Prince Edward Island
Canada's smallest province, Prince Edward Island is only about as big as the state of Delaware, or twice the size of Luxembourg. Its shape could be likened to a tattered butterfly, its wings outstretched and poised for flight at the sheltered southern edge of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Prince Edward Island, or PEI, is beautifully manicured and predominantly rural. The fields of nodding wheat and neatly combed rows of potato plants that yield the island's agricultural mainstays spread across thousands of acres, interrupted by spanking-white farmhouses and tracts of woodland.
The last ice age is responsible for the ragged shape of the island, which in places seems only tenuously sutured together by slender isthmuses. The retreating ice sheets shoved several chunks of land together to form one landmass. The component parts are still clearly discernible: the island's central part is flanked, for example, with wing-shaped additions on both sides. The configuration is most noticeable at Summerside, which sits on a mere slip of a six-km-wide isthmus connecting the western and central sections. Nowadays, counties mark the province's three parts: Kings County on the east, Queens County in the center, and Prince County on the island's western side.
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| Prince Edward Island Canada |
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| Prince Edward Island Canada |
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| Prince Edward Island Canada |
Over the years, PEI has acquired numerous nicknames. The province is known as the "Birthplace of Canada," a distinction earned in 1864 when representatives of England's colonies in eastern Canada convened for informal meetings in Charlottetown. Those meetings resulted in the creation of the Confederation of Canada three years later. The nationally esteemed painting that marked the event, "Fathers of Confederation," was painted by island artist Robert Harris.
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| Prince Edward Island Canada |
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| Prince Edward Island Canada |
In literary circles, Prince Edward Island is known as the pastoral "Avonlea" of island author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. This juvenile novel and its sequels, set in the Cavendish area on PEI's gulf seacoast, draws many thousands of visitors from around the world to the area each year—visitors who read the books as children and fell in love with the stories and their setting.
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| Prince Edward Island Canada |
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| Prince Edward Island Canada |
As for the rest of the Atlantic Canadians, they've dubbed PEI "Spud Island," a tribute of sorts to Canada's major producer of table and seed potatoes. Islanders themselves see their fertile province—about half of which is given over to farmland—as the "Garden of the Gulf" or the "Million-Acre Farm."
All of which hardly hints at what it is that attracts nearly three-quarters of a million visitors a year to PEI. The province is a tranquil and harmonious reminder of what the world was like decades ago. Its long, untrafficked roads for biking, quiet woods and trails for hiking, scores of excellent beaches, and several splendid golf courses invite you to enjoy the outdoors. Island cuisine takes full advantage of local produce and the rich surrounding seas. Add summertime dinner theaters and plays, friendly people, shops with quality crafts, and a gentle, lovely landscape, and you'll understand what brings visitors back again and again.
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