I come from Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province (population: 138,928). Our tourist guide describes it as a paradise of rolling hills, sandy beaches, quiet roads and friendly people. The guide actually includes the following paragraph:
“To help visitors understand the ‘Island way of life,’ we ask you to join us to hear the hauntingly beautiful music from a fiddle, see the scenery that kindles a multitude of stories, songs and poems, taste the harvested fruits from the land and sea, and feel the constant salt breeze against your skin on a hot summer's day.”
It’s enough to make you throw up, isn’t it?
Okay, okay, PEI is pretty. There’s no denying that. I love looking at pink apple blossoms in spring, golden wheat and green potato fields in summer, red-gold foliage in fall, and softly falling snow in winter. I love the ocean, and the beaches, and the red cliffs and the quiet forests.
I guess you could say that I love the appearance of my island home. It’s the attitude I don’t like. There are just a lot of things about PEI that really bother me.
Want to know what they are? Of course you do.
Anne of Green Gables. Okay, the Japanese might love Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “red-headed heroine,” but on PEI, we hate her. Anne has taken over the island. Just go into any craft shop or tourist boutique and you’ll see what I mean. We sell Anne dolls, straw hats with fake red braids, even bottled “Anne” Raspberry Cordial. Our Confederation Centre theater stages the Anne musical every day during the summer. You can visit “Anne’s” house, as well as the houses of many of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s relatives and the town of Avonlea. Anne is even on our license plates! She’s been so commercialized, and I’m so sick of her, that I can’t even enjoy the books or the (very well-done) movie anymore.
The Potatoes. Besides Anne, potatoes are the first thing non-islanders think of when I mention PEI. Yes, we grow a lot of potatoes on the island. Get over it.
The Beaches. PEI has some beautiful beaches. We have two different types - the rocky beaches, which are a lot of fun to walk on and great places to collect shells, and the sandy beaches, where the sand blows into big dunes and sparkles in the sun. The former type is my favorite kind of beach, because I love walking beside the red cliffs that have been cut into caves and arches by the waves. Also, the rocky beaches are a lot more secluded. That’s because all the tourists are on the sandy ones.
PEI’s sandy beaches get really crowded in the summertime, especially the beaches in Cavendish. The government actually gets away with charging admission for those ones (I think it’s somewhere around $7 per person), which I think is ludicrous and greedy. They do turn people away from the beach once it gets too crowded, but they only do this when there’s no possible way to fit even one more person on the beach.
But the worst thing of all is the litter. Thousands of people think it’s okay to come to the island and leave their bottles, candy wrappers, plastic cups, and even disposable diapers on our beautiful beaches. It’s awful. This complaint ties in with my next one:
The Tourists. I hate tourists. They come to PEI, drive down our highways really slowly because they’re too busy looking at the scenery, throw their litter everywhere, crowd the sidewalks, streets and beaches, take up all of our parking spaces (we hardly have enough for our citizens, let alone a million tourists), and flood our shopping malls and grocery stores. But, in doing so, they spend their lovely money - the money that keeps PEI going - so we have to act like we love them. And we have to keep manufacturing all that aforementioned “Anne” shit for their amusement.
The Highways. Maybe I should say “the lack of highways.” PEI has, I believe, one highway with more than two lanes. That’s not two lanes in each direction - that’s two lanes, total. I don’t know if it’s because we’re too cheap to build some decent highways, or because we want to keep the “small and rural” atmosphere for the tourists, or what, but we really need an actual divided highway. Islanders do not drive leisurely through the countryside admiring the scenery. We speed down the road, completely ignoring road signs, passing zones and unfortunate raccoons. We tailgate, switch lanes without signaling, and honk at anyone driving at the speed limit or slower. We curse at the farmers who are legally allowed to drive their tractors down the middle of the road. WE NEED A DIVIDED HIGHWAY.
The Music. For some reason, our tourism department thinks it’s a good idea to convince the tourists that we all love bad music - more specifically, fiddle music, celtic music and horrible folk songs - on the island. They play it at all festivals and gatherings, including our Canada day celebration, parades and concerts. Spinnaker’s landing, my city’s local boardwalk, hires performers to play the music all day long during the tourist season. It’s horrible, it’s out of tune, it’s screechy, and it’s unavoidable. I hate it.
The People. PEI is a very white place. The only people of color you ever see on the island are tourists. As a result, many islanders (mostly the older generation) tend to view non-whites as “different,” and there’s a definite undercurrent of racism. These same people also oppose homosexuality, and most of the gay and lesbian people on PEI are in the closet because they don’t want to deal with the gossip and ostracization of the small-minded. Which brings me to my final complaint about the island:
It’s too small. The cities are so little, and the population so small, that everyone knows everyone else. And, chances are, even if you don’t know someone, they know you. They know your family, your friends, and your business. Nothing is a secret. Every town, city and rural community is filled with close-minded gossips who love nothing better than to talk about people’s marriages, mistakes, financial status, love life, children, or anything else they can find out about. They love a good scandal, and dig relentlessly for gossip. Many of them will even ask rude and personal questions to your face without a second thought. I hate being watched, I hate being criticized, I hate being discussed, and I hate this attitude.
So that’s why I’m going to school in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It’s not a huge city, but at least here the only people who know me are University students, and they don’t seem to find me terribly gossip-worthy. I can actually go for a walk without running into someone I know (or someone who knows me), and I can go to a gay bar for
dancing
without people assuming I’m a lesbian, and I can go out drinking without worrying that my parent's friends will see how drunk I am. I love it.
I understand why the tourists like PEI. It’s very pretty, and small, and there are a lot of fun touristy things to do in the summer. The people working in our tourist industry and our multitude of shops and services are friendly and helpful. PEI is a wonderful place to visit. It’s just not a great place to live.
