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I have mostly been getting
caught up with all the outstanding admin these past few days but have had
a chance to have a couple of good sessions with Fred at the Wyatt
Historical Buildings and we're in the midst of planning several trips out
around PEI to visit the various museums and historical areas on the
island. While most of the museums are shut right now he thinks they
might open a few of them to let me take pictures and get a sense of what
can be found in them. He's also going to try and get me
some pictures of what the island looks like in the summer as all my
pictures are of course in the Winter so perhaps not showing its best.
I did spend some time in
the local library in Summerside where they were very helpful and found me
an absolute gold mine of information in a book, "Past and Present of
Prince Edward Island" by MacKinnon. Fred is in the process of producing
this book for his own web site and when it is up I will include a link to
it.
Outside of the Library
Looking each way from the Library
Pictures of the inside of the library and
their genealogy collection
I also visited a local book
shop along from the library and found a book "Cavendish - Its History, Its
People - It's Founding Families Simpsons, McNeills, Clarks and their kin"
by Harold H. Simpson. I confess to enjoying this book and in a local way
it does what I came to North America to find, an account of settlement and
the progress made up to the present day. It was published in 1973 so
obviously still under copyright but I am going to see if I can get
permission to put up the whole book for you to read. What I like about it
is the detail it goes into about the problems of settlement and how they
gradually built a community around the area together with the first
church, school, community organisation, etc. So it really shows the
practical problems and opportunities of settlement and how a good
settlement evolves to the present day.
I am still hunting figures
for PEI but it would seem around half of the population is of Scots
descent with Irish, French, Arcadian and the local native Indian people
making up most of the balance. The MacDonald's have a large presence on
the island.
I've also been up to the
local Toyota garage in Charlottetown where I saw Kurt MacLeannan the
dealer principle. He's going to see how I might approach Toyota
either here in Canada or the USA about sponsoring me by providing a Toyota
Highlander to get around in. Seemed like an interesting idea and
Kurt while not knowing anything about this has said he'll get in touch
with the Head Office to see what might be possible. As my old
grandmother used to say... "If you don't try, you don't succeed" :-)
I also got an email in from
Nils Ling inviting me to his 50th birthday bash this coming Saturday
(28th) and he tells me there will be lots of local artists there so the
music will be great. Nils has a web site at
http://truthsandhalftruths.typepad.com and I'll see if they'll be ok
for me to take a few pictures while I am there :-)
Today (Friday) the island
got closed down again due to more snow. You could only drive on the road
if it was an emergency. So I seem to have arrived at a particularly
difficult period for the Island.
And this was a picture from (inside) the house
looking out at the snow coming down. It was more the wind that was causing
problems as with so much snow it was being blown out over the road causing
white out conditions and there were several nasty accidents reported. A
great time to get my rental car from "Rent a Wreck" :-)
I had some fun the other
day while looking to cross the road. I was waiting for a break in
the traffic and noted a driver had stopped his car and was looking at
me... he then shook his head and drove off. Didn't know what to make
of that at the time. Anyway... as I returned at the same point I
noted another two cars stopped and I just thought everyone on the island
was being nice about stopping to let pedestrians cross. It was only
when I crossed and looked back that I spotted the sign across the road
"Walkway" so now I know to look for those signs above my head. Of
course in Scotland we have pedestrian crossing where there are white and
black rectangles that go across the actual road so I just wasn't looking
for a sign above my head. You live and learn for sure :-) |
