The Speares

Today we're leaving Newfoundland and heading, by way of Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, to Charlottetown. Charlottetown, of course, was named in honour of King George III's mail order bride, Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a small duchy in the north of Germany. George married her sight-unseen on 8 September 1761 pretty much exclusively because she came from a backwater and so wouldn't cause trouble at court. George was either bi-polar or a porphyriac; in any event he completely lost his marbles towards the end and his urine was blue. But none of this has anything to do with our story. Today's story is about the circus.

On August 30th, 1864, at the south corner of Queen and Fitzroy streets in the (very) small town of Charlottetown, PEI, the Slaymaker & Nichols' Olympic Circus (under the management of Goodwin & Wilder) set up their tents and began the process of bilking the colonial rubes to be found north of the border. Their show included: The most beautiful Equestriennes; The most accomplished Riders; The most daring Acrobats; The finest Stud of Horses; The most learnèd Dogs; and The most Comical Monkeys. Literally a dog and pony show, and in the finest traditions of migrant entertainment. The Olympic had been a tepid success in the south before making the trek north where it was the biggest thing ever.

Pretty much the entire population of Prince Edward Island, and all that would fit in the various steamboats offering "circus excursions" from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, were in town for the extravaganza that included trick riding, somersaulting through hoops on horseback, monkeys riding dogs, acrobats, and, of course, a clown. The sleepy little town of Charlottetown, which normally had a population of 7,000, was bursting at the seams. The local papers tended to see things through rose-coloured glasses, and the Charlottetown circus was of little interest south of the border, so there is little to be learned about what conditions were like while the carnies were in town. But a little over four years previously there had been a royal visit, attracting similar crowds. And a reporter from one of the New York papers at that time commented that "nothing has been known in street or square, but incessant brutal bursts of drunkenness, so violent, and wild, and reckless that the most vicious quarters of New York could not yield their parallel. I never saw so small a place given over so utterly to bestiality". Another New York reporter commented that the steamer Arabian pulled into harbour, packed "like the Black Hole of Calcutta" with visitors and he was unable to find lodgings, even with the mayor's help. So let's go out on a limb and say things were like that when the circus was in town. And then the second circus showed up.

With impeccable timing, a rather important conference was scheduled to start in Charlottetown half way through the circus' four day run. That meant that Charlottetown was as full of drunks as it could possibly get when the steamer SS Victoria arrived. Everyone was either rioting in the streets or at the circus, so there was no one at the public wharf to greet the delegates on board. William Henry Pope, one of the local delegates from PEI, and therefore a host, had to row out to greet the steamer himself and ferry people ashore. This was the inauspicious start to The Charlottetown Conference.

The conference's aim was to look into a possible union of the Maritime provinces. Britain was pushing for this; the American Civil War was in full swing and it was entirely possible that hostilities would spill over the border. United provinces could muster a more determined defence than any one province going it alone. So Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick decided to get together and discuss options, and maybe take in the circus and general revelry too because there's nothing quite so boring as a conference. Newfoundland was invited, but the invitation was fashionably late as they say, so they didn't think they'd be able to make it. Who knows what the presence of the biggest party in the Maritimes may have had to do with it, but sort of at the last minute Newfoundland said they'd come, and in a surprise move, so did the province of Canada, comprising present-day Ontario and Québec. So a discussion of a merger of convenience amongst three Maritime provinces turned into a discussion of confederation, maybe or maybe not because there was a huge party going on.

Much of the actual conference was conducted in camera, which ironically means no cameras allowed. So the actual details of how the country came to be can only be inferred from letters and memoirs. In any event, interest was piqued. There were subsequent meetings and balls and feasts, though nothing could compare with the circus atmosphere of the original conference. The Québec Conference was held in late October that year, and that conference produced a draft constitution for the federal union. So in 1867, on Canada Day (a good choice), the Dominion of Canada came into being, composed of the former provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and, of course, Canada. Absent were Newfoundland, and, oddly, Prince Edward Island, which was enjoying a robust economy at the time and had little use for being anchored to the new dominion.

This was the golden age of sail, and PEI timber was much in demand. And nowhere more so than in PEI itself. It had a robust shipbuilding industry, and its merchant fleet sailed the world. And of course, once all the trees are gone from a given forest then you get farmland. So PEI had a thriving agriculture industry as well. Confederation was viewed as leading to onerous taxation, conscription in future wars, and a very small voice in the federated parliament. So no deal.

But meanwhile things were happening outside of PEI's control, and not in their favour. The golden age of sail was becoming the smoky age of steam, and PEI had neither iron nor coal. A lot of the island was still owned by absentee landlords in Britain, who were skimming the dwindling profits. The reciprocity agreements (free trade) between British North America and the U.S. had expired and PEI was not in a position to negotiate a new agreement on its own. So no more selling of timber south of the border. The solution could, of course, be to join the U.S. This caused quite a stir on both sides of the ocean, and so the Dominion of Canada offered a "better deal" to PEI in 1870. This new deal involved assuming all of the island's debts, creating a steamship link between the island and the rest of the Maritimes, and buying out the absentee landlords. But premier Haythorne declined the new deal, better or not, and decided that what was really needed was a railway.

The Prince Edward Island Railway went tip-to-tip from Tignish to Elmira, with stops in all of the larger centers, including, of course, Charlottetown. Now a standard railway gauge, the distance between rails, is exactly four feet eight and one half inches. This has been the case since Roman times when carts had to fit in the grooves left by all of the carts that had gone down the road before, so a standard gauge for cart wheels was required. And it was four feet eight and one half inches. Except in PEI, where it was three feet six inches. This didn't seem like too much of a problem, as trains would never come to or depart PEI (until 1917 when an ice breaking rail ferry came to Cape Tormentine, but that's not part of this story). It did, however, mean that all of the trucks (the bogie mechanism holding the train's wheels) had to be custom. But that was not an insurmountable problem, and so construction went forward on the narrow-gauge railway. There were many contractors involved, and they were all paid by the mile. So there were a lot of miles. The PEIR was in nothing approaching a straight line. And they were also paid by the train station. There was a train station every two and a half miles. So if you missed your train you could probably walk to the next station and catch it there. The railway was bankrupting the entire province.

So faced with a tanking economy, a railway to nowhere, and mounting pressure from both Britain and Canada, PEI joined Confederation on July 1st, 1873. And even though it took nine years, we owe it all to the day the circus came to town.

Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine. Some of the people who live here are descendants of the survivors of more than 400 shipwrecks.

And a half hour later we have Charlottetown. Tomorrow we're off to Nova Scotia. See ya!

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