Prince Edward Island

Parabolic Sand Dunes

Today, we took the Eastern Coastal drive to see a little of PEI. We took a hike in PEI National Park, Greenwich. It’s on a spit of land going into the sea and had quite a variety of terrain. We started out next to St. Peter’s Bay in a typical grassland next to the water, then we entered a young forest dominated by White Spruce, it creates a lot of shade so little else grew. Then a few steps away we were in a more mature forest with a variety of tree species including pines, birch, and Maple trees with the ground covered with bright red bunch berries. A little more and we reached dried sand dunes covered with lichens. This was followed by a pond filled with cattails where we walked the board walks until we reached the shore on the other side. Here the distinctive feature was parabolic sand dunes (shaped by the wind). Only a few areas in North America have these and dunes which slowly move across the land.
We continued our drive to the Eastern lighthouse, pretty we decided it wasn’t worth $4 to have a tour of the lighthouse.
On the way back, we stopped in Charlottetown to see the Founders Hall. This was a very interesting interactive exhibit which told the story of the forming of the Canadian confederation. In 1864, the Maritime colonies planned a meeting to consider consolidation, and the colony of Canada (present day Quebec and Ontario) crashed the party and suggested a larger confederation including them. It took another 3 years, but in 1867, London approved the Canadian confederation. Each colony voted whether to join, and the funny thing was that PEI decided not to join initially. Thus only 4 colonies actually started the confederation. New Brunswick actually tried to get out 4 months after the confederation was formed, but London wouldn’t let them. PEI joined several years later because Canada offered to pay for the railroad they had built and couldn’t pay for. It wasn’t until 1949 that Labrador joined the Union.