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Today Chris was setting off
for the Wireless Island office in Summerside. Wireless Island is a
project to bring wireless internet access to the whole island eventually
but Summerside is the leader in this and is where the project is underway.
Obviously with the storm they had there were problems with masts being
bent out of alignment, etc., so the guys had a lot of work to put things
right. Lots of discussions on how they might better locate the masts
so that they could withstand another such storm in future.
Chris was also telling me
that they are upgrading the bandwidth in the next couple of weeks to
improve the service. I will say that I think this is an excellent
service and should also provide visiting tourists and business people with
an excellent and important facility. I have already seen in the USA
how lack of internet access for visiting business people can seriously
hinder business so Summerside should be commended for this initiative.
Anyway.. this was a great
opportunity to take lots of pictures on the way there and to try and show
you a little of the island and of Summerside albeit it in snowy
conditions. Mind you as they had a record amount of snow it seemed
like this could even be an historical account of this period in the island
history :-)
We got almost white out conditions at times
due to the wind blowing snow off the piles of snow from the sides of the
road. The picture on the left attempts to show this. Also I might
add that the vertical line is actually the car ariel as I was sticking my
hand out the widndow to take these shots as we drove along the road.
There are a lot of churches on the Island but
that was of course partly due to the fact that Scots were well known for
wanting a church so it was usually the first communal building they built
together along with one room schools. Also, as they were mostly
walking in those days churches were often built within reasonable walking
distance.
These shots were taken on the main highway
that runs the whole length of the island
Chris had to stop to do some banking so got a
chance to get out and take a few shots at this village and even a spot of
colour with the Canadian Flag flying which also shows that it was quite
windy.
And this was us getting near Summerside
And this was us driving down into Summerside
itself
And at last we arrived at the Wireless Island
offices and that is a picture of Chris at the door
And of course these are all views of
Summerside and I can well imagine that this would be a very pretty town in
the Summer but to me it also looked good in all that snow :-)
Chris had to go off to a
meeting so he dropped me off at a coffee shop and I took the opportunity
to pop across to the local shopping mall to buy a paper. Reading the
paper I was immediately struck that PEI has all the same problems as
Scotland. A declining population with young people going elsewhere
to work such as the main cities of Canada and elsewhere. This leaves
behind an increasingly aged population with all the associated costs on a
declining income. While in the mall I noted that there were many
unoccupied premises as most of the large shops had moved to out of town
areas. Again all this is very similar to Scotland.
Because of the exceptional
snow fall the island was looking to see if they could get emergency
funding to help with the cost of the clean up. Also noted that snow
clearing had switched to the towns and pavements to let the children get
to school. In the same paper I noted that a regional fund that goes to the
Island was being cut by around $75million and of course there were
protests in the paper about that. I really could have been back in
Scotland reading the paper.
One other thing I noted in
the paper is the call to do better at tourism. It's really the same
as in Scotland... making some progress but must do better. In actual fact
I have always been very critical of tourism authorities all over the world
as to me they just keep tinkering with the same things they have done for
years. No real innovation and yet the web is a fabulous resource to
exploit but our marketing people really don't seem to know how to use it
to their advantage. It was the same when I was in Kentucky in the US as
they have just the same problems. It all comes down to the fact that
each area has tremendous tourism resources but they can't seem to really
tell a story about them that will make more people want to come and use
them. It is time to do something different in my opinion but it's hard to
get marketing people to be innovative as they seem more interested in
protecting their jobs by doing tried and tested marketing that no longer
works. [moan mode off :-)]
And here we arived at the City of Summerside
offices where we were to meet with Terry Murphy the Chief Administration
Officer of the city. While there I also got to meet with the Mayor, Basil
Stewart. I also noted that the Administrative Assistant to the Mayor
is a Anna Marie MacDonald
so the Scots and Irish are certainly doing well in Summerside :-)
Terry didn't have too much time but he did share some information on his
own Scottish ancestors and later that night I received an email containing
an account of
Donald Chisholm
which I've also posted into our Mini Bios section. Thanks for that
Terry and look forward to having more chats with you in the days ahead.
You can in fact explore the
web site of the city at
http://www.city.summerside.pe.ca
I then spent an hour or so
with Fred Horn at the McNaught Centre.
He is in charge of the Wyatt Heritage
Properties where they invite you to learn about there three historic homes
and take a tour of the Wyatt Museum. You can visit the site at
http://www.wyattheritage.com/
Fred was
most generous with his time and has offered to take me around some of the
historic areas of the island during my stay which I am very much looking
forward to.
It was now time to head back home and a chance
to get some more pictures of the side roads
You can see the snow blower in action
And we arrived back home |
