PEI–Orwell Historic Village–East Coast Scenic Drive

 

The Orwell Corner Historic Village is about 25 minutes east of Charlottetown on the way to the Wood Islands Ferry Terminal.  The village consists of mostly original buildings with a few reconstructions.  It captures the essence of rural village life in the mid-1800’s in PEI.  Once you pass through the gates of the visitors centre they do a pretty good job of blocking out 21st. Century technology.       The interpreters that we saw did not wear any watches nor did they have modern eye glasses that would spoil the setting.  The blacksmith was “sweating it out” by the forge making decorative hooks to be sold in the the visitors centre, while the women were giving demonstrations of the many useful articles for sale in the general store.

As it was a slow day, one of the farmers cornered us and proceeded to tell us about every piece of farming equipment that they had in the yard, most of which still operated.  When we were able to escape we went to the schoolhouse. The school held about 40 children from grades 1 to 10 in one room.  Some of the smaller children sat 3 to a desk.  I guess class size was not an issue with teachers at this time.

Afterwards we drove further along the coast to the Cape Bear lighthouse.  The lighthouse is still there and open for tours during the summer but the light has since be removed and replaced by an automatic light. Samuel, a grade 12 student from Montague, PEI gave us the tour of the station and described the former Marconi Wireless station that first received the distress call from the sinking Titanic.  (Cape Race, NL received the signal at the same time but was not a part of Canada then.)

 

 

Prince Edward Island appears so small on the maps of Canada but we were hard pressed to travel the perimeter of the island on the secondary roads that exist there.  We were wishing that we had the rental car back!