The Speares

Quite some time ago, the continents didn't look much like they do today. North America was joined to Greenland and together they formed the continent of Laurentia. Baltica, composed of what today we would call Europe, Scandinavia and Siberia was another continent that was colliding, at the speed of continents, with Laurentia. Where they met they were pushing up the Caledonian Mountains, the Himalayas of their day.

They were later joined by Avalonia, which was creating the Acadian Mountains at its border. So together with some smaller bits of land, these three continents were forming a supercontinent. Larussia. Or more colloquially, the Old Red Sandstone Supercontinent.

Sandstone is formed when a lot of sediment, let's say from the erosion of Himalayan-sized mountains, flows into a basin of some sort, perhaps an ancient Devonian sea floor. Over the course of eons this sediment, this sand, compresses and becomes a sort of rock. Clastic, if you're particularly curious. Sedimentary, if you're not. If the sediments involved were to contain a lot of Hematite, an iron oxide, then the resulting sandstone would be red in colour. And that is pretty much how the Old Red Sandstone Supercontinent was made.

Over time, the ancient supercontinents split up and various bits of them went their separate ways. Old Red is now spread out as far east as Norway, Great Britain and Ireland; as far north as Greenland and Svalbard; and as far west as the northeast bit of North America. That would be the Maritime Provinces. And Prince Edward Island in particular.

Long before it was called Prince Edward Island, the little island lying in the water was called Epekwitk, literally lying in the water. The Mi'kmaq considered the island to be part of a larger region along with Piktuk, the explosive place, currently Pictou county on the mainland, where methane gas bubbles up from underground coal seams. But Epekwitk and Piktuk was only one region in Mi'kma'ki, the land that today, by those of European descent, would be considered the Maritime Provinces and the eastern part of Québec. Mi'kma'ki was created by the Great Spirit in seven stages: first the Sky and the Sun, then Mother Earth were created. After this, the first humans were created: Glooscap and his grandmother, nephew and mother. Glooscap rid the world of monsters and also rearranged the land so as to be more suitable for people. Then he commanded seven men and seven women to come forth from the sparks of his fire. And these seven couples became the founding families of the seven Mi'kma'ki districts: Kespukwitk, Sipekni'katik, Eskikewa'kik, Unama'kik, Siknikt, Kespek and, of course, Epekwitk aq Piktuk, formed when the Creator smeared a crescent of red clay on the water.

The Mi'kmaq have been living in Epekwitk for at least 12,000 years. They likely walked here, perhaps from Piktuk, which would be why they are considered to be the same region. The Northumberland Strait currently separating PEI from Nova Scotia is 68 meters deep at the eastern end at Piktuk, but, generally speaking, it is quite shallow for most of its width. And water levels were 120 meters lower at the end of the last glaciation, coincidentally about 12,000 years ago. Certainly a lot of critters did walk here. PEI was at one time home to moose, bear, caribou, wolf, and any number of other mainland species. Larger mammals are mostly extinct on the island now, but when the Breton sailor Jaques Cartier arrived in 1534 he would have found it to be full of life, and "the fairest land that may possibly be seen full of goodly meadows and trees".

The French laid claim to the island and the rest of Acadia (most of the Maritimes) in 1604. They named Epekwitk Île Saint-jean. The Mi'kmaq were not amused but tolerated the French as trading partners and allies, because the foreigners had metal tools and weapons. Over the next few hundred years hostilities flared up from time to time between the British and the French, with the Mi'kmaq generally siding with the French. These hostilities subsided after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, which gave Britain control of the mainland but not the islands. So the Acadians fled the mainland and many of them ended up on the little crescent of red clay lying in the water.

But the English-French hostilities were far from over, and erupted again in 1754 in a war which would take seven years to resolve. After this war, the British took over Epekwitk, which they named St. John's Island, and immediately set about deporting all of the rest of the Acadians to France. But not all of them made it. Almost 1,000 of them died in three separate tragedies at sea, all, oddly enough, within days of each other. Be that as it may, Britain now had a largely empty island, ignoring the savages of course, and it was a part of the colony at Nova Scotia.

In the late 1760s the island became its own colony and was split up into 67 lots. These lots were granted on a lottery basis to those loyal (and useful) to King George III. But the new owners all lived in England. So the people who worked and lived on the land would never actually own it, and owed huge rents to the absentee landlords in Britain. We'll continue that thread tomorrow.

In the meantime, the new colony needed people to work the land. They changed their name to New Ireland and set about attracting Irish immigrants. Of course the name never stuck; only the British Privy Council can change the name of a colony, which they did later when they named the island after the King's fourth son, Prince Edward Augustus. But in the meantime the island was flooded with 10,000 Irish immigrants. And you know what the Irish are famous for. That's right, lumber.

PEI was covered in vast tracks of forests in the 1800s. And nowhere on the island was further than 20 miles from access to the coast, so getting lumber to market was pretty easy. The mid 1800s was the golden age of sail, and the ship building centers on the mainland would take all of the timber that could be cut down on the island. There seemed to be no end to the prosperity brought about by timber exports. Until it all ended when steam ships became a thing and they were made out of iron, which is not commercially viable in PEI, even though the whole place is made of hematite.

Anyhow, to gloss over some pretty bleak economic times for the island during which they turned to fox farming, it turns out that PEI's soil, climate, relative isolation from pests and massive deforestation make it ideally suited to growing potatoes, and today the island produces about a quarter of Canada's crop.

So like they say, the spuds are big on the back of Bud's rig, and they're from Prince Edward Island

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