Announcing
1997 recipient of the
Lake Superior Magazine
Achievement Award
Given to:
The North of Superior Marina Marketing Association
When the Canadian Pacific Railway first opened Ontario's
rugged Lake Superior north shore for land travel, the need for boat travel
in that sparsely populated area virtually ended. Then, interest in boating
the north shore was rekindled with the completion of the Trans Canada Highway
across the top of Lake Superior in 1960, encouraging fishermen and other
boaters to trailer boats to launching sites to spend time on the water.
As more people grew enthused, facilities to accommodate those boaters became
more common.
Today, thanks to the promotional efforts of our Lake Superior Magazine
Achievement
Award winner and those communities that developed boating facilities, many
more boaters are lured by the scenery and security of this watery getaway.
"The North of Superior Marina Marketing Association (NSMMA) is our 1997
Achievement Award winner," announces Paul L. Hayden, editor of Lake
Superior Magazine. "Its effort is exemplary not only because it promotes
boating on Lake Superior's Canadian north shore, but because it is also
a cooperative effort between several travel promotion groups in Canada.
"Essentially, it is as if all of the marinas on the U.S. shoreline got
together and agreed to jointly promote Lake Superior boating. It's a great
idea and NSMMA has already made it work," Hayden notes.
About four years ago, the idea for NSMMA was broached by Bruce Pritchard
of Thunder Bay during a meeting of the North of Superior Tourism Association.
NSMMA was formed of representatives from the communities between Thunder
Bay and Wawa. The group had barely adopted a three-year plan when the Algoma
Kinniwabi Travel Association on the eastern shoreline expressed an interest
in coordinating efforts to benefit both groups. Among other benefits, the
Sault Ste. Marie-based Algoma association attends tourism shows in Chicago
and more easterly locations, while NSMMA promotes in the central Midwest
of the United States.
 This
combined effort drew the attention of the Trent-Severn Travel Association,
which serves an area that includes a huge number of boaters with barely
a nodding acquaintance of Lake Superior, and that association also came
aboard.
The NSMMA was able to unite three Ontario tourism areas into a common promotional
goal, reflecting the ability to cut across regional biases.
This cooperation now promotes boating an area that would take three weeks
to travel by water and includes Canadian shoreline scenery stretching from
the Pigeon River on western Lake Superior through the Soo Locks, Georgian
Bay on Lake Erie and the Lake Ontario shoreline east to Trenton.
"The neat part of all this," Hayden says, "is that they have transcended
regional boundaries and biases to serve boaters and the cities that offer
services to boaters. This is a model more of us need to emulate around
Lake Superior."
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