Eminent Islanders started from a small but growing bookcase on the history of Prince Edward Island. From personal stories to academic tomes, from diaries and letters to historic records, from governmental and legislative archives to personal biographies, the history of Canada’s smallest province is an intriguing tale of the small among the great, of human endurance to great achievement. Her sons and daughters roamed the world, and brought renown to the councils of literary circles, the Church, the judiciary, academe, politics, and the professions. Aside from the good, the odd Islander warmed prison beds, feathered his nest from misdemeanors, everything from horse theft to stealing from private estates. The odd Islander also learned the worst from noble visitors, pompous men of action, and the great and near great, from one glass too many to slick rum running, from an over-weaning haughtiness to an exceptionally under-nourished verbosity. Small size and population put visitors under the microscope, and the Island has seen them all. Islanders are intensely loyal to their province and to their history. They know their own habits and prejudices, but they will extend their friendship and their charity far beyond what might be expected from such a small place where friendship is appreciated and extended without too much expected in return.
P.E.I., as it is affectionately known, is an island of some stature, known to many as the Island, home to Anne of Green Gables. As an Island, like thousands of other geographical places around the world, it is small by most features: acreage, people, economy, and diversity. Some called PEI Spud Island, or Canada’s Garden Province, the Million Acre Farm, or the Cradle of Confederation. Islanders call it the Island, as if there is no other. But PEI is a legal and provincial entity, one of ten provinces in Canada, with its own legislative system and two hundred and fifty years of recorded government - from the domination of the French royalty, the heyday of the British Empire, to the very founding of Canada in 1864. From the thousands of geographical islands around the world, few have a protracted history of peaceful legislative evolution, without war, revolt, oppression, or military rule.
As a small colony, with only 5000 people in 1800, or 90,000 by 1900, PEI is roughly the same size as many independent states in the West Indies. True, some islands can be very large – Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo come to mind – and some Islands were once vast colonial Empires – Britain and Japan, for instance – but Prince Edward Island is in a unique situation by more than geography or population. It has gone through different phases of development, from a small outlet in the once vast French commercial Empire of North America, protected by the might fortress of Louisburg, to a British colony isolated in the vast British Empire and casually taken over by London as part of the British holdings in North America. For a hundred years, the colony struggled: it was dominated by a cavalier colonial administration and Governors more interested in pleasing London or serving as vassals to the absentee landlords. Gradually, through settlements, planned or otherwise, it gained stature by population and commercial success to warrant measures of responsible government. PEI avoided the worst excesses of other jurisdictions, from slavery to rebellion, religious persecution to ethnic cleansing. Responsible government gave rise to new leadership and new responsibilities, and gradually and reluctantly, this small island became a province of Canada in the new Federal Dominion. That was in 1873, almost 350 years after it was first discovered by the French explorer, Jacques Cartier.
Within Canada, and as part of Canadian history, PEI has carved its own place, sometimes benign, sometimes cantankerous, and sometimes stupendous. Geography plays a role - a truly magnificent site, ever the more so to first time visitors. George Brown, the Editor of the Globe and a leading Father of Confederation, taking a warm swim in the Northumberland Strait of PEI, remarked that the Island was “as pretty a country as you ever put your eye upon.” Island geography has a heavy burden, because it largely shaped the economic, political and social life of the province. Like all British colonies, it fought for responsible government, not by the violent acts of 1789 in France, or the struggles in Ireland of 1798 or 1916, but the hardships were still real, and the land burden imposed by Imperial London were obtuse and objectionable and helped shape the Island’s approach to friendship. More specifically, geogra
