Landscape plagiarism again: Alberta-on-Sea

A while ago, I picked up on the odd need of tourism promoters to expropriate other people's landscapes in their advertising (Spain's Costa Brava boasting a Bahamas beach); now its happened again, this time perhaps even more bizarrely. The last time I checked the condition of the earth's geography, the Canadian province of Alberta was a long way from the sea. But what's wrong with a little re-branding exercise? As part of a $25 million promotional campaign, the Alberta Government has conjured up a major marine transgression and committed an ethical one themselves, using an image of a young girl, clearly having fun, but on a British beach. We all know that there are lakes in Alberta, but this is ridiculous. And so it has been viewed by the rest of the world  - "derision" is the word most used in the Canadian media. The location is actually on the northeast English coast (hence the need for a wooly sweater) near the town of Bamburgh and the scene-stealing was discovered by Peter Bailey who knew that Alberta had plenty of lakes with sandy shores but no coast. He tracked down the real setting after pestering the Canadian government and tourist authorities with e-mails. And here's the good stuff: under the headline "We screwed up," various Albertan government representatives have been quoted as saying (feel free to laugh out loud as you read - I did):

There had been “no attempt to make people think that the place pictured was Alberta”

"We all knew that every single image we put out to represent Alberta had to be of Alberta, or we would be roasted. Then we screwed up.… We're sorry."

“This slide represents Albertans’ concern for the future of the world”

Tom Olsen, the director of media relations for Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, said: “There’s no attempt to mislead. That picture fitted the mood and tone of what we were trying to do. Children are a symbol of the future. They symbolise that Albertans are a worldly people.”

Well, the Albertans are proud of their "freedom to create".......

Of course, the Northumberland tourism folk, whose beach it is, are quite pleased: “We think it's quite funny — a landlocked province in Canada presenting an image of itself as an island,” said a marketing executive, “But Northumberland Tourism is actually really thrilled that a picture of a beach in our area is being used for the Alberta campaign. We see it as promoting the beauty of the North of England, which is often neglected. I hope that when people in Alberta realise where the beach is, they’ll come to visit.”

This is the real beach (the Albertans clearly did not want to include the caravan - mobile home - parks) which is indeed a great sweep of sand backed by dunes.

 

The Canadians were also hijacking some great (but inappropriate geology). This is the coast where the Lower Carboniferous comes down to the sea, the marine, estuarine, fluvial and deltaic sediments that inundated the worn-down Devonian Old Red Sandstone continent. The sculpture of the coast reflects the underlying stratigraphy, and Bamburgh Castle, just to the north, is built on the Whin Sill, a late Carboniferous igneous intrusion whose scarp today winds across the country and forms the foundation for great stretches of Hadrian's Wall. For yes, we are close to the Scottish border here, just a little south of Siccar Point where James Hutton had his flash of inspiration and the unconformity named after him. From its origins in the 11th century, Bamburgh Castle had a torrid history, given its location, but its various sieges and battles were historically predictable, unlike today's Canadian invasion.

 

And, while we're at it, there have been other examples of landscape plagiarism - the English city of Birmingham has used images of its namesake in Alabama, the northwest England industrial town of Rochdale has  expropriated images of the industrial city of Manchester, and Bamburgh Castle has been used to attract folk to Scotland (which has many spectacular castles of its own).

[Bamburgh Castle and beach photo, Gemma Longman, Creative Commons License] 

Comments

[Jules]

One of the great aspects of Google Earth and other satellite views is that now almost everyone can see the whole and unvarnished picture without the embellishments of sometimes disingenuous advertising.

[Sandglass]

Yup - it's all there for all to see, which is great - but it's incredible how many idot folk think they can still get away with such stuff!

[tricks]

They are many unexplored places in the world in the world, and i think sometimes what you call" lanscape plagiarism" can help discover those unpopular but still elegant places, i would love some one to go to Haiti and do that, we have a lot of great unpopular monumental places

[Sandglass]

You're right - this kind of thing can certainly draw people's attention to relatively unknown yet beautiful places. If only people's attention could be drawn more directly!