Some of these summers this Ontarian is going to go to Prince Edward Island. Friends tell me that there is a Bothwell Beach there at the province’s eastern tip. Could there be a more obvious invitation? A 1967 PEI Travel Bureau Centennial Year brochure said, “Just bring birthday greetings and we’ll entertain you royally”. The cost of a seaside vacation has undoubtedly risen since then.

The intention to visit the island province is longstanding. Its attractions were detailed by a friend of my mother, Mrs MacDonald (Lucy Maude Montgomery) who was occasionally in our home in connection with Mum’s involvement in the women’s activities of a West Toronto Presbyterian church. The ‘Anne’stories were not a part of my childhood reading but I remember hearing about the red soil, ocean winds and ‘singing sands’ of Canada’s ‘gem in the silver sea’ .

In due course I learned the part that the little maritime province had played in our national story. The aboriginal Micmacqs called it Abegweil (‘Ocean cradle’). The early 18th Century francophone settlers called it Isle St-Jean. About 4,000 of them lived there until expelled by British American colonists who were planning the 1759 attack on Québec. In 1798 the island, still part of Nova Scotia, was renamed for Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (1767-1820), father of Queen Victoria, who was stationed at Halifax.

PEI was under the television cameras a week ago when the morning chat show Live with Regis and Kelly aired from Charlottetown. It included the caterwauling of that raucous five-man aggregation, One Republic. The four days were subsidised by $1 million of provincial government money. The province is desperate for tourist dollars which last year amounted to almost 8% of its GDP. How much is that? About $375 million.

Robert Ghiz, second generation premier of Prince Edward Island, tells about visiting Arizona (U.S.A.) and dining at a seafood restaurant. The menu featured ‘PEI mussels’. He asked his server where they came from. “They’re from an Italian island in the Mediterranean”, she said. Tourism PEI, as it is now called, is determined to ‘GPS’ the place more precisely and add more North American tourists to the Japanese enthusiasts who visit “Green Gables” annually.

Every Canadian should visit “the Birthplace of Confederation” at least once. It was at the Charlottetown Conference in m1864 that parliamentarians from the Province of Canada (now Québec and Ontario) met with those of the maritime colonies that were about to plan a union of their own. The Canadians advocated a wider federation of all British North America. The 150th anniversary of that meeting is just four years away.

Charlottetown ’64 was followed by another meeting the next month at Québec where the BNA Act of 1867 was drafted. PEI waited for six years to join the new Dominion, flirting meanwhile with the possibility of being either an independent state or of joining the American republic. Canada purchased the vast Rupert’s Land territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company and British Columbia entered Confederation in 1870. PEI did so in 1873.

The federal government agreed to assume the heavy debt that the small colony had incurred by the construction of a railroad from one end of the island to the other. Britain, anxious to unload the responsibility, pushed the confederation project. Canada promised to maintain year-round means of communication with the mainland.

Remember that pledge as you drive across the Confederation Bridge between Cape Tormentine, NB and Borden, PEI. Until it was opened in 1997 ferry service was provided, as it still is. The 12.9 km bridge is the longest in the world built over ice-covered water. An on-line account of the problems entailed in its construction is available at www. Canadian Journal of Engineering / Confederation Bridge.

There was initial concern that a ‘fixed link’ with the mainland would result in unwanted changes in the islanders’ way of life. A 1988 referendum resulted in a 59.4% vote in favour of it being built and it was opened in 1997. A careful monitoring of the seasonal pressure of ice in the Northumberland Strait proves that the precautions taken have been even more effective than was anticipated.

What was the impact on the island’s life and economy? The former question will be answered differently by different people. The number of tourists has increased by about half a million a year. The debatable importance of ‘big box’ stores and the eco-contamination of motor vehicles are part of the adverse verdict. Those who rent seaside accommodation at Bothwell Beach and elsewhere on the 1100 kilometre coastline are happy.

Charlottetown, the capital, has a population of only about 15,000. Including PEI’s own Brighton, Cornwall, Stratford, York and a score of other communities around the arms of Hillsborough Bay, the count rises to over 50,000. The population of the whole island is only 150,000.

The PEI legislature governs about one-third the number of people who kive in Brampton ON. The province is represented in the House of Commons by four MPs and in the Senate by four of the 30 maritime region senators. They speak, however, for the most culturally homogeneous section of Canada. It is preponderantly British in origin. About 12% has Acadian ancestry. The Micmaq strain, with a 10,000 year history, is all but invisible.

It has been estimated that 5 million people could live in PEI. That kind of population would likely provide sufficient work to prevent the egress of young islanders to New England, mid and western Canada. How to achieve that? That is the question.

The 1992 Charlottetown Accord to achieve agreement on the constitutional division of powers between Ottawa and the provinces was defeated in a national referendum. PEI gave it a 73.9% ‘yes’. The national average was a 54.3% ‘no’ from a 70.6% voter turnout. Canada, as they say, continues to work in practice but not in theory. Polls say that most of the world’s people would like to live here if they could.

Back to PEI. Its Latin motto is “Parvus sub ingenti”. That means “The small under (i.e.close to) the large. Spot on.