Above: Glacier National Park, Montana, part of the
Crown of the Continent. Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot

On the Border

The destination-based geotourism approach may be a way to join back together what the 9-11 attacks tore asunder 13 years ago: an easygoing U.S.-Canadian border. You still need passports to cross, but these geotourism projects focus on the destination as a whole, regardless of bisection by the political boundary.

Canoeists especially may welcome the latest entry: “Heart of the Continent. This new National Geographic Geotourism MapGuide program just launched in the border lakes region of northeastern Minnesota and adjacent portions of western Ontario, as reported on the U.S. side and the Canadian side. Supervised by the international Heart of the Continent Partnership, the project will create a cobranded geotourism printed map and website for the triangular area reaching from Thunder Bay, ON west to International Falls, MN and south to Duluth, also including Isle Royale.

This marks the third U.S.-Canada transborder geotourism project, following Crown of the Continent (Montana-Alberta-B.C.) and Lakes to Locks (N.Y.-Quebec). Exploration is now underway for yet a fourth, the Okanagan Valley (B.C.-Washington). Notably, one of the earliest MapGuide projects bridged a different, tougher border: Arizona (U.S.) and Sonora, Mexico. It yielded an excellent (I think) detailed print map of the Sonoran Desert but lacked a strong supervisory geotourism stewardship council that would keep the program going.

And in Alaska

Elsewhere in geotourism developments, a statewide group convened by the University of Alaska has launched a geotourism initiative and posted an Alaskan Geotourism Charter. The group is now reviewing ideas for bringing tourism benefits to Alaskan gateway communities. Many feel bypassed by tourists either on cruise-line package tours or transferring by charter flights to high-end wilderness lodges. We expect you will be hearing more about this effort.

And in Philippines

And I myself just finished a geotourism speaking tour in the Philippines, invited by a Manila-based event planner who believes Philippine tourism has lost a sense of identity. Two lectures in Manila and one each with press coverage in Baguio and Legazpi introduced the geotourism approach to some 3,500 Filipino university students and a variety of professional practitioners.