Permanent Weekend: Nature, Leisure, and Rural Gentrification (McGill-Queen's Rural, Wildland, and Resource Studies, 7) (Volume 7) - Softcover

Michels, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0773548793 ISBN 13: 9780773548794

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017

Synopsis

North of the heart of Ontario’s scenic Muskoka District are the Almaguin Highlands, a loosely organized collection of villages, townships, and municipalities. In the mid-1800s, the region was home to loggers and farmers, as well as seasonal residents in simple cottages and camps. Since then, the impact of economic globalization and government policies has transformed the countryside into a luxurious recreational, residential, and tourist destination.

John Michels investigates change in the Almaguin Highlands, exploring the modern faces of cottaging, tourism, agriculture, forestry, and economic development initiatives. He shows how years of neoliberal policies have displaced agriculture and logging as the principal sources of employment in northern Ontario, generating tension and unexpected alliances between tourists, residents, loggers, farmers, developers, and governmental officials over the proper uses and meanings of rural space. The repercussions of this new service-oriented countryside include increased youth outmigration, decreased full-time employment opportunities, and an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor.

A rich and detailed study based on long-term interviews and fieldwork, Permanent Weekend critically explores the catalysts and outcomes of gentrifying rural areas.

About this title

About the Author

John Michels teaches in the Department of Social Studies at Sheboygan North High School in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

From the Back Cover

Series editors: Jennifer Bonnell, James Murton, and R.W. Sandwell

The Rural, Wildland, and Resource Studies Series includes monographs, thematically unified edited collections, and rare out-of-print classics. Inspired by Canadian Papers in Rural History, Donald H. Akenson's influential occasional papers series, it seeks to catalyze reconsideration of communities and places lying beyond city limits, outside centres of urban political and cultural power, and located at past and present sites of resource procurement and environmental change. Scholarly and popular interest in the environment, climate change, food, and a seemingly deepening divide between city and country, is drawing non-urban places back into the mainstream. The series seeks to present the best environmentally contextualized research on topics such as agriculture, cottage living, fishing, the gathering of wild foods, mining, power generation, and rural commerce, within and beyond Canada's borders.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773548793
• ISBN 13: 9780773548794
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296