Canada and the British immigrant

by Emily P. Weaver

THIS, by far the smallest of the Canadian provinces, seems to exercise a peculiar charm on all who visit or dwell within it. “Abegweit”—“Rest on the Wave”—was the poetic name bestowed upon it by its Indian inhabitants; and rugged Jacques Cartier, the Breton explorer, described the country in glowing terms as “the most beautiful it is possible to see . . . full of beautiful trees and meadows . . . of pease, white and red gooseberries, strawberries, blackberries and wild grain like rye,” and having “the best temperature it is possible to see.”

In shape Prince Edward Island bears some resemblance to a crescent with the two horns turned northwards, and the outer curve lying from nine to fifteen miles away from the corresponding curve of the mainland shores of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Its greatest length is about one hundred and forty miles, and its greatest breadth thirty-four miles, but its shores are so deeply indented with bays and inlets that the distance between water and water is in places only two miles.

Its soil is peculiarly fertile; and compared with the other provinces—all of which have large stretches of wild land, either uncultivated or uncultivable—it may well claim the title of the “Garden of the Gulf,” for 86 per cent. of its surface is occupied by farms, and very little of the remaining 14 per cent. is actually worthless for agriculture.

It has no mountains or wild, rugged hills, no great forests, and of course no great rivers; but the land is pleasantly undulating, vegetation is usually richly green, contrasting with soil of a warm reddish hue, with glints of shining water, or with lines of snowy breakers, roaring on the sands. In general the character of the scenery is mild and gentle and smiling; with a glad wealth of colour when the orchards are breaking into bloom, or when the first touch of frost is kindling a magic glow amongst the maples and sumach trees. But the wildly-beating surf on the reefs of the north shore forbids that even here nature’s majesty and strength and terror should be forgotten.

The climate is milder than that of the mainland near by, neither so sharply cold in winter nor so fiercely hot in summer, though all writers have praise for the “Island’s” clear blue skies and plenitude of sunlight.

Prince Edward Island is reached by steamers from Point du Chêne in New Brunswick to Summerside; and from Pictou in Nova Scotia to Charlottetown; or from Pictou to Georgetown, when the strait is full of ice. Strongly-built ice-breaking steamers, however, usually manage to keep open communication with the capital of the little province; and in winter there is an “ice-boat service,” by which the adventurous can cross from Cape Tormentine to Cape Traverse. The ice-boat is contrived to travel either in water or on the ice by means of “twin keels,” which in case of necessity serve as “runners.”

The people, however, have for long demanded improved means of communication with the mainland, and at last a “car-ferry” steamer (powerful enough to force its way through the worst ice) is to be constructed to connect the railway on the island with the Intercolonial line on the mainland. Both are owned by the Dominion government. “The island railway is of a narrow gauge, but it is to be changed this year to the standard gauge (4 ft. 8½ ins.) of the Canadian and American lines.” When this is done, Prince Edward Island will be very happily situated in the matter of transportation service, for into her three counties, all with easy water-communication, is packed a well-branched railway line of two hundred and sixty miles.

Prince Edward Island was first called the Island of St. John, but historians are not agreed as to who bestowed this name upon “the right little, tight little island.” Some people think it was John Cabot; some Samuel Champlain; but, at any rate, it bore the name from the time its history began until 1799, when it was re-christened in honour of Queen Victoria’s father. In 1663 it was granted by the “Company of New France” to a French naval officer, Doublet, and a few fishing stations were established. As late as 1728 it had only three hundred inhabitants; but after the deportation of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755, a good many of these hapless people took refuge in the peaceful island. It was annexed by the British the year before the capture of Quebec, and was amongst the territories formally ceded to England by the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

In 1767 the soil of nearly the whole island was disposed of in one day to officers and other gentlemen, who agreed to settle the country, and, by paying small “quit-rents” for their lands, to provide for the cost of government. Small reservations were made for the support of churches and schools; but the plan, it may be said, was an utter failure, saddling the island for many years with a class of absentee landlords, who did practically nothing for the country. For more than a century the cultivators of the soil remained in the position of tenants.

In 1873, when the province agreed to enter into Confederation, the Dominion government granted $800,000 (£160,000) to aid in buying out the land-owners; but many would not sell, till an Act was passed in 1875 obliging them to sell at a fair price to the Provincial government, which in turn sold to the tenants.