# The Tourist's Maritime Provinces/Chapter 13

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
CHAPTER XIII
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
Though the youngest and the smallest member of the Maritime Federation lies so close within the embrace of her sister provinces she bears them slight resemblance in features or temperament. The appeal of the bow-shaped isle is not to the tourist, but rather to the summer resident who finds contentment in rustic surroundings that are spiced by briny zephyrs and livened by salt water scenes and diversions. From Tignish to Souris, from Rustico to Argyle Shore there is not an impassioned vista, nor one which recalls a stirring episode. But there are many stretches of country that are refreshing and harmonious just as a bit of fertile Ohio might be if uprooted and put adrift on a balmy sea. Throughout the island's length of 150 miles there is no brusque elevation, nor gorge, nor rock, nor any frown on the face of ​nature. A great part of the million undulating acres which compose the pastoral kingdom are improved. In this regard Prince Edward is more like the Mother Isles than any Canadian province. Geologically it is of the newest period, as Gaspé is of the oldest. Its florid sandstone, the only dramatic note in a lyric landscape, accentuates the green of groves and sleek meadows and the yellow of the oat-fields. Carmine embankments hem the wide arms of Northumberland Strait; on the gulf shore white sand hills girdle a succession of bays and lagoons which are frequented in summer by the islanders and their visitors. Strangely, the deepest inlets are on the side least vexed by the winds and breakers. The province is nearly divided into three by the intrusion of the bays of Hillsboro, Bedeque and Malpeque. This intimacy of sea and country-side is one of the island's most pleasing characteristics. Besides, there are fresh water streams that run all ways to the surf,—rills, creeks and placid rivers in which trout, and only trout, abound.
Canadians east of the Quebec line call the junior province "The Island"; the Indians in accordance with savage custom gave it a descriptive appellation, "Home on the Wave." Probably Champlain, though some say Cabot, called it Isle St. Jean, the name it retained until English landlords changed it to New Ireland. In 1800 it was christened for Edward, Duke of Kent, at that time ​commander of the British troops in North America. Cartier explored the southerly shore and found Indians there in 1534. The earliest settlement of white men was made by Acadians in 1715. Others came in the eviction year and after the fall of Louisbourg. When France ceded "Canada with all its dependencies" to Great Britain, St. John Island was made part of Nova Scotia. On becoming a separate province it was apportioned to British adventurers who received land free for the ploughing and undertook to colonise their grants in the proportion of five settlers to each parcel of a thousand acres. When, a century later, the province allied itself with the Canadian Confederation the heirs to these baronies were paid by the Provincial Government £160,000 for their holdings of 845,000 acres, which were in turn sold to the tenants whose protests against absenteeism had brought the land question to a climax.
The natural fruitfulness of the native red loam is preserved by dressings of shell mud, seaweed and fish refuse. The decayed jackets of mussels, oysters, clams, crabs and lobsters form a highly valued deposit which the farmer hauls from the outlets of bays and rivers to spread upon his grain and truck fields. Fourteen thousand Island farmers produce each year about $8,000,000 worth of grains, hay and vegetables.
The sea as well as the land yields this Midas isle an inexhaustible harvest. In a year, 10,000 ​barrels of oysters and 50,000 cases of lobster are fished around its shores. The value of all fish taken annually in island waters, including bivalves, crustaceans, cod, hake, haddock, herring and mackerel, is approximately $1,500,000. A bank report says this province with its population of 100,000 has savings deposits of $10,000,000 and is per capita the richest rural community in the Dominion.
More remunerative than its industries of agriculture and fishing is the fur farming of Prince Edward Island, an enterprise which in the past few years has made a sensational advance. More than a quarter of a century ago a merchant of Tignish secured a pair of silver foxes from an Anticosti trapper and bred them so successfully that three companions joined him in experiments with animals captured in the island woods until a profitable ranch was established. At first the litters of captive black foxes were valued solely for their skins, which frequently brought from one to two thousand dollars each at the London auctions. The industry is at present confined to breeding for live foxes. Animals of known strain find a market at $12,000 to $30,000 a pair. Companies are capitalised with two pairs or more as assets, the average number of their pups being three in a year.
A FOX RANCH, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
​shoulders and through the heart; long delicately turned head; a springy pelt and pink skin covered with a wealth of fine lustrous hair, particularly marked on limbs and under-body; and a large heavy 'brush.'" Says Dalton, the dean of breeders, "The black fox, silver fox and red fox are all the same species, differing only in colour. Litters have been found in the woods with some black pups among the reds, or silvers among the reds. The black fox is distinguished from others by the total absence of white or silver hairs, except on the tip of the tail. The hairs are three inches long. In the black fox each individual hair has a blue section one and a half inches long next to the body and the rest of the hair is black. In the silver fox, each individual hair is made up of the following—starting with the body—blue, for one and a half inches, black one-half inch, white one-half inch, black one-half inch.
"The firm of Lampsons, London, are the great fur-brokers of the world. It is upon their sales that the quotations of the world are based. They hold four auction sales every year in January, March, June and October, and these are conducted as follows—Eight days before the date of the sale the furs are arranged in lots, generally, as to silvers, one skin in each, seldom more than two. These lots are all numbered. The expert buyer ​examines them, takes down their number, and places opposite each the maximum amount one can afford to pay. He determines the value entirely upon merit. The name of the breeder and the place where they were secured are not known to him. The auction is held in a different place from where the furs have been exhibited. Ten shillings is the minimum bid. The sales are made with great rapidity, scarcely a word is spoken, a nod from the buyer suffices. Often, it takes only fifteen seconds to dispose of one lot. The larger percentage of poorer skins are usually offered in October and June. The principal sale is held in March. It is then that the greatest competition is met with for good skins. Since I first began to ship, the falling off in the world's supply of silvers has been about sixty per cent. The average price for ordinary grades has increased by 200 per cent.: for the higher grades about 400 per cent.
"The lowest grade is the pure silver, the whole body covered with silver. The second grade is black between the ears, shoulders, back of the neck and belly. The rest of the skin is silver. In the next higher grade the black would extend half down the body, and the silver would not be very bright on the rest of the body. Going higher up the scale there is the three quarter black and the one quarter silver, with no distinct dividing point, the change being gradual from one colour to the other.
​The highest quality is the pure black. Year after year there has been an increased demand for the black and a steady increase in price."
The only rivals of the native black and silver black fox are the almost extinct sea otter, the Russian sable and the South American chinchilla. The island's cool damp climate and non-alkaline soil produces the heaviest, glossiest fur yielded by the fox family. Ninety per cent, of the world's captive foxes are held by 128 individuals or companies on Prince Edward Island's 300 ranches. The latest Government estimate of the value of old and young Blacks, Silver Blacks, Silvers, Patches, Reds and Blues contained therein is more than $15,000,000.
The ranches are enclosed by a high wire netting bent over at the top and under at the bottom to prohibit the possibility of the occupants leaping or gnawing their way to freedom. Within the enclosure, pairs are divided from other pairs by aisles and fences. Each fox is provided with a sanitary sleeping pen. Reared for generations in captivity, most of them from Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland stock, the parent foxes and particularly the lithe keen little pups are frequently on playful terms with their guards, some ​of whom are constantly on duty about the ranch to protect their charges from alarm and from thieves. The Legislature of 1913 enacted a bill providing that "every one who, without the consent of the owner or caretaker of a ranch or enclosure where foxes or other fur-bearing animals are in captivity for breeding purposes, shall enter the grounds occupied by these animals or go within twenty-five yards of the outer fence or enclosure within which they are kept, shall be deemed guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not to exceed $1000 nor less than $500."
The domesticated and even the wild fox is not malicious by nature, but is inordinately timid—sometimes disastrously so in the case of vixens which destroy their new-born whelps in attempting to hide them from prying eyes. For three weeks or more after the arrival of the litter the utmost caution is necessary to avoid the loss of the five or six thousand dollar babies. This valuation does not refer to the pelt's worth but to the estimated (sometimes grossly over-estimated) rating of the offspring as reproducers of their species. A female which lives the maximum period of eleven to fifteen years may give birth to from twenty to forty pups during her life-time. So long as there is demand for breeding pairs no foxes will be killed for their skins unless they become old or injured. It is believed that several more ​years must elapse before the island pelts again appear on the English and German markets.
Companies owning prolific Class A vixens have paid sumptuous dividends to their stock-holders, most of whom have been farmers, shop-keepers and other moderately circumstanced citizens living on the island. Everywhere one sees new foundations, rebuilt barns, expanded acreages as a result of wealth acquired with intoxicating ease. A man and wife had saved a thousand dollars to build a house. Instead they put it in foxes. Now they have the house and $30,000 besides. A druggist in Montague bought stock in five companies which earned in one year dividends of 110, 125, 60, 200 and 130 per cent, respectively. A bookkeeper's investment of $300 returned him $45,000 in three years. These are not exceptional cases. Farmhands, women clerks, ministers. Government officials will tell you others to match them ad nauseam. Substantial men of affairs say the demand for captive breeders is justified by the unfailing prestige and market valuation of the pelt which for centuries has been one of the chosen furs of Madame Croesus.
The introduction of mongrel foxes from the Far West, the over-capitalisation of stock companies, the unprincipled advertisement of broker and promoter and the uncertainty of nature's decrees are the sinister elements of a venture which in ​principle is as legitimate as the rearing of blue ribbon live-stock or pedigreed hens. Other farms have been established to raise sable, marten, mink, skunk and the Karakúl sheep which gives Persian lamb, Astrakhan, broadtail and krimmer fur under differing conditions of breeding and birth.
The economic revolution which has swept the island during this earlier and most lucrative period of fur ranching has brought about bizarre conditions unparalleled in a country community. Labourers of a few years back are the masters of their former employers. Ranch presidents ride in cars who cannot sign the cheques that buy them. Their wives wear jewels so immense that strangers unaware of the suddenly achieved gains as a matter of course think them artificial. Sons who always ran barefoot now tilt their sun-browned noses at any but the costliest boots. Farmers' daughters who once sighed to possess a cottage organ are bored by their new pianolas. Many modest fortunes have been acquired, but more immodest ones if we are to judge by the swagger of their makers.
The shops of Charlottetown and the press of bright new vehicles about Queen Square reflect the island's exuberant prosperity. "Charlotte Town" says the author of an ancient Account of Prince Edward Island in the Gulph of St, Lawrence. North America, "has a situation both centrical and convenient." It is not only the ​political capital of the island but the social and commercial seat. It has roomy streets, parks and flowering plazas that are pleasing to the eye. The Government Buildings on Queen Square and some of the churches are dignified structures. Three converging rivers and the harbour formed by their united streams, as well as the shores of Hillsboro Bay offer opportunities for tranquil excursions by steamboat. The roads to Government House and Victoria Park, to Rocky Point and Pownal (7 m.) are the favourite promenades by carriage. Stages run daily to Cherry Valley, Bonshaw, Hampton, a vacation beach on the Strait, and Fort Augustus. On the outskirts of the capital are the Driving Park and Golf Links. Though Charlottetown is a pleasant enough place as a residence,—its founders called the site Port Joy,—it has no attraction for the tourist in search of the historic or unusual, unless one excepts an antiquated fort in the recreation ground at Rocky Point overlooking the bay, and the grey pile of Parliament House in whose Council Chamber were laid the foundations of the Dominion, September, 1864.
The towns of the island are consistently charmless; they are neither picturesque, quaint, shady nor home-like. On hot days the sun blazes upon their dusty and defenceless streets, making them places to flee from. The principal gulf resorts, Tracadie, Stanhope, Brackley Beach, Rustico are ​all within 20 miles' drive of the capital over straight smooth roads.
The Government narrow gauge railway which ambles hither and yon, dodging inlets and linking isolated ports to the main track, has as its chief centres Charlottetown and Summerside, the termini of the two steamer services from the mainland. On the trunk line, if one may use so impressive a term to describe so unimposing a road, and on the four principal branches there are two trains every week-day, a "Passenger" and a "Mixed," running in both directions. From Charlottetown to Tignish via Royalty Junction is a distance of 116 miles. One leaves by the "Passenger" at 7:30 in the dewy morning and arrives at dewy eve. The tedium of the journey is aggravated by an enforced stay of more than an hour in grimy Summerside (48 m.). Hunter River, 20 miles from Charlottetown, is the station for Rustico Beach and Cavendish, the former an attractive bathing and fishing resort on the North Shore. At Emerald Junction an 11-mile branch turns off to Cape Traverse, destined to increase in importance at the installation of the Car Ferry from Tormentine. At this point New Brunswick is only 9 miles distant. From Kensington, a few miles beyond Emerald Junction, stages run to Malpeque Beach on the gulf shore, and to towns on Malpeque or Richmond Bay. The bottom of this spreading arm of the gulf has been surveyed for ​the culture of oysters by the Provincial Government. Malpeque "eyesters" already have an extra-insular reputation. About seven thousand acres have been leased to individuals and firms who propose to increase by scientific methods the diminishing oyster crop. Formerly Prince Edward Island led all the provinces of Canada in its oyster production. Along its 400 miles of shore fronting on gulf and strait there are more than 180 lobster canneries.
Summerside facing the strait and the New Brunswick coast lies only 3 miles from Malpeque Bay, which stretches 10 miles in from the gulf. A hill on the intervening isthmus has an outlook upon marine views to the south, the west and the north. Even the railway littérateurs can find nothing to say of Summerside except that sitting in a draught of sea air it is always cool when other towns are not. Hoping for this reason to attract vacation visitors its citizens bestowed the present delusive name, vice former Princetown.
The Micmac chief lives with all the Indians of the Prince Edward district on Ellis Island, the station for which is Port Hill. The reservation is an orderly community and has its own schools taught by native teachers.
On both sides of the willowy road to Tignish there are glimpses of the sea, of fishing rivers and of ponds where wild fowl congregate. The woven fences of fox farms show among thinned-out groves.
​Here and there in the midst of well-tilled acres are new farm-houses, built with the earnings of a lucky investment. One hears a great deal in cars and on way-side platforms of "September deliveries," options and soaring dividends, but very little of dividends that dwindle and collapse because mothers have borne patches instead of blacks, or borne none at all, or buried Class A litters that they feared to have confined in over-warm pens. On Cherry Island in Alberton harbour the pioneer fox farmer, Charles Dalton, laid out the ranch upon which all later fox studs were modelled. Not without tribulations did he found the new industry. "At first," he says, "I kept the animals in ordinary board sheds, connected by chutes. They used to lose their litters, owing to the disturbances usually associated with a barn-yard. The first year I kept them in a wire enclosure. I had no over-hang, and two foxes climbed out. At first I had only one strip of wire between each pen. The foxes used to get their legs through and kill each other. I stopped this by doubling the partitions. At first I kept two females in one pen. This resulted in jealousy and when the two had young in the same pen, they destroyed each other’s litters. Then, I had trouble with the water getting in their nests, and causing death to the pups." It was a rancher at the other end of the island who wakened one winter morning to find three full-grown foxes in a yard where there had been only ​two. The stranger was a wild seven-eighths patch or red-and-silver cross-breed who had heard the call of his kind and had vaulted an eleven-foot fence into the enclosure by means of a convenient snowdrift.
Alberton is an unkempt town of 2000 inhabitants whose only attraction is its good air and proximity to fishing and shooting grounds—both of which are attributes possessed by other places more agreeable and less inaccessible, on the island and off of it. Within driving distance are the trout streams of Kildare and Miminegash. Wild geese flock to near-by marshes. A hotel with more pretensions to comfort and good service than is usually afforded by island houses has recently been opened in a renovated mansion surrounded by shade-trees. Tignish, 12 miles further on, is an uninteresting fishing-port. A drive of 8 miles brings one to North Point, one of the horns of the island crescent.
Starting again at Charlottetown, the traveller who is bent upon traversing the length of the province may cross by branch railway to the other side of the Hillsboro or East River and journey southward 48 miles to Murray Harbour, a little town which looks directly across to Port Hood on the Cape Breton shore, 25 miles away. Highways go north from here through an increasingly pleasant farm country to Montague and Georgetown. The same places are served by the railway branch ​which runs off from the Charlottetown—Royalty JunctionSouris line at Mount Stewart Junction. Between these two junctions is York (9 m. north of Charlottetown), station for Brackley Beach and Stanhope where there are good beaches, famous cliffs and several over-crowded summer hotels. Beyond are Bedford and Tracadie, the stations for the Acadia Hotel and the strand on Tracadie Bay. The train from Mt. Stewart (22 m.) to Georgetown (46 m. east of Charlottetown) runs into Montague and backs out again on the way to its terminus. All this eastern region is incomparably prettier than the western end of the island. The hills are higher and the scenery in every way more agreeable.
At Montague on the high bank of the river there is a group of birches so stately, white and tall that a metaphor might be based upon them, "fair as the birches of Montague." If artists knew of this grove they would set up their easels and stay the summer-long, inspired by the sensitive shadows, the marble pureness, the noble symmetry of these rounded trunks and the delicacy of their lofty foliage. The few strangers who do come to this pleasantly-situated little village stay at McDonald’s, an inn of unassuming hospitality, fragrant cleanliness and unexceptionable home cuisine. In the neighbourhood there are several interesting fur ranches, a notable apple orchard ​covering 30 acres, and some thoroughly delightful hill drives.
Georgetown, 12 miles distant by railway, is a port on Cardigan Bay facing across the gulf to Cape Breton. When the ice blocks the strait harbours the Pictou steamer calls here in the winter. It must be some such exigency as this which would inveigle the traveller to so flat and arid a town as the moribund capital of Kings County. Its shipping interests are said to be considerable but the streets have no charm of scene or life. Shuttered stores indicate that the shire-town has been drained of even its one-time commercial vigour. The county’s inhabitants poke fun at King George’s sprawling namesake and say that it is in truth well laid out. Neighbouring rivers and bays attract hunters of sea fowl and fishers of sundry kinds of the omnipresent and versatile trout.
Souris bears the same relation to the east coast as Tignish to the west. The railway from Charlottetown by way of Mt. Stewart halts there after a winding journey of 60 miles. The towns on either side the road invite anglers and summer boarders in search of an economical and peaceful holiday. Souris was settled by the Scotch who came to the island in 1803 under the patronage of a Highland Earl. In the vicinity are lakes, rivers and estuaries where fabulous catches of fish are taken and plover, duck, brant, partridge and ​curlew swarm in tempting bevies. Due north lies the Magdalen archipelago with which this port is connected by a bi-weekly steamer from Pictou.
* ↑ On arrival of trains over the Intercolonial, steamers leave every week-day afternoon about 4 o'clock from Pictou for Charlottetown and from Point du Chene for Summerside. See under "Provincial Railways and Steamers," Chapter I. Also "Steamers from the United States" and "Steamers from Canadian Ports." See under Pictou, Chapter VIII, for steamer to Souris, P. E. I., en route to the Magdalens.
* ↑ One of the precious features of the black and silver black fox fur is the impossibility of imitating it by artificial methods.
* ↑ Fur buyers designate as "silver" all shades of grey and black. A writer of 1806 enumerates the red, grey and black fox as inhabiting the island and declares that "sometimes five or six have been shot by one person in the course of a few hours." Wild mink and marten are also abundant on the island.