Into the mountains and across the country: emergent forms of equine adventure leisure in Canada

This paper draws upon Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘lines of flight’ to analyze the complex inter-relationship between people and their animals as enacted through adventure travel. Two narrative case studies illustrate how the human/horse relationship has been used to transform and/or escape from power relations. The first takes place during the early twentieth century with Mary Shaffer challenging Victorian gender and class relations through her exertions into what is now Jasper National Park in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. Similarly, second is the journey of Barbara Kingscote, who after the Second World War rode her horse from Quebec across Canada. Each case study constitutes an emergent form of adventure leisure that involves a companion species. In forging dialogic and material alliances based on a mutual ethics of caring, participants seek out ‘lines of flight’ from territorializing social forces and by doing so discover new territories in which to inhabit.