Leisure today The Sixth Canadian Congress on Leisure Research held on 9-12 May 1990 at the University of Waterloo, Canada, provided a comprehensive overview of many aspects of leisure. Chris Ryan of the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Saskatchewan reports on some of the topics discussed including allocation of time for leisure pursuits by our current post-industrial society, satisfaction derived from such pursuits and their impact on host communities.

The Si.vlll Cnncltlinn Corlgrrss OII Lei-

sure Resecwch was held at the Uni- versity of Waterloo, Canada, and was chaired by Professor Stephen Smith. Over 140 delegates attended, with a total of 90 papers being presented. The sessions were divided into themes, these being. ‘Development, lifestyle and aging’, ‘Leisure program- mes and services for persons with dis- abilities‘, ‘Management and evalua- tion of leisure services and products’, ‘Outdoor recreation and parks/ heritage areas’, ‘Philosophy and his- tory of leisure’, ‘Psychology and social psychology of leisure’, ‘Research methods’. ‘Sociology of leisure’, ‘Tourism and commercial recreation’, ‘Women in leisure services’. ‘Women and leisure, constraints and opportu- nities’, and ‘Leisure constraints’.

Time famine

With over 90 papers being presented it was impossible to attend all the ses- sions. This summary can therefore be described as eclectic at best, and in- adequate at worst! The first keynote speaker, Professor Susan Shaw from Dalhousie University, proposed that contrary to the initial hopes of writers the emerging post-industrial society was not leading to an extension of leisure time. Indeed, contemporary society was increasingly being marked by a ‘time famine’. Evidence of this was to be found in a careful analysis of Canadian data on the working week. and on research into hours spent in leisure. This presentation gave rise to a debate on the impact of demog- raphics on the working week statistics

as reported by governments. and on the meaning of leisure and participa- tion rates. Indeed. as was pointed out. Shaw’s own data indicated that those working longer hours had only a mar- ginal decrease in hours spent on lei- sure, indicating possibly a wish to pre- serve time for leisure pursuits. Tess Kay from Loughborough University subsequently presented a paper which indicated that it was those with the highest participation rates in leisure pursuits who reported the greatest constraints of time, a finding with which others from Australia and Canada tended to concur. The experi- ence of time was reported by Roger Mannell, University of Waterloo. who reported on research that required respondents to record their percep- tions of how quickly time was passing. His findings supported the popular notion that Monday was the day on which time ‘dragged’ longest.

Involvement

The nature of involvement in leisure and tourism pursuits was fully ex- plored by Judith Voekl and Gary Ellis from the University of Utah who argued that an eight-stage model along the dimensions of ‘challenge‘ and ‘exercising of skill’ could help to explain the satisfaction that people had from their leisure pursuits. This theme was taken up by Garv Chick and John Roberts, (Universities of Illinois and Pittsburgh respectively) who reported on tension-relief. approach-avoidance continua as de- terminants of quitting or staying in a Monday-night pool league. This was a

well presented paper, which also noted the potential impact of alcohol on both respondents and participant researchers! Satisfaction from parti- cipation was examined by a number of papers, notably by Sandra Hupp (Washington State University). and Judy Sefton (Alberta Centre for Well- being). Both of these papers. and others, noted also their difficulty in replicating the leisure motivation scale of Beard and Ragheb in terms of factor analysis supporting the numbers and types of factors.

Paul Wilkinson and Alex Murray (York University, Ontario) presented a detailed account of the impact of tourism on the Collingwood region which covered not only the housing market, the host community reaction to tourism, the emergent corruption relating to construction contracts and the employment patterns. but also attempted to do so within a holistic context. The theme of tourism impact was also explored further by Geoff Wall (University of Waterloo) in a field trip looking at the Mennonite communities of southern Ontario, and how the Mennonites were attempting to portray their own image to tourists through the Mennonite Meeting Place, an exhibition on kiennonite life and beliefs sited at St Jacobs. Howev- er, in many ways the main threats to the rural communities came not from tourism, it was argued, but from the increasing urban sprawl of the Toron- to commuter belt.

The proceedings of the conference are available from Ontario Research Council on Leisure, City of Missis- sauga, 3235 Mavis Road. Mississauga. Ontario, or from the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies. The University of Waterloo.

Chris Ryan The Tourism and Recreation

Studies Unit Department of Business Studies

Nottingham Business School Burton Street, Nottingham

NGl 4BU, UK

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