Covering Niagara: Studies in Local Popular Culture

Weaving Local Identity: The Niagara Region Tartan and the Invention of Tradition

WEAVING LOCAL IDENTITY The Niagara Region Tartan and the Invention of Tradition GREG GILLESPIE INTRODUCTION In the spring of 2007 the Niagara Regional Police Pipe Band (NRPPB) created a new tartan to mark its thirtieth anniversary. The band unveiled the tartan at an annual tug-of-war competition between local Canadian and American police services held on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. Surrounded by the community, tourists, and members of local organizations, the band led its team to the centre of the international bridge while proudly displaying the new tartan. Although the Niagara Regional Police (NRP) lost the match to their American counterparts, the community responded favourably to the new “Niagara Region” tartan. Newspaper reports recorded the event, retold the creation of the plaid, and set the tartan within the approval of local government and community organizations.1 Newspapers expressed the band’s desire to create a new tartan that reflected the community of Niagara—they wanted “something that’s ours.”2 Despite the newness of the Niagara Region tartan, the unveiling of the plaid marked the expression of regional history, identity, and the invention of a local tradition. I analyze the local meanings woven into the Niagara Region tartan by situating the plaid as an invented tradition, as a recently constructed artifact of material culture, and explain the role that local and international organizations played in the authentication, codification, and institutionalization of the tartan. In accomplishing these tasks, I also provide additional historical and cultural context on tartan generally, such as addressing the origin of tartan and the proliferation of tartans drawn from popular culture. I close 337 338 Borderline Matters by considering the Niagara Region tartan as a commodified expression of Highlandism, a historically marginalized Scottish identity traditionally associated with the tourist industry in Scotland and abroad. Over the last two decades, the notion of tradition invention forwarded by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger has received much scholarly attention , including critique of the concept’s heavy ideological assumptions. Tradition invention studies focus on the deconstruction of tradition and seek to “expose” the historical “realities” behind traditions and myths. Also called “bubble-bursting” studies, research like this suggests that invented traditions are laughable, fake, or invalid as cultural forms. Even the etymology of the term contributes to confusion about what tradition inventions means. In common usage, invention typically suggests newness and tradition implies something old (Tuleja 1997, 3–4). However, tradition need not imply an ancient lineage, and invention simply refers to discovering something. Moreover , Hobsbawm and Ranger failed to define the concept specifically and, as a result, scholars have loosely used the idea across numerous academic literatures (1992, 1–14). The concept of tradition invention includes a number of implicit assumptions. Hobsbawm and Ranger seem to suggest that tradition is static and reactionary rather than being constantly adaptive and creative.3 This contributed to the false notion that tradition and modernity stand in juxtaposition. The notion of tradition invention carries the suggestion of manipulation or imposition and implies that some traditions are more genuine and authentic than others. Hobsbawm and Ranger failed to distinguish between the traditions they viewed as invented and other forms of tradition.4 They also failed to explicate how traditions require continual reinvention and interpretation. Traditions are temporal and a reflection of the social, cultural, and historical contexts of their renewal. Perhaps most importantly , invented traditions and practices and artifacts of material culture, such as the Niagara Region tartan, carry meaning. These symbolize local community and represent a people’s connection with a shared past. In my view, proving or disproving the authenticity of the tartan as an invented tradition is a fruitless exercise (Basu 2007, 123). Authenticity is a cultural construct and as such classifications of authenticity are relative and dependant on the determiner (Tuleja 1997, 3–4). Whether or not we view an invented tradition as authentic misses the point. People take meaning from activities and artifacts of material culture regardless of their age. Even a new cultural activity can be perceived as highly rule-bound and ritualized. Traditions glossed with the veneer of authenticity typically support some sort of underlying social, cultural, or economic agenda. Of greater interest here are the processes through which invented traditions are draped with notions of authenticity to construct them as official or traditional. Put differently, I am interested in the processes through which the tartan became acknowledged as an institutional and community...