Covering Niagara

Covering Niagara: Studies in Local Popular Culture closely examines some of the myriad forms of popular culture in the Niagara region of Canada. Essays consider common assumptions and definitions of what popular culture is and seek to determine whether broad theories of popular culture can explain or make sense of localized instances of popular culture and the cultural experiences of people in their daily lives. Among the many topics covered are local bicycle parades and war memorials, cooking and wine culture, radio and movie-going, music stores and music scenes, tourist sites, and blackface minstrel shows. The authors approach their subjects from a variety of critical and historical perspectives and employ a range of methodologies that includes cultural studies, textual analysis, archival research, and participant interviews. Altogether, Covering Niagara provides a richly diverse mapping of the popular culture of a particular area of Canada and demonstrates the complexities of everyday culture.

Covering Niagara: Studies in Local Popular Culture closely examines some of the myriad forms of popular culture in the Niagara region of Canada. Essays consider common assumptions and definitions of what popular culture is and seek to determine whether broad theories of popular culture can explain or make sense of localized instances of popular culture and the cultural experiences of people in their daily lives. Among the many topics covered are local bicycle parades and war memorials, cooking and wine culture, radio and movie-going, music stores and music scenes, tourist sites, and blackface minstrel shows. The authors approach their subjects from a variety of critical and historical perspectives and employ a range of methodologies that includes cultural studies, textual analysis, archival research, and participant interviews. Altogether, Covering Niagara provides a richly diverse mapping of the popular culture of a particular area of Canada and demonstrates the complexities of everyday culture.

Full of heroes and villains, eccentrics and daredevils, scientists, and power brokers, Niagara has a contemporary resonance: how a great natural wonder created both the industrial heartland of southern Ontario and the worst pollution on the continent.

Strand reveals the hidden history of America's most iconic natural wonder, Niagara Falls, illuminating what it says about our history, our relationship with the environment, and ourselves.

The World of Niagara Wine is a transdisciplinary exploration of the Niagara wine industry. In the first section, contributors explore the history and regulation of wine production as well as its contemporary economic significance. The second section focuses on the entrepreneurship behind and the promotion and marketing of Niagara wines. The third introduces readers to the science of grape growing, wine tasting, and wine production, and the final section examines the social and cultural ramifications of Niagara’s increasing reliance on grapes and wine as an economic motor for the region. The original research in this book celebrates and critiques the local wine industry and situates it in a complex web of Old World traditions and New World reliance on technology, science, and taste as well as global processes and local sociocultural reactions. Preface by Konrad Ejbich.

Visitors may wonder how Niagara Falls came to be the site of magnificent bridges, a famous cereal factory, and a picturesque New York state reservation, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Although many have always admired the natural splendor of the Falls, William Irwin explains that it was not until the mid-1800s that Niagara truly captured the American imagination. With the coming of John Roebling's railway suspension bridge in 1855 came the promise of a "new" Niagara, one in which nature and technology could flourish in harmony. Although some saw the transformation of Niagara Falls as a national shame, for many others it stimulated utopian visions of a great modern America. Tourists flocked to a place that showcased both the beauty of nature and the marvels of technology. Companies such as Shredded Wheat (later absorbed by Nabisco) fed on the public's expectations of novel and revolutionary progress at Niagara. The Shredded Wheat factory and the Niagara Power Company became tourist attractions in their own right. Some developers went so far as to claim that their works exceeded Niagara's natural beauty. It was not until the 1920s that failed expectations revealed the scope of the blighted landscape. By taking us back to a period when Niagara Falls was appreciated as much for its utopian promise as for its natural beauty, The New Niagara reveals America's remarkable romance with technology and its faith in human mastery of the environment.

Since the late nineteenth century, Niagara Falls has been heavily engineered to generate energy behind a flowing façade designed to appeal to tourists. Fixing Niagara Falls reveals the technological feats and cross-border politics that facilitated the transformation of one of the most important natural sites in North America. Daniel Macfarlane shows how this natural wonder is essentially a tap: huge tunnels around the reconfigured Falls channel the waters of the Niagara River, which ebb and flow according to the tourism calendar. This book offers a unique interdisciplinary and transborder perspective on how the Niagara landscape embodies the power of technology and nature.