Abstract

Based on fieldwork conducted over three months in the Mackenzie Delta communities of Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, this thesis explores tourism in the Western Arctic as a product of a newly completed all season highway. The new Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway (ITH) connects the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, a community of 900 people on the Beaufort Sea, to the North American public highway system and has led to a steady rush of road trippers, overlanders, motorcyclists, cycle-trekkers, and RVers into the region. Ostensibly an extension of the already famous Dempster Highway, the ITH has captured the imaginations of travellers and set online forums and blogs abuzz with accounts of a new Arctic destination. Narratives of adventure, of unspoilt wilderness and rugged frontier towns abound in the accounts of travellers, paired with an acute awareness of the explosive potential for change in communities seeing several times their residential numbers in visitors during the short summer months. Taking an approach centered on the stories told and the interactive intersections of infrastructure, material goods, and people, this project hopes to use a specific moment of touristic activity to speak to larger notions of leisure travel, engagement with nature, and the fetishization of particular places.