Volume: 4  Number: 2  Page: 92–107

Not 'Ecotourism'?: Wilderness Tourism in Canada's Yukon Territory

Suzanne de la Barre Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Wilderness-based tourism experiences are increasingly popular given both the growing demand for special interest travel products and tourists' desire to engage with nature. Canada's Yukon Territory is a vast land defined by a seemingly unlimited amount of pristine wilderness. Tourism stakeholders in the Yukon have given considerable thought to what it means to use the wilderness for the business of tourism. Few Yukon wilderness tourism products have been labelled 'ecotourism'. This study proposes that not categorising wilderness tourism products as 'ecotourism' might provide 'discursive space' for non-scientific valuation perspectives. This space might allow Yukon host cultures, both native and non-native, to take part in defining sustainability in the context of tourism. I explore this by using ecotourism and its use in the Yukon as an 'experiment'. The experiment asks that we consider two discourses on sustainability that guide human/nature understandings. These discourses inform tourism's use of nature. The experiment also invites us to consider the possibility that paradigm shifts are required for how we frame human/nature relationships and how we define 'sustainable' for tourism purposes.

Keywords: ecotourism, adventure travel, sustainability, wilderness, Yukon Territory

© 2005 S. de la Barre

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