A POLITICAL PARADISE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4534, 9 February 1942, Page 7

A POLITICAL PARADISE

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND CANADA’S “TASMANIA” (By 5.8.) The ferry crosses the Strait of Northumberland in 45 minutes, for it is only nine miles from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island. Centuries ago the Micmac Indians paddled across in the bark canoes from the mainland to “Abegweit,” the “Island Cradled on the Waves.”

They say Lief Ericson knew the island during his Vineland expedition five centuries before Columbus. Jacques' Cartier, who was the first white man in the St. Lawrence, wrote of it in 1534, “The land is low and the most beautiful it is possible to see, and full of beautiful trees and meadows. This is a land of the best temperature.” It is like a crescent in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 145 miles long from east to west, but only three to 35 miles wide. The sea has worn the northern coasts until only a half of the ancient island remains. Now the sand dunes have formed a barrier against the Atlantic and the beaches are famous from Quebec to Boston.

The French named it Isle St. Jean, a name it retained for many years after the British occupation. In 1799 the new christening was in honour of the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria’s father, then commander in chief of the British forces in North America. British forces occupied Prince Edward Island after the fall of Louisburg in 1758, the act being confirmed by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. At first they ruled it as part of Nova Scotia, but after six years it was granted self government. As the first general assembly met at Charlottetown in 1773, this is not only the smallest, but one of the oldest provinces of Canada. EARLY TRAGEDY

Tragedy had already visited the island. The French had made their first permanent settlement on Charlottetown harbour. Immigration from Acadia (Nova Scotia) was steady until 1758. Then General Amherst sent Lord Rollo with an expedition to destroy the French settlement. This was the system of deportation to France which the French settlers in Acadia suffered, the most famous being Evangeline. From Prince Edward Island alone 6000 were deported in transports. Two ships, the Duke William and the Violet, foundered in a gale in sight of the English coast and 700 died.

There were only 30 Acadian families left on the island, and from these are descended the 13,000 Acadinans (French descent) in the province. Unfortunately for the isisland’s peace, absentee landlordism sprouted from the pernicious system of granted lords to court officials in London. The fight between the islanders and the London landlords was bitter, and was not settled until 1873, when the British Government advanced £200,000 to buy the lands from the owners and give it to the tenants. Between 1770 and 1783 British settlers flooded in, so that to-day, of the province’s 90,000 people, most are of original British pioneer stock. The rest are descended from the original 30 Acadian families—all of them of the old pioneer stock. No other’ province is so populated with citizens who can trace their Canadian ancestors for generations. Four out of five are farmers.

Politically, the province is the most interesting in Canada. Two facts alone make for this. Charlottetown is the Cradle of Federalism. In 1864 the confederation planners 'met in the old Legislative Assembly room in Parliament Buildings. They included delegates from Upper and Lower Canada (Quebec and Ontario), Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I. The original idea, was for a maritime confederation of the eastern provinces, but this blossomed into the complete union. Yet the island itself did not enter the union until 1873. A POLITICAL PARADISE The other political phenomenon is that the previous Government had every single seat.. In 1935 the Liberals swept the polls, and Thane A. Campbell, the Premier, had not a single dissentient voice in the Legislature of thirty members. This political paradise vanished in 1940, when the Liberals were returneed to power with four Tory opponents. The members receive what must be one of the smallest salaries of any M.’sP. in the world, 400dol. a year (about £AI33). The history of the island is crammed with interesting stories and facts. For instance, in 1775 two American privateers plundered the capital, Charlottetown, and took off the Acting Governor and SufveyorGeneral as prisoners to Washington’s head quarters. Washington dismissed the captains and apologised to the Province. In the National Park at Cavendish is a white farm house among the birches that make the island woods, with fences of rough rails, and where ducks wander along the paths. Millions of women and girls all over the world know it as “Green Gables,” where L. M. Montgomery’s “Anne” enjoyed her adventures. Part of his description of the island reads:—“But it still rains and shines, and blows and blossoms on the farm he tilled, and still in breeze and flower and meadow, the old

charm lingers yet. For our island is still ‘the island,’ and what other is there ?” MILLION-ACRE FARM They call the island “the Million Acre Farm,” for 1,000,000 of its 1,400,000 acres are under cultivation, a phenomenal percentage not approached on the American continent. The fishing industry is famous in North America, as the lobsters and oysters from the island’s coasts are regarded by New England and Montreal gourmets as the finest to be had. The silver fox industry is a major business, and it is often forgotten that fox farming began on the island. In 1887, Charles Dalton, the Lieuten-ant-Governor, began breeding foxes, There was a boom in the 1910’s that rocketed values of breeding pairs to as much as £lO,OOO. The Great War smashed this boom, and ruined hundreds of farmers, but to-day the industry is on a sane level. The island is the world’s centre of silver fox farming, with over 900 farms. One hardly thinks of cities on Prince Edward Island, and really there are none. Charlottetown is a quiet town of 13,000 population, with its stately old colonial building or Parliament building, where Confederation was planned. The room in which the delegates met is preserved as it was on that occasion. Dotted around the coast are little fishing townships, like Mount Carmel, where the descendants of the Acadians live as their distant relatives do in the fishing villages of Brittany, and their women make fine hand-hooked rugs. At Port Hill and Tyne Valley, the farmers are Devon folk by blood; at Scotchfort, there are thick Gaelic accents, for in 1772 John MacDonald, of Glenaladale, led 300 Highlanders to found a new Scotland. At Montague there are families who trace their blood to the United Empire Loyalists, who came there after the American Revolution.

Quiet and peaceful, an island in which American artists seek rest or inspiration, and where the cattle look out to sea and stare at the fishing smacks—this is Canada’s Tasmania.