Join us for a talk by our guest, Dr Kevin James of the University of Guelph Department of History,

“’[T]he Highlander is glad to see the tourist, as the hunter is glad to see game’: The Victorian Traveller in Scotland”

7:30-9:00 pm. Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014. Room 7000, SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver.

This talk will bring to life a prominent figure in Victorian travel writing:  the Highland innkeeper, drawing on humorous tourists’ remarks and vivid illustrations.  Appraisals of Highland hospitality, which travellers claimed was dispensed in measures as limited as whisky at a Highland inn on Sunday, offer us an opportunity to consider the inn as a site of welcome and refreshment, the strictures of Victorian Sabbatarianism, and the struggles of the innkeeper against challenges thrown up by landlordism, Nature and the volatile tourist market.  In the face of such inhospitable conditions, how hospitable could the innkeeper afford to be?