Economic History Archives | Touring the Gaspé Peninsula

Wonderland of Gaspé

Wonderland of Gaspé is one of the earliest films for a bilingual audience made to present the Gaspé coast. The work of Montreal’s Associated Screen News, it offers […]

A Legendary Tour

The Gaspé Peninsula History, Legends, Resources, Attractions was the inaugural publication of the Department of Highways and Mines to promote the region and its attractions. The dense descriptions […]

The Image of the Gaspésie

Professional photographers created an image of the Gaspésie. Working for Canadian National Railways, the Canadian Government Travel Bureau (founded in 1934) or the Service de ciné-photographie de la […]

Road Maintenance

As soon as automobiles began to circulate, the roads became a veritable nightmare. Roads require maintenance. Municipalities asked for government assistance to maintain the new roads, used as […]

The First Nations in the Gaspé

The first tourists to the region marvelled at the unique ability of peoples of the First Nations to build canoes and manoeuvre them on the region’s many rivers. […]

Group Travel

Getting to the Gaspé has often meant travelling in groups. For many tourists, their first visit to a new part of the world is in a group. The […]

Ladder to Success

Matane was the first of the region’s cities to recognize the value of allowing visitors to observe the Atlantic salmon up close. As early as the 1850s the […]

Creating a Tourism Industry

For much of its history, the Gaspé was a destination with no attractions. Aside from Percé Rock and the highway itself, there were few ‘attractions’ that tourists could […]

Parks Born in Controversy

The creation of a park is usually greeted with enthusiasm by the local population – but not always. The creation of a national park at Forillon was painful […]

Creating a New Tourism Economy

The Bureau d’aménagement de l’est du Québec (BAEQ) was created in 1963 to set new directions for eastern Quebec. Teams of bureaucrats and consultants brought their expertise to […]

A Gîte Like No Other

Mountain lodges have a long history in the European Alps. National parks in both the United States and Canada imported the model and designed buildings to accommodate the […]

A Guild to Promote Handicrafts

A movement to promote handicrafts took hold in Quebec in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Anthropologist Marius Barbeau inventoried craftsmen and women throughout the province and organized exhibitions to […]