Prince Edward Island National Park
Home of world-famous Green Gables

Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) is a favored province. Canadians seem to dote on the 2,200-square mile island, nudged in between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia off Canada’s east coast. It may be that Prince Edward Island does for Canadians what New England does for Americans, which is to preserve a small-scale, self-reliant, primarily rural culture in the middle of a benign, beautiful landscape.

Perhaps the most evocative image of P.E.I. as a Canadian idyll is Anne of Green Gables, first published in 1908, an internationally popular novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery about a spirited red-haired orphan growing up on the island. Green Gables is the actual name of the house where Montgomery set Anne’s adventures (Montgomery’s cousins lived in the house). The well-reserved two-story house, which draws 350,000 visitors a year, is the centerpiece attraction of Prince Edward Island National Park, a narrow stretch of forest, wetlands and seashore extending 40 kilometers (25 miles) along P.E.I.’s northern coast. 

The park’s web site brags that some of Canada’s most popular beaches lie along this stretch. There are some long, sandy strands that draw happy summer visitors, but the ocean and climate here can be volatile in winter: Erosion from wind and water eat away at the shore at a rate of .5 to 1 meter (20 inches to a little more than a yard) per year. But what nature takes away, it gives back. Storms often create sand bars that act as barriers to incoming waves, allowing the creation of protected coves.

Inland, the combination of deciduous and conifer forest often gives way to bogs and ponds, features that attract an abundance of birds, including ducks, plovers, terns, herons and other shorebirds. Mammals include raccoons, squirrels, foxes, porcupines, hares, skunks, muskrats and even mink. Probably the most notable recent addition to the park’s animal mix has been the coyote, which over the past 150 years since the near extinction of the wolf in North America has been gradually migrating eastward to fill the wolf’s ecological niche.

The first European settlement of P.E.I. was by the French. The island, then called Ile St. Jean, eventually supported a colony of several thousand Acadians. When the British forcibly exiled the Acadians in the late 1750s, hundreds of them perished attempting to cross the Atlantic. Many of those who survived the exile settled in the bayou country of southern Louisiana and became the Cajuns.

Access to P.E.I., which is now a thriving arts and crafts center, traditionally has been by ferry. But Canada, in one of its proudest engineering feats, completed the 12.9 kilometer- long (8 miles) Confederation Bridge in 1997, linking P.E.I. by auto to mainland New Brunswick and ending centuries of relative isolation. In winter, the concrete-girder bridge is the longest span in the world over ice-choked waters. Designers had to build the bridge’s support columns to withstand grinding collisions with storm-driven ice floes.

Many visitors to P.E.I. arrive by ferry and leave by the bridge, or vice versa. The bridge toll of $39 (Canadian) for a car ($44.50 for an RV) compares favorably to $49 for the ferry. (RV rates on the ferry vary according to vehicle length from $68 to $82.)

P.E.I.’s inhabitants know that they live 1,000 miles away from Canada’s big-city sophistications. Aside from an abundance of great golf courses on this perpetually green island, there’s not a lot to do. Residents have to content themselves with sailing, fishing, hiking, horse riding, auto touring, visits to friendly bars and small restaurants, and picnics, fairs and festivals.

It’s a hard life and somebody’s got to live it.

An aside:

If nachos swimming in liquefied cheese and pepper shards is one of America’s great guilty pleasures, Canadians proudly possess their own distinct trespass against healthy eating and haut cuisine. It’s called poutine, and it combines the two food groups that the health nannies of the world most abhor: carbohydrates and fat, with generous pinches of salt throughout.

Like all junk food, poutine’s a simple concoction: You take coarse-cut French fries and cook them in clean oil, dribble cheese or cheese curds over the hot fries, then drown the mess in brown gravy (gray or white gravies are considered déclassé).

The key to a good poutine is the potatoes. Many Canadians insist that a poutine can never achieve junk food greatness unless the potatoes come from Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.). Taters from Maine, Idaho, New Brunswick or Quebec simply won’t do. Apparently P.E.I.’s climate and red soil do wonderful things to potatoes, and poutine connoisseurs across Canada long ago noted it. In fact, seasoned poutineers ask for P.E.I. potatoes by name, calling out for McCain or Cavendish Farms spuds.

– Patrick Totty