History 3320: History of Prince Edward Island: Post-Confederation (Winter 2025)

This study of Prince Edward Island from 1864 until the present emphasizes the role of the Island in the Confederation movement, its entry into Confederation, and provincial-federal adjustments as they affected Prince Edward Island's history.

Course Instructor
Sheilagh Quaile

7 January: Confederation

David Weale and Harry Baglole, The Island and Confederation: The End of an Era (Summerside: Williams and Crue, 1973): 79–98, 105–113, 133–145.

H.T. Holman, “‘Happy in Their Seclusion’: An Englishman Visits the Pre-Confederation Island,” The Island Magazine, No. 83 (Spring/Summer 2018): 34–39.

14 January: Post-Confederation: Resolving the Land Question

Deborah Stewart, “Robert Bruce Stewart and the Land Question.” The Island Magazine, No. 21 (Spring/Summer 1987): 3–11.

Rusty Bittermann & Margaret McCallum, “Upholding the Land Legislation of a ‘Communistic and Socialist Assembly’: The Benefits of Confederation for Prince Edward Island,” Canadian Historical Review, 87, no. 1 (2006): 1-28

21 January: Shipbuilding

Nicolas J. De Jong and Marven Moore, Shipbuilding on Prince Edward Island: Enterprise in a Maritime Setting, 1787–1920 (Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994): 131–168.

Douglas Sobey, Shipbuilding and the Forests of Prince Edward Island ([Charlottetown: Department of Environment, Energy and Forestry and the author], 2011): Summary.

28 January: The Fishery

Nancy Gorveatt, “‘Polluted with Factories’: Lobster Canning on Prince Edward Island,” The Island Magazine, No. 57 (Spring/Summer 2005): 10–21.

Sharon Arsenault, “Packing Lobsters at the Beach: Cannery Life on Prince Edward Island,” The Island Magazine, No. 60 (Fall/Winter 2006): 13–21.

Edward MacDonald, “Shell Games: The Marine Commons, Economic Policy, and Oyster Culture on Prince Edward Island, 1865–1928,” in The Greater Gulf: Essays on the Environmental History of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, ed. Claire E. Campbell, Edward MacDonald, and Brian Payne (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020): 192–223.  

4 February: Agriculture

Joshua MacFadyen, “The Fertile Crescent: Agricultural Land Use on Prince Edward Island,” in Time and a Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island, ed. Edward MacDonald, Joshua MacFadyen, and Irené Novaczek (Charlottetown, Montreal, Kingston: Island Studies Press and McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016): 161–176.

H.T. Holman, “Prince Eggward Island: The Henhouse of the Gulf.The Island Magazine, No. 88 (Spring/Summer 2021): 22–32.

Edward MacDonald, If You’re Stronghearted71–76, 128–32.

11 February: Tourism

Alan MacEachern and Edward MacDonald, The Summer Trade: A History of Tourism on Prince Edward Island (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press), Chapter One.

Edward MacDonald, “A Landscape . . . with Figures: Tourism and Environment on Prince Edward Island,” 61–77 in Land and Sea: Environmental History in Atlantic Canada, ed. Claire Campbell and Robert Summerby-Murray (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 2013).

25 February: Outmigration

Edward MacDonald, If You’re Stronghearted, 45–51.

Alan A. Brookes, “Islanders in the Boston States, 1850–1900,” The Island Magazine, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 1977): 11–15.

Edward “Sandy” Ives, “The Boys of the Island: ‘P.I.s” in the Maine Lumberwoods,” The Island Magazine, No. 16 (Fall/Winter 1984): 28–35.  

4 March: The Boer War and the Great War

Edward MacDonald, If You’re Stronghearted, Chapter 3 (77-98, 99-110, illustrations).

Darin MacKinnon and Boyde Beck, “Islanders and the Boer War,” The Island Magazine 26 (Spring/ Summer 1989): 3–12.

11 March: Visible Minorities, Invisible Islanders: Indigenous Islanders, Black Islanders, Chinese Islanders, Lebanese Islanders, Jewish Islanders

Jim Hornby, Black Islanders: Prince Edward Islanders’ Historic Black Community (Charlottetown: Institute of Island Studies, 1991), 45–83, 91–102.

Hung-Min Chiang, Chinese Islanders: Making a Home in the New World (Charlottetown: Island Studies Press, 2006), 17–35.

David Weale, “Going to the Country: Lebanese Peddlers on Prince Edward Island,” The Island Magazine, No. 18 (Fall/Winter 1985): 11–15.

Joseph B. Glass, “The Jewish Peddler on Prince Edward Island,” The Island Magazine, No. 85 (Spring/Summer 2019): 2–11.

18 March: New Transportation

Deborah Stewart, “The Island Meets the Auto,” The Island Magazine, No. 5 (Fall/Winter 1978): 9–14.

Sasha Mullally, “The Machine in the Garden,” The Island Magazine, No. 54 (Fall/Winter 2003): 16–25.  

25 March: The Interwar Years and the Great Depression

Edward MacDonald, If You’re Stronghearted, Chapter 4, Chapter 5.

Douglas Baldwin, "Volunteers in Action: The Establishment of Government Health Care on Prince Edward Island, 1900–1931," Acadiensis 19, no. 2 (Spring/1990): 121–47.

1 April: The Second World War

Edward MacDonald, If You’re Stronghearted, Chapter 6.