventually incorporate the architectural guidance of Arthur Erickson. “From that moment, the new facility really started to take shape. This has led to commitments from various levels of government, backed by a massive fundraising initiative.
The two‑phase project is nearing the end of Phase I, which includes the completion of the actual building and of the first phase of exhibits encompassing 18,000 square feet of main exhibit hall space including 10,000 square feet of interactive exhibit. The location of the Centre is seen as critical; the authenticity of having it right where the cadets are trained – where the story begins – is an essential element. "We will continue to offer tours during the summer as occurred with the old Centennial Museum, notes Huard, "but we will link that to programming based out of the RCMP Heritage Centre.” He promises a visitor experience unlike any other: “Interpretive programming will go beyond simple guided tours."
Despite his optimism and earnest belief the impact of the Heritage Centre on Regina’ economy will be significant, Vic Huard is quick to caution those who claim this much awaited attraction will dramatically increase tourism activity in Saskatchewan’s capital city: “Those shoes are too big for us to fill alone. Some people think in those terms and we don’t want to get ourselves in that position. We are well aware that single point attractions aren’t what drive tourism. We know this from the research carried out during the development of Regina’s recently completed destination marketing strategy.”
Huard prefers to see the Centre work with some of the other attractions within the city and across the province. “How can we leverage the iconic drawing power of the RCMP? It is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. If we successfully intercept visitors and draw them here, we’ll ask: ‘how can we then keep them in Regina overnight? How can we work with other packages, attractions or heritage and cultural assets?’ We do have a very rich history and we perhaps don’t leverage it as much as we should; this gives us an opportunity to attract people in a way that perhaps wasn’t there before.”
Meanwhile, Huard will concentrate on honing the guest experience. “We need first to ensure the product here works, that the systems work, that we understand our own product and that we deliver a first‑class service. It is the experience on the grounds and at the Centre that will help build our success. The building is architecturally phenomenal, there will be great exhibits, but we are banking on the impressions people will leave with to ensure they keep saying ‘wow! I want to come back!’ We are committed to putting together a team of people who understand that and who will deliver it all the time. It is very critical.”
Placemaking at work at Mont Tremblant, QuebecPhoto: Intrawest(Originally published in
TOURISM)
If one of the golden rules of resort development is the need to create places where guests will experience a certain "pedestrian‑friendliness", few resort developers have been as transparent as Intrawest about the guiding principles they use to achieve this goal. The Vancouver‑based resort company has properties in North America and around the world, but is better known in Canada for its activities at Whistler Blackcomb (BC) and Mont‑Tremblant (Quebec) – two places with very different histories but where the same principles apply, according to executive vice president David Greenfield.
“In 1986, Intrawest had the opportunity to purchase Blackcomb Mountain, one of the two mountains at Whistler. At the time, Intrawest was a real estate developer focused mainly on Vancouver, Western Canada, and North‑western United States," Greenfield continues. "We saw an opportunity to combine the operational management expertise at Blackcomb Mountain with Intrawest’s real estate experience. In the world of winter resorts at the time, you didn’t often see the marriage of the two.”
Intrawest embarked on a master planning exercise at Blackcomb. “We thought the best way to approach this was to bring together some of the better minds in the resort planning world, and Intrawest did just that."
Meanwhile, another opportunity presented itself at the other end of the country, for which this insight of another contributor was required: Eldon Beck. He had been involved with the original master planning of Whistler village and Vail, Colorado. “We realized that he was the only one who had the special eye and skills that were needed to create a ‘true’ resort village,” notes Greenfield. “With his help, we began to grasp what it takes. Eldon Beck understands the true underpinnings of why villages in mountain places really work – and what are the main physical, spiritual and social foundations for those resorts.”
Nowhere would these foundations be more rigorously put to the test than at Mont‑Tremblant: “This was our first real entry into building a village from the ground up, in 1991. Tremblant was absolutely on its last legs and it would probably have withered away if nobody had picked it up when we did. What we found was such an incredible wealth of culture and a rare authenticity. You don’t have to fabricate it; it is just there – in the local history, the history of the province and in the place itself. It wasn’t hard to create a village with so many elements around you to draw from.”
Tremblant was one of the first resort villages in North America, established in 1938, Greenfield explains: “The only other true ski resort in North America to that date was Sun Valley, Idaho. Tremblant was second and, in fact, bought a lift from Sun Valley to create the first ski lift at Tremblant. The architecture at the time was somewhat unique because the original owner/developer – a fellow by the name of Joe Ryan – had a created his own traditions around his view of what should go on in a resort in that particular setting.”
Mont Tremblant had been part of the Quebec psyche for generations, so when Intrawest took it over, the company realized it needed to capitalize on that heritage. “We started talking to people and all these incredible memories about growing up as kids and enjoying this wonderful international destination in the 50s and 60s emerged. We started to piece together all these stories, local styles and cultural elements, and got a sense not so much of what Tremblant should look like, but of what it should feel like.”
Drawing on the knowledge of people who had lived in the area for years (long‑time ski instructors and staff members who had been at the resort for 30 years), Greenfield could envision how to re‑kindle the dream that was so alive in the 1930s and 1940s.
He and his team made trips to Europe to look at resort villages in the mountains, in order to gain insight into how the villages there are physically configured. “We also visited locations throughout Québec to see if there were architectural stylings which we felt were important, and we came up with a plan for the village inspired by some of the original architecture. You can’t just go in there and put up the kind of Western Canadian architecture that we would put up in Whistler and Blackcomb.”
The result had to convey a certain authenticity in the dominant sense of place: “We wanted a hotel that was reminiscent of an old Chateau that you might have seen in Québec City or in other places," emphasizes Greenfield. "We wanted a small commercial area with the old buildings to be very much a statement about what Tremblant was back in the 1930s. Everything that you see there says ‘Quebec’. We also felt it was important to preserve certain buildings as a statement about what Tremblant was and should be in the future."
He gives the example of a church built in the late 1930s that is really an icon for the resort. “There was a collection of smaller buildings which we had to relocate to a place where we could create a kind of historic pedestrian village, and use it in an entertainment capacity with food and beverage areas because there was a heritage theme we felt we should preserve there.”
"Placemaking", as Intrawest sees it, is a philosophy that the organization tries to apply. “We are human; sometimes we are very successful at it and we sometimes miss the mark in our interpretations. People go to Europe and they say: ‘you know these villages are fantastic’. It is easy to forget they have developed over hundreds of years; we are trying to build places in 4 or 5 years!”
Greenfield is of the opinion that we must give today’s villages the time to grow and organically evolve. “The tendency sometimes is to judge results a little too early.” As he boils down some of the principles that make great resort villages, Greenfield makes the following recommendations:
“The village has to be true to its history and culture. It must fit into the natural landscape, so it doesn’t look like it has been forced in there. It has to have a great sense of scale in relation to the surroundings, but also scaled to the size people would expect the architecture for that area to be. There needs to be variety, intrigue and excitement in the environment. Eldon Beck always talks about the voyage of discovery in the village – people should not be able to start at one end and stand there and look and decipher everything at once. You need to be drawn into places and discover your way through the village as you walk – there should be that constant sense of discovery.”
A number of elements contribute to that. In facilities like the Four Seasons Whistler, Greenfield mentions the use of natural building materials in a design which has almost a contemporary feel to it. “It is almost a West Coast derivative. There is a strong sense of the natural environment but we use it in a contemporary way. At Whistler, we don’t have a history harking back to 200 or 300 years ago from which to draw; the flavour therefore is more akin to a national park lodge.”
At Mont Tremblant’s main plaza, there used to be 100 or so Adirondack chairs that, on any given day, people would make use of, moving them around to face the sun. This was a simple tradition that the new owners kept, because of the way guests used the chairs to make themselves at home, expressing even a tiny bit of their own personality. The Adirondack chairs create the animation, and the environment lends itself to personal interpretations.
It has been said that placemaking is the “art of finding yourself in a place where you live.” That is what great resorts make possible.
(Originally published in
TOURISM)
The year 2008 marks British Columbia's 150th anniversary. That's not all; the same year is also the 200th anniversary of Simon Fraser’s and David Thompson’s journeys of exploration. The organizers of the BC 2008 celebrations are well aware of how opportunities sometimes arise out of the most simple of commemorations. Secretariat executive director Charles Parkinson knows it, and so, apparently, do Tourism Minister Stan Hagen and Premier Gordon Campbell.
“The Premier himself came up with the concept of creating what he calls Spirit Squares," says Parkinson. "These are outdoor gathering places in communities where people can come together in the spirit of celebration – not for just 2008 but with a view to the future as well." He continues: "Is there a place in your community that is a natural gathering place for people? It could be at the waterfront, downtown, in a park, where communities can go to celebrate what nourishes them.”
BC 2008 earmarked $20 million for the initiative and received 132 applications from communities around British Columbia. These are currently being evaluated by a panel of landscape architects, community planners and design specialists.
“We have really struck a chord, it seems. Many communities seek a physical heart for their sense of place. This heart may become the Spirit Square. All we are doing is providing tools to shape it a bit more.”
Parkinson hopes the tourism industry will capitalize on the celebrations in the works for the province’s 150th birthday: "The Olympics are coming in 2010. And there is more; we are working with the North American Indigenous Games, which are being held in the Cowichan Valley in 2008. An estimated 6,000 athletes and 3,000 cultural performers will attend, so we wanted to come up with an original way of bringing the Games to all the people of BC.”
Organizers decided on an aboriginal version of the torch relay, Parkinson explains. “We are commissioning a totem pole from various aboriginal artists (and their apprentices, who will get valuable training in the process), and its creation will take the form of an interactive exhibition.”
The pole will be selected and the design conceived in traditional fashion, and the monumental sculpture will travel to different communities throughout the province, where people will be invited to carve a piece of the pole before it moves on. Since the totem pole – indigenous to aboriginal peoples of the Pacific Northwest – traditionally represented the history of a particular family or tribe and served as a reminder of its ancestry, this collaborative effort is a fitting symbol of the unification of the communities and regions of BC over the last 150 years.
"In the end, as many as 10,000 people will have contributed to the project. Everyone who participates may keep the shavings as a souvenir and will sign the book of artists, to be put on display alongside the totem,” adds Parkinson. "The pole will eventually make its way to Prince Rupert and be integrated into Tribal Journeys, a celebration of indigenous nations' maritime heritage and one of the most prominent cultural events associated with the North American Indigenous Games. Tribal Journeys of 2008 is slated to be the largest ever, with up to 80 traditional ocean‑going canoes taking part."
The canoe regatta, with symbolic totem pole on board, will travel down the coast, picking up more vessels along the way. As Parkinson describes it, canoes – with participants in full regalia – will come across the Strait of Georgia and gather at the mouth of Cowichan Bay. There they will be invited ashore to receive a traditional Coast Salish welcome. The raising of the pole, equivalent to the lighting of the torch, will be an integral part of the opening ceremonies and will be presented by the people of BC to the people of the Cowichan Tribes.
In elaborating the program for BC 2008, Parkinson and his team identified success factors, taking inspiration from Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s centennials, the Lewis and Clark Bicentennials, Millennium celebrations, Expo 86 and even Canada’s 125th birthday celebration. “It is not just something that you can 'Google'," says Parkinson. "We made our way through the literature, and realized that communities had to feel a sense of ownership and participation in these celebrations. It is also about communications, marketing, and especially about getting your story out there. We saw there was value in building on our pride and identity. We thought ‘if we are trying to double our tourism revenue, how can we make history come alive for people? How do we engage our community across generations and cultures?”
Parkinson’s group adopted a number of compelling solutions, one of which calls for the re‑commissioning of the Royal Hudson, a completely refurbished 1930s‑era steam locomotive that would go around the province to interpret the multiple ways by which railways influenced the province.
“The Royal Hudson will pull seven cars, the first three of which will be vintage cars featuring a traveling exhibit telling the story of the province, produced by the Royal BC Museum. The next 3 cars will be passenger cars citizens will be able to board and ride under steam from point A to B. There may be people in period costumes and storytellers in the cars, representing different periods of BC’s history. The final car will be one of those classic old‑fashioned entertainment cars, so when the train stops overnight in communities, it can host receptions and other events."
At the moment, Parkinson says three themed itineraries being developed: “the Gold Rush Trail will run all the way up to northern BC; the Confederation Route will take the rail procession east to the Kootenays; and the third will see the cars ferried on a barge to Vancouver Island so they can proceed along the Heritage Route.”
Parkinson emphasizes that these ideas are not his or his Secretariat’s. “They come from citizens around the province and from various meetings. Our belief is that history was written locally and it needs to be celebrated locally. The economy is strong, unemployment is low, the resource sector is booming, Vancouver 2010 is coming; there is a genuine feeling in British Columbia that we have much to celebrate, and 2008 gives us that opportunity!”
Photo: RCMP Heritage Centre
