cktimes.ca Archives for Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
Arts, Heritage and culture need to be factored into Chatham-Kent's future
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
We may be totally off base on this and I hope that we are wrong but did you ever stop and contemplate the possibility that Chatham-Kent may be pursuing an economic policy from another age and that it may just not be the correct direction to follow in 2003?Just maybe, we will never attract another major automotive related industry. Maybe Chatham's flirtation with that industry is over and others with more money, more amenities, a lower paid work force, better facilities etc. have captured their hearts. Maybe a place like Mexico is just too attractive and too seductive for big business to ignore. We hope that is not true but......what if it is true?
If it is true, or even partially true, then maybe we need to pay a little more attention to a recent economic analysis done on the Chatham-Kent tourism sector by Judy Rogers of the independent Research Resolutions company.
Some very interesting and thought-provoking statistics came out of this report. For example, forty one per cent ( 99,000) of the overnight tourist visits to Chatham-Kent came from the United States and that this percentage was about double the provincial average of U.S visitors staying in the rest of Ontario. It was Roger's conclusion that Chatham-Kent "...has a very substantive U.S. visitor component" and that this was even more important as these visitors brought "new money" into the economy rather than "re-circulated money" that comes from Canadian visitors to the area.
Rogers went on to report that "leisure overnight stays" accounted for twenty nine per cent of all visitors to Chatham-Kent in 2001, which translated into more than half of the 43 million dollars spent by tourists in our area. Rogers stressed the key point that if you can get people to stay overnight in your area, then "the dollars spent goes up appreciably".
How do you attract U.S. tourists? How do you get them to stay overnight? Another call center? Probably not. Another donut/coffee shop? Probably not. More destruction or neglect of heritage buildings? Probably not.
What about bird watching? Yes! What about eco-tourism? Yes! What about recreational boating? Yes! What about golf? Yes! What about the African Canadian Heritage Tour? Yes! No question about it! What about heritage related activities promoting our exciting local history? Yes! We have plenty of examples! What about the Capitol Theatre? Yes, Most definitely!!
Now let's get really "wild" and "creative" and imagine what would happen if Chatham-Kent decided to pursue various combinations of the above and... let's get really bizarre here, and decided to "promote" arts, culture, heritage and recreation in a big way??!! Just maybe.....we might get more overnight visitors, new businesses would result, more people would move here to live and our economy would improve. Maybe then, it would not be so traumatic to contemplate that the "love affair" between Chatham-Kent and the automotive industry has lost some of its former allure.
We need to stop thinking that arts, heritage, culture and recreational activities are for the elite or that they are frills, burdens or unnecessary affectations. We need to start to regard these things as essential to ALL of Chatham-Kent's future and we ALL need to promote, patronize and support these types of activities. We can no longer afford to run behind local or provincial governments and ask them where they are going so that we can follow them. We need instead to stand up and say that this is where we want to go and we need their leadership!
I know this goes against what many residents of Chatham-Kent have come to accept as a truism but instead of spending money on those things that were important and vital in the 1950s and 1960s, maybe we should spend money on those things that will be important in the 2000s. After all, what have we got to lose?
Let's not be like those people who see things as they are and say "Why". Let us be, instead, more like those individuals who see things that never were and say..."WHY NOT!"
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
