Beaches, beaches, beaches! Vivid colors: rusty red cliffs, sapphire blue water, every shade of green in the grasses and trees, white sand, pale yellow fields of grain, an artist’s palette of colors for the wildflowers, rainbow colored deck chairs marching across lawns, and the most spectacular sunsets and moonrises imaginable. Fields and fields of potatoes, soybeans, buckwheat, oats, barley, wheat, corn, and more and more potatoes extending all the way to the ocean shore. Fishing fleets, lobster boats, mussel and oyster farms. Gift shops, tourists, bike paths. Peaceful, pastoral, serene. That is Prince Edward Island!
PEI is a very small island, less than 170 miles across from east to west, and much less from north to south. It is almost three islands because there are three definite parts, each just barely attached to its neighbor. The southern shore is on the Northumberland Strait, the northern shore is on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Eastern Point gets blasted by the North Atlantic and its strong winds. The middle gets the most press and the most tourists, probably because Charlottetown, the largest city with 65,000 people, is there as well as the National Park and Anne of Green Gables. The other 65,000 people who live on the island are scattered all over with most towns having only a few hundred people in them.
If you can’t tell, we love it! We still love Newfoundland best because it was so different: harsh and rugged and vast, but PEI is a beach lover’s paradise, and I love the beach. As usual, we’ve explored all of the nooks and crannies, trying to find the best camping places. As often as possible we found campsites at the end of one or another red dirt road right next to the sandy beach. One night we camped at the end of a red dirt road right next to a lighthouse with red cliffs between us and the beautiful ocean. So you can tell that there is a lot of red dirt here. We met some musicians who wrote a song called, “The Red Dirt Road” about PEI!
We’ve seen beautiful sunsets and moonrises. The first night we had a campfire on the beach we suddenly saw something in the distance that looked like a tent that was so brightly lit it must have been on fire. Then we realized we were looking at the moon on the horizon, and watched in awe as it rose slowly into the sky like a hot air balloon. As it rose, it’s color changed from orange to pale yellow. While that was happening, the last redness from the sunset was fading in the east, and the white frothy waves were being drawn into shore. The waves looked eerie, almost iridescent, because a floodlight from one of the cottages down the way was shining on them. They were coming into shore quickly, their paths seeming to change, and they looked almost like they were being pulled into shore by fluttering ribbons, much like those used in gymnastics. After that every night we looked for the moonrise as much as the sunset!
Of course we had to visit Green Gables. Both of us have watched the videos made from the books, and love the characters. Watching the “Anne” movies and the tv show “Avonlea” was one reason we decided to take our Maritime Provinces trip. We loved the scenery in the shows, which were supposed to be here on PEI. Of course, most of the shows were shot elsewhere in Canada, but in locations that looked like PEI did 100 years ago.
Green Gables, which Lucy Maud Montgomery used as the setting of her books, is now a National Historic Site. Lucy didn’t live there, she lived with her grandparents nearby, but her cousins owned Green Gables and she spent a lot of time there. I think she patterned Anne after much of herself: an orphan raised by an elderly man and woman, a young girl who liked to use her imagination and also to write, a young lady who taught in the one-room school near her house, and a young lady who loved the area in which she grew up.
One day we went to Avonlea Village. We weren’t really sure what it was, thinking it was just another town where restored buildings are brought in and demonstrations of the time period go on. We were pleasantly surprised! Avonlea Village is an experience! Luckily we got there when it first opened, because the action starts then. They have the characters from the Anne books, and recreate scenes from the first story in different places in the town. We saw Anne’s arrival on the island, the first time she met Matthew and Marilla, her green hair dye, and when Diana accidentally got drunk. Later we went to school, where I called called up to the front, and gave the wrong answer. No dunce cap for me, though! The schoolmaster just figured people from New York didn’t have the “right kind of learnin’ like they do in PEI”. There were more scenes from the book reenacted during the day, lots of singing by a great ceilidh band, beautiful houses to explore, buggy rides, lots of stuff for kids to do, and constant street scenes with Gilbert and Charlie doing what little boys do. One little boy of about 10 told his grandmother after the first scene reenactment that “this is for babies.” He soon got into the action, following Gilbert and Charlie around, playing pranks with them and on them. After a short time, he was totally hooked, and will probably long remember his adventures in Avonlea.
One night we went to the musical “Anne of Green Gables” in Charlottetown. It was wonderful. They had chosen shorter actors and actresses to play the students, and taller people to play the adults, so it didn’t look unreal. The woman who played Anne was about 30, but played the part of 11 year old Anne to 16 year old Anne very well. She was probably less than 5 feet tall and very slight, but she had the biggest voice! She was excellent in the part.
I, of course, bought some Anne books. For the 100th anniversary of the release of “Anne of Green Gables,” an author okayed by LM Montgomery’s descendants wrote a wonderful book about where Anne came from and how she happened to have such an astounding vocabulary. It is called “Before Green Gables” by Budge Wilson.
There are bike trails all over the island. The old railroad bed has been made into a bike trail, and extends from east to west. Also, the national park which owns most of the coastline in the northern central section of the island has miles and miles of paved trails running right along the ocean. It was really fun to ride along the coast and see the spectacular views of the cliffs and the water.
PEI was having Old Home Days at Charlottetown last week. That is like our county fair. PEI is a province, and that is like a state, but because PEI is so small, their fair was more like our county fair than state fair. The women’s craft exhibits and young 4-Her’s exhibits were wonderful. Besides beautiful quilts, hooked rugs, needlework of many kinds, jams, jellies, and pies, they had categories for photography and scrapbooking. I think I could have competed in those!
When we went to the western third of the island, it was lobster season! The other parts of the island are through with their lobster season as it was in May and June. Of course we had to get fresh lobster right off the boat! We had been watching tens of boats off the shore all morning pulling their traps, checking their catches, and putting the traps back down, or taking the traps to a different location. When we got to the harbor, we watched them unload their catch, then went and bought two big ones!
We also saw boats unloading what we thought at first was Irish moss, a seaweed that is harvested here and used to make carageum (sp?) to thicken ice cream, cottage cheese, pudding, and many other things. At the second harbor we visited, we found out it was not Irish moss after all, but fuscilarium or “foo foo.” Foo foo is an invasive species that is taking over the Irish moss beds. It is harvested and used as an additive to thicken paint, but foo foo only brings 6 cents a pound whereas Irish moss brings 25 cents a pound. Both seaweeds are harvested by boats dragging rakes across the sea bottom. Irish moss also comes into shore with high winds, and people of all ages will rake it up and put it on wagons or trucks to be hauled to the “Seaweed Store.” They also use workhorses pulling rakes near the shoreline to harvest the moss.
Since this is supposed to be Irish moss territory, we went to a restaurant and had Seaweed Pie. It sounds horrible, but it was delicious! The carageum is just used to thicken the pudding that covers the top of a delicious sponge cake topped with berry syrup!
The Maritime Provinces were all heavily settled by immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, and France. When Britain finally got control of the land here from France they, at first, deported all of the French settlers who were already here. Then they said that the area could only be settled by non-British settlers. At the time, of course, anyone who was not a British subject was their enemy, so that meant there was no one to settle here. The government of Britain soon changed their mind, and welcomed Scottish and Irish settlers to these lands, After a few years, still needing more settlers, they allowed the French back in also. Later, of course, people from other areas, including New England and England, settled here.
Anyway, those three cultures have heavily influenced the music here in the Maritimes. We’ve been to several performances in all of the provinces except New Brunswick, and we’ve enjoyed all types of music. Here in PEI, we’ve been to a couple of ceilidhs and to a wonderful performance at the College of Piping. The ceilidhs here included lots of songs about PEI with fishing, potatoes, and the red roads being a large part of the lyrics. That sounds funny, but the songs are quite good, and really tell about the province and the feelings life here evokes. The Highland Storm concert was great, too, spotlighting the Scottish and Irish heritage. Most of the performers were high school and college students who are studying there. There were lots of bagpipers and drummers, one fiddler, and several highland dancers as well as step-dancers. It was an energetic performance to say the least!
Unlike Newfoundland which was settled to provide codfish to England, PEI was settled for its great farmland, not fishing at all. Besides farming, it was also important in the shipbuilding industry. In its hay day in the mid 1800s, hundreds of ships were being built here every year. We visited the ship building museum, though not many items related to that trade are still around. They did have a lot of information about the ships that were built, however. The best part of that museum was the huge house that had been built by the Yeo family who were the island’s richest boatbuilders. It was a huge house with 3 stories and a cupola on top. Unlike most museums, we were allowed on all of the floors and in all of the rooms. From the cupola, you could see the bay and where the ships had been built. The house is furnished like it would have been in the mid to late 1800s, and guides there explain what all of the little strange-to-us items were used for at the time. The house was lived in until the late 1950s.
There are hundreds of small farms dotting the island, and like I mentioned previously, farmland goes all the way to the ocean. There are fancy houses along the ocean, but there are also farms and businesses selling cars, auto parts, or whatever. Not all of the shoreline has become “prime real estate,” probably because there is so much shoreline, and the farms were here long before tourism. Most of the farms grow potatoes, and some grow other vegetables or grains. Several have dairy or beef cows, and a few have horses, sheep, or alpacas. Most of the “interior” part of the island is still farmland. Seeing all of the farms and dirt roads reminds me a lot of Candor in the 1950s when our prime industry there was farming.
I have loved all of the beaches: some with white sand, some with red, a few with just red rocks. There are so many that except in the national parks, most of the beaches are not crowded at all. There are beautiful red sandstone cliffs, and miles and miles of sandy dunes to admire and walk along. The harbors are all very interesting, too,with fishing sheds lining the shore and crab pots and unused lobster traps piled here and there. With fishermen bringing in their catch of the day, and boats going in and out, there is always lots of activity there to watch and fishermen around to explain things to curious people like us.
It will be difficult to leave this friendly place, but in a few days we’ll start heading home, spending a few days in Maine along the way.
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